The three most popular superheroes are poised to duke it out for the box office crown of 2004.Shortly after Spider-Man shattered records, Sony announced that the sequel would swing into theaters on May 7, 2004. Theadaptation has since become the biggest comic book movie ever.Now comes word that after the commercial and critical failings of their last big screen adventures—1997'sand 1987's—Batman and Superman will star in the same movie, though their on-screen pairing will result in fisticuffs of some sort.Warner Bros. announced it will resurrect DC Comics' signature characters in, which will not be a continuation of the previous movies. Wolfgang Petersen () will direct from a script by Andrew Kevin Walker () that finds the superheroes starting as buddies but ending up foes over their differing philosophies."Superman stands for what is powerful, clear, bright, noble and just; Batman is dark, obsessive and vengeful," Petersen told. "Because they are so different, they will inevitably end up clashing. It will be a battle of the titans."According to Petersen, the soonest that cameras could roll is early 2003, and the shoot would last five to six months. No one has been cast yet, but the director is expected to make unusual choices a la Sam Raimi 's use of Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man.Petersen is aiming for a summer 2004 release, which would pit it againstin the same season.would joinand the thirdas one of Warner Bros.' four tent pole releases for the year—the fourth is not known at this point.Last in theaters with 2000's The Perfect Storm , Petersen would helm the project prior to taking onand, which he had been previously attached to.The two solo revivals of the superheroes—director McG'sanddirector Darren Aronofsky's—are still in development, though neither one has been given the official greenlight.Warner Bros. has been eager to seefly again for some time, and not only because the franchise could still be quite lucrative as hinted by the small screen success of. The studio has already spent millions trying to revive it over the years, including the commissioning of scripts forfrom Kevin Smith ), Dan Gilroy () and Bill Wisher ().But Warner Bros. still didn't have a script it deemed usable and the projected production cost had escalated to a whopping $140 million, so studio boss Lorenzo di Bonaventura aborted pre-production in April 1998 as the disappointing performance ofstill hung in the air. Further loss was incurred asdirector Tim Burton and star Nicolas Cage —who publicly talked about playing Superman at such venues as—had pay-or-play deals. In other words, their contracts stipulated that they would get paid even if the movie went forward without them.Other comic book-based pictures that could be released in 2004 includeand