1. A Complete Unknown
TIMOTHEE Chalamet is tipped for an Oscar nod thanks to his portrayal of the young Bob Dylan in director James Mangold’s upcoming biopic centred on Dylan’s early to middle years as a folkie sensation who rebelled against expectations.
Also starring Elle Fanning as his foil Joan Baez, the film looks fantastic in terms of its period details and has won points with US critics for daring to depict one of music’s great sacred cows as (to quote Fanning in the film) being “kind of an a**hole” on occasion.
Release date: January 17
2. Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
DANIEL Craig is set to return as Southern gentleman/ace sleuth Benoit Blanc in the third instalment of Rian Johnson’s hit Netflix-backed murder mystery franchise.
Plot details are scarce for the film, which has yet to receive a confirmed release date, but we do know that it will also feature Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner and Andrew Scott among its cast.
Craig only needs two more of these star-studded Benoit Blanc romps to equal his five film stint as 007 - and he already seems to be enjoying Blanc a lot more than Bond.
Release date: TBC
3. The Monkey
ONE OF two Stephen King-adaptations set to hit cinemas this year, Osgood Perkins (Longlegs) directed horror The Monkey is based upon a creepy short story from King’s best-selling Skeleton Crew collection.
A notoriously tricky author to get ‘right’ on the screen, the success of Doctor Sleep, the IT films and the Castle Rock TV series proved that it is actually possible to do his writing justice - will this Theo James-starring tale of a maniacal miniature monkey also shine?
Release date: February 21
4. Mickey 17
WHAT’S better than one Robert Pattinson? Try 17 (and possibly more) Robert Pattinsons, in Bong Joon Ho’s upcoming clone-themed sci-fi comedy.
Mickey 17 expands on the idea of synthetic clones as cheap and expendable space labourers which was explored so effectively by Duncan Jones in his 2009 classic, Moon, with Pattinson playing the titular down-on-his-luck schlub who signs his life away to become human photocopier fodder.
Also starring Mark Ruffalo as a comically evil corporate overlord type, plus supporting turns from Steven Yeun, Toni Collette and Naomi Ackie, this one looks like a lot of fun.
Release date: April 18
5. Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning
“I’M ASKING you to trust me one last time,” implores Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt in the trailer for the upcoming Mission: Impossible sequel. Could this really be the final fling for cinema’s most successful spy since James Bond?
There’s already chat about ‘rebooting’ the M:I franchise with a new star, but it’s hard to imagine anyone other than Cruise, AKA The Man Who Saved Cinema, being able to get these films made and helping them to succeed at the box office.
The last Mission set an impossibly (pardon the pun) high bar for part eight to clear, but the action-packed trailer certainly looks promising.
Release date: May 21
6. 28 Years Later
THIS belated sequel to the excellent 28 Weeks Later will explore what the world looks like nearly three decades on from the outbreak of the Rage virus in the original 28 Days Later which turned huge swathes of the population into blood-lusting bezerkers.
With original creative team Danny Boyle and Alex Garland returning as director and writer respectively for this third outing starring Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Ralph Fiennes, hopes are high for the first post-pandemic entry in the 28 franchise.
Will original star Cillian Murphy also return? He’s not in the first trailer, so we might just have to wait until June to find out.
Release date: June 28
7. Superman
DESPITE the unassailable fact that Christopher Reeve is the definitive big screen Superman, writer/director James Gunn being most famous for the awful, inexplicably successful Guardians of The Galaxy franchise and the trailer for his upcoming Superman reboot promising a non-stop parade of headache-inducing CGI ‘thrills’, I’m still kind of curious about Superman 2025 - mainly because it prominently features Superdog, aka (consults Wikipedia) Krypto.
Yep, that’s an actual cape-wearing canine with superpowers akin to his blue leotard-clad master, played by David Corenswet.
Now that I simply have to see.
Release date: July 11
8. Nobody 2
BOB Odenkirk scored a surprise hit with the first Nobody in 2021, a funny, action-packed tale of a former US government assassin, Hutch Mansell (Odenkirk), forced to revive his very particular set of skills when he accidentally crosses a Russian crime gang.
Now, Hutch is set to return - along with his wife (Connie Nielsen), brother (RZA), dad (Christopher Lloyd) and former handler (Colin Salmon) - for another ultra-violent chucklefest, which will feature new characters played by Sharon Stone, John Ortiz and Colin Hanks.
With 72-year-old Liam Neeson now a bit too long in the tooth to be wiping out heavily armed bad guys convincingly, could comparatively young pup Odenkirk (62) now be set to become the new geriaction king?
Release date: August 15
9. Predator: Badlands
IT’S a banner year for sequels and remakes of classic 1980s actioners starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, with not one but two of them landing in November.
Set long after events of Arnie’s 1987 jungle-set shoot-‘em-up, Predator: Badlands falls into the former camp and is writer/director Dan Trachtenberg’s sequel to the excellent Prey, his Predator prequel set in the 18th century.
Badlands fast-forwards to the future and transports us to an alien world where we’ll get to root for a Pred for a change (or at least for the first time since Shane Black’s risible The Predator) and, apparently, multiple Elle Fannings.
There’s something out there waiting for us, again, and it still ain’t no man...
Release date: November 7
10. The Running Man
IT’S showtime! Having grown up with the dumb-but-fun 1987 Schwarzenegger film as a pop cultural touchstone, writer/director Edgar Wright has gamely stepped up to take The Running Man back to its uber-dark ‘Stephen King writing as Richard Bachman’ roots.
Man of the moment Glen Powell is stepping into the doomed boots of Ben Richards, a downtrodden everyman who reluctantly agrees to take part in a deadly gameshow where you earn $100 for every hour you survive.
Having seen photos of the film being shot in Glasgow, its 1980s-style retro-futuristic set design looks promising - and I can’t wait to find out how Wright tackles the novel’s now infamous ending.
Release date: November 21
