With Spider-Man 2 spinning webs around its box-office competitors, Shrek and Harry Potter expanding their franchises into perpetuity and even the loquacious lovers of Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise coming back for a rematch nine years on, the sequel has a new-found credibility. Forget straight-to-video ignominy, inferior production values and original stars conspicuous by their absence - signing up for the sequel to a hit film now represents a significant means for a star to consolidate his or her prominence and earning power.

It remains an intriguingly risky proposition, however, to follow up on the kind of film that has established itself permanently within cultural discourse - especially when considerable time has elapsed since the original. Love it or hate it, Paul Verhoeven's Basic Instinct is one such film. Talk of a sequel began soon after its release in 1992 but the ongoing efforts to bring the project to fruition have turned into a truly epic Hollywood saga that rivals the original film for unexpected twists.

Such protracted wrangling is commonplace in Hollywood, of course. It usually plays out behind closed doors. The fact the international press has reported on every salvo fired in the Basic Instinct 2 battle - which culminated last month with star Sharon Stone suing the producers for a reported $19m - is evidence of the undimmed fascination the original film still commands. Basic Instinct launched Sharon Stone as a major star, pushed the boundaries for forthright eroticism in mainstream cinema, spawned an entire genre of imitators, and elicited fevered debate across the cultural spectrum. For many, its lewdness, luridness and histrionic plotting made it the byword for meritless, exploitative guff; Saturday night thrills for the lowest common denominator. Yet the film found a more appreciative and analytical audience within criticism and academia. Theorists wrote reams about its self-consciously

trashy mode of address and ambiguous sexual politics (and still do - Camille Paglia provided a commentary for the 2001 special edition DVD).

Meanwhile, less cerebral fans just buzzed about the infamous interrogation room scene, in which Stone provided a graphic flesh flash that has since been spoofed more than enough times to qualify as legendary. If Marilyn Monroe secured her place in the pantheon of great movie blondes by showing her pants, Stone got there by leaving hers off.

As for Michael Douglas, forget producing One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, forget winning the Oscar for Wall Street, forget marrying Catherine Zeta-Jones - it's

his role as Detective Nick Curran in Basic Instinct that fixed him for good in the popular imagination. Specifically, it's the exquisitely embarrassing nightclub scene in which he bumps and grinds to prime 1992 Belgian techno while clad in an unpleasantly clingy

casual sweater. (Douglas, good sport that he is, lampooned this iconic sequence during a recent guest spot on Will And Grace.)

And so we come to Basic

Instinct 2. Or do we? As the smoke clears over the most recent bickering, it remains unclear whether this much chewed-over film will materialise as a sequel proper, a sympathetic companion piece, or just a Sharon Stone movie about a tough lady with no knickers.

The original intention was to begin shooting a continuation of the same story before the end of the last century. Henry Bean and Leora Barish were working on a script; tantalisingly, David Cronenberg was attached to direct. He passed on it, as did a list of putative male co-stars for La Stone that reportedly included Douglas, Harrison Ford, Kurt Russell and Bruce Greenwood. Things looked healthier again when John McTiernan took over as director and Benjamin Bratt was mentioned to co-star - but then Stone signalled her disapproval of Bratt and things stalled again. Vincent Perez came to nothing. Pierce Brosnan said no. By the end of 2001, Stone had filed her mammoth lawsuit, claiming compensation for work she missed while waiting to reprise her role as Basic Instinct's (possibly) murderous Catherine Trammell.

Producers Andrew Vajna and Mario Kassar countered by going public with the details of Stone's contract negotiations - comprising what must be some of the most outrageous demands since Mephistopheles and Faustus did their little deal. With Stone temporarily out of the picture, production plans continued apace: the title changed to Risk Addiction, the connections to Basic Instinct were severed, and directorial duties were offered to Lee Tamahori, who made Once Were Warriors and Die Another Day.

Now, confusingly, it's been reported Stone and the producers have settled their differences and she's back on board. Whether Tamahori will remain is unclear at present. He may balk at working with the woman Paul Verhoeven dubbed ''a nightmare'', or Stone might veto him, depending on the terms of her new contract.

Ah yes, that contract. Since Basic Instinct, Stone has made the full progression from sex kitten to grown-up diva. She's got the madly tumultuous private life (lawsuits, divorces, life-threatening brain aneurysm, husband bitten by komodo dragon, etc), the patchy CV (Oscar-nominated for Casino; less feted for Diabolique, Last Dance, Gloria, the Muse, etc) and the deranged self-importance. In a recent interview with Premiere magazine, Stone gave vent to her bitterness over the lack of praise she gets for the film that made her a megastar: ''They need to say I got famous because I crossed and uncrossed my legs because they can't face the fact my character was so empowered. People can't give it up for me. They can't take that I owned that much male energy.''

Presumably the ''perk list'' she presented to the Basic Instinct 2 producers represented an effort to get back at this nebulous and misguided ''they''. Stone's list - the text of which can be found at thesmokinggun.com - is an eye-popping read. Extras Stone demanded, above and beyond her salary, included private jets, round-the-clock armed guards, presidential hotel suites and first-class round-the-world plane tickets ''for family, staff and companions''. Then there's the issue of press and publicity - any upstaging is precluded with the specification that ''if the likeness of any other cast member appears in any paid ads or posters for the picture, Sharon's likeness must also appear in substantially the same size (or larger)''.

It goes on. Call this a fearless display of ''male energy'' or the crazed sputterings of a deluded narcissist - it's certainly a fitting footnote to Basic Instinct's onscreen power struggle. Catherine Trammell could afford to play power games with the men around her, because she knew the case couldn't be solved without her. Sharon Stone has apparently been trying the same trick, in the knowledge there couldn't be a Basic Instinct 2 without her. How much she had to compromise to get the project back on track, we may never know.

The first film ends on a famously ambiguous note, with a dizzying succession of red herrings obscuring whether or not an icepick in

the head is going to impede Nick's plan to ''f*** like minks, raise rugrats, and live happily ever after'' with Catherine. Douglas's absence from the sequel would seem to consign poor Nick to a theoretical sticky end. Stone has confirmed her co-star will be a younger actor - on the grounds that ''somebody should be younger!''. Let's hope

the lad in question has some fight

in him (and some appropriate

clubbing gear).