The Dark Knight starring Christian Bale, and the late Heath Ledger as The Joker, arrives July 18.

Warner Bros. / Stephen Vaughan

Summer doesn’t officially begin for more than a month, but already the “summer movie” Speed Racer has crashed and burned, Iron Man has proven its durability, Patrick Dempsey (Made of Honor) and Cameron Diaz (What Happens in Vegas) have walked down their separate aisles and today those four siblings once again find themselves in the fantasy land of Narnia.

However, all this is just the lead up to what’s expected to be the biggest “summer” blockbuster of them all — Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull — which opens Thursday, following in the footsteps of the last Indy — Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade — by 19 years.

But, with the start of summer still a month in the future post-Indy, that’s far from all for a season that promises to be filled with a lot of familiar faces, from comic books (Batman, the Incredible Hulk, Hellboy) to TV (Get Smart, The X-Files, Sex and the City) to the kind of actors and directors that the popcorn-crunching summer movie glut seems to have been designed to accommodate — Eddie Murphy, M. Night Shyamalan, Adam Sandler, Mike Myers, Will Smith, Ben Stiller, Jack Black. They’ll all be coming your way this summer, ready or not.

Harrison Ford told me in early 2006 that although several scripts had been written and presented to him and director Steven Spielberg over the years by executive producer George Lucas, part of the problem in bringing this latest Indiana Jones to the screen was “a matter of getting one that we all like and think is going to work.” Lucas and Jeff Nathanson eventually did come up with a story idea that worked, but they’ve kept the details close to the vest. What we do know, however, is that not a lot of computerized special effects were used, that the film is set in 1957, that Cate Blanchett plays a Soviet agent, that space aliens may be involved, that Karen Allen is back for the first time since Raiders of the Lost Ark 27 years ago, that 21-year-old Shia LaBeouf has been brought in as a sidekick for the 66-year-old Ford to bring in the young audience (many of whom were not born when Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade opened in 1989, let alone Raiders in 1981). Oh, and that fans have already voted it the most anticipated movie of the year. That said, let’s all keep our fingers crossed.

But this summer is much more than Indy and Iron Man. The Incredible Hulk, who came from the comics to a hit TV show that ran from 1978 to 1982 to a 2003 movie that audiences did not go green with envy over, will be back for another shot at big-screen stardom (June 13). This time Edward Norton will play scientist Bruce Banner who is desperate to find a cure to the gamma radiation that poisoned his cells and turned him into the not-so-jolly green giant. Director Louis Leterrier has said he wanted to deliver a film that was more in line with the comic books and the TV show.

There’s more comic book muscle and mayhem due with the return of the kitten-loving hero from hell in Hellboy II: The Golden Army (July 11), with the superhero battling an unstoppable (wanna bet?) bloodthirsty army of creatures ruled by a merciless dictator. The good news for fans of the first film is that Ron Perlman returns in the title role and Guillermo del Toro is back directing following his Oscar nomination for Pan’s Labyrinth.

Fans may have already been up for The Dark Knight (July 18), Christopher Nolan’s follow-up to his 2005 Batman Begins, again starring Christian Bale. But with the death of Heath Ledger, who makes his final appearance in the film as The Joker, the attraction for audiences beyond the usual Batman fans may be irresistible. Other attractions include a redesigned Batsuit for our hero, as well as four action sequences designed for the IMAX camera.

Brendan Fraser will be back, too, as explorer Rick O’Connell along with his favorite wrapped-tight creature in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (Aug. 1). This time the bandaged one is played by Jet Li as a resurrected Han emperor. The action races from the catacombs of ancient China to the frigid Himalayas. But before he climbs a mountain, Fraser will be going far below it in Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D (July 11), trudging to where no one has gone on the big screen since Pat Boone in the 1959 version of the Jules Verne tale.

Steve Carell will spoof spy movies (wasn’t that a ’60s thing?) in Get Smart (June 20), a re-do of the ’60s TV hit that starred Don Adams as the world’s most inept secret agent. Yes, Smart’s shoe phone will be a major prop and he will still be trying to thwart the latest plot by the evil crime syndicate known as KAOS. But Anne Hathaway takes over for TV’s Barbara Feldon as Agent 99.

David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson will make a bid to bring their own brand of out-of-this-world sleuthing to life again in The X-Files: I Want to Believe (July 25), six years after the TV series ended and a decade after the first big-screen version of the show. Fans will want to believe that lightning can strike twice.

Meanwhile, just four years after HBO’s Sex and the City wrapped, Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon, Kim Cattrall and Kristin Davis will return May 30 for another go-round of pondering fashion, hair, nails and men as well as to tie up loose ends from the series.

One of the big hits of last summer was the screen version of the Broadway smash Hairspray, which featured John Travolta in a dress. There’s nothing this summer that can top that, but Universal sets out to prove at least that musicals haven’t died with its big-screen version of the Broadway smash Mamma Mia! (July 18). In the film, which was based on a raft of ABBA songs, Meryl Streep plays a single mother who owns a small hotel on a Greek island. Her about-to-be married daughter (Amanda Seyfried) invites the three possible men who might be her father to the wedding so someone can walk her down the aisle.

In WALLE (June 27), the Disney-Pixar Studios take us to the Earth of the year 2700 when the planet has been rendered uninhabitable and the humans, who now live in spaceships circling it, are awaiting word on when it is safe to return home. WALLE (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class) is a robot who has been left behind to collect trash. In his duties, WALLE inadvertently stumbles upon the key to the planet’s future. But before his secrets can be unlocked, he begins a race across the galaxy in pursuit of a pretty robot called EVE.

There will be more intergalactic comedy with Space Chimps (July 18), highlighting the slapstick antics of astronaut chimpanzees who have the “wrong stuff.”

Meanwhile, Eddie Murphy plays an alien spaceship (no kidding!) who is made in the image of its miniature-sized captain in Meet Dave (July 11). The film’s original title was Starship Dave and he comes to Earth where his problems begin when he falls in love with an Earth girl.

Closer to home is writer-director M. Night Shyamalan’s latest journey to the world of the paranormal, The Happening (June 13). Mark Wahlberg plays a science teacher who witnesses an environmental nightmare and takes his family on the run from the inexplicable and unstoppable event that causes mass suicides.

Will Smith plays a down-in-the-dumps alcoholic superhero who hires a public relations whiz to restore his status as an action hero in Hancock (July 2). Edgy, conflicted, sarcastic and misunderstood, the fact that his well-intentioned heroics always leave mega damage in their wake has caused his downfall. This is not your usual superhero movie, but might just click with those who are looking for something a little different this summer.

Offbeat comedy is afoot when Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly play a pair of confirmed, live-at-home bachelors who find they must move in together when Ferrell’s mother (Mary Steenburgen) and Reilly’s father (Rhode Island’s Richard Jenkins) get married in Step Brothers (July 25).

Jack Black brings his own brand of physical comedy as the voice of a Panda who is chosen to fulfill an ancient prophecy and finds himself training alongside his martial arts idols in the animated Kung Fu Panda (June 6). Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan, Lucy Liu and Seth Rogen are some of the other stars lending their vocal talents to the characters.

Black will be back, this time in human form, alongside Ben Stiller and Robert (Iron Man) Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder (Aug. 15) as a team of self-absorbed actors who set out to make the most expensive war movie ever made. Ignoring the fact that their film has been shelved by the studio because of budget overruns, they set out for the jungles of Southeast Asia where they meet up with a real team of bad guys.

There’s lots more in the summer pipeline, too, including Angelina Jolie as an assassination bureau trainer in Wanted (June 27); Amber Tamblyn and America Ferrera back for Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (Aug. 8); the Sundance Film Festival hit American Teen (Aug. 15) about high schoolers in a rural Indiana town; Kiefer Sutherland unlocking a horrific secret in a fire-ravaged department store in Mirrors (Aug. 15); Adam Sandler as an Israeli secret agent who takes a job in a New York hair salon in You Don’t Mess With Zohan (June 6), and Mike Myers as an American who was raised by gurus in India and returns to the States to seek fame and fortune as a self-help spiritualist in The Love Guru (June 20). So far The Love Guru is the only film in the batch that has stirred controversy, from Hindu groups. They fear it will insult their religion and demand that they be allowed to see it before it opens. Perhaps they will picket. For Myers, it is a long way from Shrek.

mjanuson@projo.com