Four years after HBO's groundbreaking show put Cosmopolitans, Manolo Blahniks and Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha into common vernacular, "Sex and the City" is back in big screen fashion. And despite a series of road blocks - difficulties in getting all four principal actresses on board, settling on Disthe right script, and getting the right studio support - the girls are back.

Like the TV show, the movie follows the lives of four successful and empowered women living and loving in New York City. The film picks up with Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), a sex columnist who's just published her third book, looking for apartments with her longtime love, Mr. Big (Chris Noth), hinting that their relationship has taken a more officially committed form. Charlotte (Kristin Davis), who at series end was adopting a baby from China, now faces a surprise pregnancy and worries that she's too happy. Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) is dealing with increasing demands as a partner in a law firm, raising her son and unfortunately, an unexpected betrayal by her husband. Delightfully entertaining man-eater Samantha (Kim Cattrall) has left Manhattan to manage her boyfriend's rising Hollywood career in L.A., but soon doubts her decisions when she realizes she's living a life that revolves around a man.

The major differences between the TV show and the film are surprisingly few. Aside from the long 2:20 runtime, fans of the show will not be disappointed. The film blends the series' greatest strengths- strong characters, witty banter, fabulous (and fantasy) New York fashion and, of course, sex. "The hardest part, no pun intended, about starting the movie was the amount of responsibility I felt to the fans and people who had watched the series for six years," says writer/director Michael Patrick King. "[Also including] everything that everybody loved and knew so that it would seem current, but not like the same thing again." King says the differentiating factor is that the film has less talk and more story. "There's a journey," he explains. "The fact that it goes from light to dark to light in one sitting, that's what makes it a movie."

A movie that almost didn't make it, however, as the first big screen attempt in 2004 failed (the blame for which was allegedly due to monetary demands from Cattrall's camp). Therefore this time around, the biggest challenge was getting everyone and everything to allign.

"I will tell you that the men were as complicated as the women," says Parker, who also served as executive producer on the film, "Just to break all myths and rumors," she explains, alluding to rumors of Cattrall's holdout. "It's the logistics [and] the perfunctory details that are far more difficult," she says. "It took us a really long time to get a green light."

So long, in fact, many of the cast and crew members had given up on the film version -as the four years between the series end and the start of production is an eternity in Hollywood.

"I thought it would never happen," says Nixon, channeling her character's cynical stance. "Even when they called and said, ‘We are going to try and do this.’ I was like, ‘OK, good luck to you.’ (Laughs.) ‘Sure, I’ll be there. Just let me know.’ But I didn’t have a lot of hope for it."

Regarding Cattrall's part in the first series-to-screen attempt in 2004, the actress says her reasons for passing on the project went far beyond the monetary-based mumblings that circulated at the time.

"I look at what was going on in ’04 … the show coming to an end, which was really devastating because it was the best job that a woman in her forties could ever want,” says Cattrall. "At the same time, I was going through a divorce ... We as a couple had decided not to share it and then suddenly it was all over the world and on blogs. That was really, really tough. And then my dad was diagnosed with dementia,” she explains. "So, I look back on ’04 as one of the worst years of my life. I kind of think that I needed a time out." Cattrall says that when she got the phone call a second time, she felt things had come full circle. "It really felt in some ways like a fairy tale that we were going to get a chance to rewrite the history of not being able to [make the movie]."

The fairy tale descriptor is a common one used by the four female cast members and King, in describing their "Sex and the City" experiences. "Getting to this point has been the sole professional focus of my life for the last two years," says Parker. "I never thought I would be sitting here talking to you about this movie. I swear I'm not making this up that Michael and I talk at the end of each of these [interview] days and we cannot believe this is happening. We cannot believe this dream has come true," she gushes.

When asked if any of those dreams now involve plans for a sequel, Parker replies pointedly, "To think beyond this is greedy, you know. This has been a dream. To ask for anything more is just vulgar, really."

King puts it a little more metaphorically: "When I'm having good sex, I'm not thinking about the sex coming around the corner and right now I'm having good sex. But that's the great thing about New York," he adds. "You never know what's coming around the corner."