Familiar fall

Hollywood may not have a Harry Potter, Spider-Man, Shrek or Capt. Jack Sparrow on its fall lineup. Yet the schedule does offer filmgoers a chance to catch up with some familiar characters, stories and movie-making teams. It’ll be reunion season for actors and filmmakers such as Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott (“American Gangster”); Cate Blanchett and Shekhar Kapur (“Elizabeth: The Golden Age”); Nicolas Cage and Jon Turteltaub (“National Treasure: Book of Secrets”); Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and Tim Burton (“Sweeney Todd”); and Ben Stiller and the Farrelly brothers (“The Heartbreak Kid”).

It’s reacquaintance time for some classic characters in Robert Zemeckis’ retelling of the Norse legend “Beowulf”; “Fred Claus,” a North Pole comedy about Santa (Paul Giamatti) and his black-sheep brother (Vince Vaughn); and “I Am Legend,” with Will Smith in a new take on the sci-fi thriller “The Omega Man.”

There’s even the return of a venerable genre, the Western, which has fallen on hard times in modern Hollywood.

Crowe and Christian Bale star in the remake “3:10 to Yuma,” which hits theaters on Friday, about a poor rancher helping to escort a captured gang leader.

A second Old West tale comes close on its heels with “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” (scheduled for a Sept. 21 release). Brad Pitt plays James in the last year of his life as he lapses into paranoia over potential betrayal by accomplices and intimates, including young idolizer Ford (Casey Affleck).

Pitt says his own celebrity helped him sympathize with the outlaw, whose notoriety as a heroic Robin Hood figure was heavily fabricated.

“I liked the themes of fame, the obsession with fame,” he says, “the idea of the Jesse James character being trapped behind a facade and not knowing how to get out.”

Among the other fall highlights (release dates subject to change):

•Jodie Foster stars in “The Brave One” (Sept. 14), a thriller about a Manhattan woman who becomes a gun-toting vigilante after recovering from an attack that killed her fiancé.

•Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron and Susan Sarandon star in a murder mystery surrounding an Iraq war soldier after he returns home in “In the Valley of Elah” (Sept. 14).

•”The Kingdom” (Sept. 28) stars Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner and Chris Cooper as members of a U.S. counterterrorism unit chasing after the mastermind of a bombing in Saudi Arabia.

•Stiller rejoins the Farrellys, who directed him in “There’s Something About Mary,” for “The Heartbreak Kid” (Oct. 5), about a man who meets the perfect woman – on his honeymoon with another bride.

•George Clooney again pulls double duty, starring in “Michael Clayton” (Oct. 5), a legal drama about a corporation battling a class-action lawsuit, and directing and starring in “Leatherheads” (Dec. 7) as a 1920s pro football player who recruits a young college athlete (John Krasinski) with whom he ends up in a romantic triangle over a reporter (Renee Zellweger).

•Nine years after “Elizabeth,” Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush and director Kapur reteam for “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” (Oct. 12), resuming the story of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth I.

•Phoenix stars with Mark Wahlberg and Robert Duvall in “We Own the Night” (Oct. 12), a crime tale in 1980s New York.

•Reese Witherspoon is a woman searching for her missing husband, an Egyptian who vanishes on a flight to Washington, in “Rendition” (Oct. 19).

•Joaquin Phoenix and Jennifer Connelly are a couple in grief after their son is killed by a hit-and-run driver (Mark Ruffalo) in “Reservation Road” (Oct. 19).

•Steve Carell plays a widower who falls for his brother’s girlfriend (Juliette Binoche) in “Dan in Real Life” (Oct. 26).

•Halle Berry is a widow who forges a relationship with her husband’s friend (Benicio Del Toro) in “Things We Lost in the Fire” (Oct. 26).

•Crowe plays a New York cop to Denzel Washington’s Harlem crime kingpin in director Scott’s “American Gangster” (Nov. 2).

•Jerry Seinfeld returns with his first major project since “Seinfeld,” co-writing and providing the lead voice in the animated comedy “Bee Movie” (Nov. 2).

•Vaughn plays the title role in “Fred Claus” (Nov. 9) to Giamatti’s Santa, who bails his sibling out of jail and forces him to work off the debt at the North Pole.

•Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins and Ray Winstone are featured in “Beowulf” (Nov. 16), with Zemeckis applying the performance-capture technology he used in “The Polar Express” to animate the epic of the hero’s battle against the monster Grendel and his mother.

•Sarandon plays a wicked queen who banishes a fairy-tale princess (Amy Adams) to modern New York in “Enchanted” (Nov. 21).

•Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig appear in “His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass” (Dec. 7), set in a fantasy world where a girl rushes to rescue her missing friend.

•Tim Roth stars in Francis Ford Coppola’s “Youth Without Youth” (Dec. 14), playing a professor on the run in Europe as World War II looms.

•A gang of beloved cartoon critters come to life in “Alvin and the Chipmunks” (Dec. 14), with Jason Lee.

•Will Smith stars as possibly the last person on Earth in “I Am Legend” (Dec. 14), adapted from the same novel as “The Omega Man,” which takes place after a plague that wipes out most of humanity and transforms others into bloodthirsty nocturnal creatures.

•Cage sets out to clear an ancestor implicated in Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in “National Treasure: Book of Secrets” (Dec. 21).

•Frequent collaborators Depp, Bonham Carter and Burton adapt Stephen Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd” (Dec. 21), the musical about the murderous 18th century barber.

•Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman are terminal patients who take a final road trip in “The Bucket List” (Dec. 21).

•Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts mastermind American strategy to counter the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in “Charlie Wilson’s War” (Dec. 25).