Coming to a cinema near you
‘Barbenheimer’ gave the movie industry an adrenalin shot in 2023, and 2024 promises to build on the hype with blockbusters sprinkled throughout the year.
Given the many hurdles the film industry has had to deal with in recent years, 2023 proved to be one of its best. The cultural colossus of “Barbenheimer” revitalised a cinema industry that had struggled under the weight of increased streaming service power and pandemic-induced dwindling cinema attendance.
Then came the Writers Guild of America strike in May over a contract dispute with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, soon followed by the SAG-AFTRA strike, when labour disputes between the American actors’ union and the AMPTP threatened to derail films again.
But the industry persevered. If anything, the union members not promoting their films made the hype around these upcoming projects only all the more immense. With 2023 now in the books, this year brings a raft of films. promising tremendous excitement and yet more excuses to head into the cinema.
From Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, the prequel that returned series’ production to our shores, to Priscilla, the latest Sofia Coppola film – starring Australian Jacob Elordi as Elvis Presley and Cailee Spaeny as the titular Priscilla, and promising a fresh angle on the King of Rock and Roll – there’s something for all viewers this year.Here are eight films we’re most excited about:
January – Priscilla
Is there a director working today who’s better than Coppola at capturing the agony and the ecstasy of being a young woman? The Oscar-winning American director of The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation and Marie Antoinette returns to the big screen with Priscilla, a portrait of the young Priscilla Presley as she navigates coming of age within the glossy, gilded walls of Graceland while married to Elvis Presley. This movie is exquisitely attuned to the particular loneliness of being lost in the orbit of a megastar (here, it has shades of Marie Antoinette and Lost in Translation, arguably Coppola’s two best films). There is a star-making turn from Spaeny, who took the best actress prize at last year’s Venice film festival, while Elordi follows up his recent indelible performance in Saltburn with a finely tuned supporting role as the menacing but charismatic figure of Elvis.
March – Mickey 17
The latest project from Academy Award winner Bong Joon-ho, Mickey 17 is the director’s first film since Parasite. What has us most excited about it is the collaboration between Bong and Hollywood heart-throb turned art-house darling Robert Pattinson. The dystopian sci-fi thriller is based on the novel Mickey7 by Edward Ashton and centres on an “expendable”, played by Pattinson, who is a disposable employee enlisted on an expedition to colonise a distant ice world called Niflheim. The catch is, after each expendable dies, a new one is regenerated with most of their memories intact – something Pattinson begins to reckon with in the film. Australian actor Toni Collette, Mark Ruffalo, Steven Yeun and Naomi Ackie also star.
April – Challengers
Zendaya, tennis, love triangle: what more do you need to know? This film From Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino was on everyone’s most anticipated titles of 2023 list until it was unceremoniously booted from the schedule on account of the Hollywood actors’ strike. Now that the dispute has been resolved, Challengers is slated for an April release, and we couldn’t be more excited. Zendaya stars as a tennis champion sidelined by injury who becomes a coach for her husband (Mike Faist), whose former best friend and on-court rival (Josh O’Connor) was once her lover. Juicy! This film has something for everyone: sport, drama, sex and great fashion. (The costumes were designed by Loewe creative director Jonathan Anderson). But really, we think O’Connor, best known as Prince Charles in seasons three and four of The Crown, has said it best. “The tennis is the sex,” he said in an interview. “Those moments are so sexy.” We cannot wait.
May – Furiosa
For many, the six-time Oscar-winning Mad Max: Fury Road, a continuation of Australian filmmaker George Miller’s franchise, is the greatest action film made. Which means that the release of Furiosa, Miller’s prequel to the Fury Road story, will arrive in cinemas in May with enormous expectations. We know the stunts will be thrilling, the action brilliantly choreographed, the costumes wild and the performances outstanding. Anya Taylor-Joy stars as a young Furiosa (the role played by Charlize Theron in the 2015 film), with Chris Hemsworth, one of Australia’s biggest film stars today, in a mysterious, unknown role.
June – Twisters
Whatever happened to disaster pictures? There was once a time when cinemas were packed with them: The Towering Inferno, The Core, The Day After Tomorrow and, of course, the original Twister. Released in 1996, this featured Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton as a meteorologist and her husband, on the brink of divorce, thrown into the path of a raging tornado. This year, disaster films are staging a comeback, with a rebooted Twisters, directed by Minari filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung and starring some of the best young actors working right now. We’re talking Daisy Edgar-Jones (Normal People), Glen Powell (Top Gun: Maverick), David Corenswet (soon to be the new Superman) and Anthony Ramos (Hamilton). Can this great cast and stellar director make us fall in love with the high-stakes, adrenaline-pumping thrill of a disaster movie again? Let’s find out.
October – Joker: Folie a Deux
Director Todd Phillipps – whose 2019 blockbuster, Joker, earned star Joaquin Phoenix an Academy award for best actor – returns this year with a sequel, Joker: Folie a Deux. This time, though, there’s an added musical element to the film. Phoenix will reprise his role as Arthur Fleck – the Joker – with Lady Gaga cast as Dr Harleen Quinzel, better known as Harley Quinn. Icelandic composer Hildur Gudnadottir also returns from the first film, for which she won best original score at the Academy Awards, to bring her eerie soundscape back to Gotham. With the first Joker film ending as riots erupt across Gotham City, the follow-up has been revealed to take place mostly inside Arkham Asylum. We’re most excited to see how the musical element plays out, given the distressing and joyless tone of the first film.
November – Gladiator 2
One of the most talked-about sequels in years, the follow-up to every dad’s favourite film – Gladiator – is finally getting a new chapter to the story. Twenty-four years after the first film, director Ridley Scott is returning to what he does best, a historical epic. Not much has been revealed about the premise of the sequel, other than it will centre on Lucius Verus, played by Paul Mescal, the fully grown nephew of Joaquin Phoenix’s Commodus from the first film. The all-star cast also includes Denzel Washington, Joseph Quinn, Fred Hechinger, Pedro Pascal, Connie Nielsen, Djimon Hounsou and British classical theatre veteran Derek Jacobi, with Nielsen, Hounsou and Jac0obi reprising their roles from the first film. Leaked video shows Mescal working out in preparation for the role – and hopefully as a fighter rather than a ruler – so there is sure to be great action scenes ahead.
December – Nosferatu
Few filmmakers can get under a viewer’s skin as well as Robert Eggers. From the critically acclaimed horror flick The Witch in 2016, to the psychological thriller The Lighthouse in 2019, and even the gruelling The Northman (2022), Eggers is the master of haunting realism. At the tail end of this year, his next project is set to spook us again. While Eggers’s last two projects have been less horror-heavy than his earlier work, his remake of Nosferatu, the 1922 German expressionist vampire cult-classic, is a return to the director’s filmmaking roots. Bill Skarsgard plays the titular Transylvanian vampire, and joining him are a range of frequent Eggers collaborators including Willem Dafoe and Ralph Ineson, as well as new faces including Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Corrin (Diana in season four of The Crown). Get ready to be haunted in time for Christmas.
