My latest movie pitch, if I'm ever asked for one, is The Sound of Music 2: The Hills are Alive – and They're Headed Right for Us! In this film, Maria and the Von Trapp family have escaped the Nazis, but now they must battle a corrupt milkman/coke dealer who cannot die!

Or how about High Noon II: An Hour Later. Gary Cooper comes back into town because he had left behind some monogrammed towels and finds himself facing nine more desperados, with no one in town who will help him except an amusing but hyperactive Chris Tucker.

These movie pitches are pure genius because they are totally unoriginal – and that, by gosh, is what's especially big for this summer movie season. Look at your newspaper's movie listings. Have you ever seen so many sequels at once? Let me jump ahead and answer that: You have not. Variety magazine confirms that never before has Hollywood put so much focus on sequels, probably because it's never made so much money off them.

Though sequels once were expected to make less than the originals, now they frequently make more. 2 Fast 2 Furious, The Matrix Reloaded and X2: X-Men United have so far made more than their predecessors. Of the 10 top-grossing movies last weekend (June 27-29), three were sequels – including the No. 1 movie, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. And of the remaining movies that are not sequels, one is a remake (The Italian Job) and another is based on a comic book (The Hulk).

Heck, they're so anxious for sequels, they're reaching back about 10 years for the originals. The first Bad Boys, for example, slept quite peacefully from 1995 until Martin Lawrence and Will Smith showed up for a paycheck in Bad Boys II this year. And oh, how did we survive a similar wait between Dumb and Dumber (1995) and Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd (2003)? You'd have to go even farther into the past for the last Terminator movie – 1991, way back when you didn't worry about Arnold Schwarzenegger every time you saw him running.

Then there's Legally Blonde 2, Spy Kids 3D: Game Over, Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, Rugrats Go Wild, and Pokemon Heroes – all sequels, all in theaters now or soon.

Want to know when the next Matrix movie is due out? Get this: November.

My Sound of Music 2 idea doesn't sound so stupid now, does it?

Or how about these:

Mary Poppins 2
Mary Poppins returns as the perfect android killing machine from the future. Everyone in old London town learns to take life with a spoonful of sugar, then are all lured to their deaths in a trash compactor.

Pee Wee's Big Adventure 2
As we know, Pee Wee spent the first movie searching for his missing bicycle, which was stolen when he went to a store. In this one, he goes into a pornographic film theater and emerges to find that someone has taken away his movie career. He spends the remainder of the movie trying to get David Letterman to return his calls.

Taxi Driver 2: Taxi Squared
Robert De Niro reprises his role as the intense, homicidal cab driver Travis Bickle, this time teamed up with the zany characters from the TV show Taxi. Wackiness ensues as Rev. Jim adopts a wayward but adorable ferret while Travis methodically stalks Jodie Foster.

Gone with the Wind 2
The first Gone with the Wind covered 12 years in the life of spoiled, willful plantation belle Scarlett O'Hara, from the start of the Civil War through Reconstruction. It ends with her tenaciously finding her source and strength in her old plantation land. In the sequel, two cheeky high school chums make a pact that they will both lose their virginity by the end of summer.