From Alpha to X-Men, here are the 100 movies that will help define our collective 2018. How many will you have seen by year’s end?
Deadpool 2: Against all R-rated odds, the original was a hit and the anti-hero is back with Atomic Blonde‘s David Leitch taking over directing duties.
Tomb Raider: Alicia Vikander takes up the bow and arrow as young Lara Croft.
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald: Johnny Depp officially joins the fray as the titular dark wizard.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: The follow-up to Marvel’s surprise crowd-pleaser (as much as an MCU movie could be considered a ‘surprise’), with Evangeline Lilly suiting up as Paul Rudd’s rival and partner.
Won’t You Be My Neighbor?: Documentary on beloved, gentle childhood icon Fred Rogers.
Red Sparrow: Russian spy Jennifer Lawrence is tasked with seducing a CIA agent. But is she getting too close to her subject?
Bumblebee: Transformers spinoff starring the popular yellow Volkswagen.
Pacific Rim: Uprising: Then we shall fight in the…daylight? This kaiju robot sequel promises fewer nighttime action sequences.
Dark Phoenix: After the botched third X-Men, we get another attempt to do the famous Jean Grey story right.
Mulan: The latest in the factory line of Disney live-action remakes of their beloved animated films.
Solo: A Star Wars Story: Ron Howard took over directing duties of this young Han Solo movie.
Super Troopers 2: Finally, the question will be answered: Who’s gonna get that mustache ride?
Mary Poppins Returns: Emily Blunt is Mary Poppins, y’all!!!
Gringo: An easy mix of genres for an uneasy protagonist, David Oyelowo crosses the border and into a life of a hardened criminal.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse: Animated film of the popular Marvel character, but with Miles Morales instead of Peter Parker.
Strangers: Prey at Night: They’re baaaaack. Three masked killers torment unsuspecting home dwellers.
Aquaman:
Jason Momoa ( Justice League) returns as DC superhero Aquaman (aka Arthur Curry), leader of the undersea kingdom of Atlantis, who can control the ocean, communicate with sea creatures, and swim at supersonic speeds. Amber Heard plays Atlantean Queen Mera, while Patrick Wilson is Aquaman’s ambitious half-brother Orm and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is enemy mercenary Black Manta. Willem Dafoe, Nicole Kidman, and Dolph Lundgren also appear.
Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2: Ralph and Vanellope find a way out of the arcade through a wi-fi router and onto the Internet.
First Man: Damien Chazelle’s La La Land follow-up, starring Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon.
Halloween: Original mastermind John Carpenter is on board to produce (and score!) this remake, directed by David Gordon Green.
Early Man:
It’s been 13(!) years since the last feature from Nick Park, creator of Wallace & Gromit and Chicken Run. The stop-motion master’s new film is an adventure set during prehistoric times, when woolly mammoths, big-teethed rabbits, and humans with British accents co-existed.
Black Panther:
Writer/director Ryan Coogler aims to give us another emotionally, socially, and culturally charged film, albeit this time through a hotly anticipated superhero blockbuster. From the trailer, Coogler’s Black Panther looks to be beautifully crafted, wonderfully acted and unapologetically black. Wakanda forever!
The Happytime Murders: Brian Henson, son of Jim, directs this comedic thriller where sentient puppets from the ’80s start getting killed off.
Annihilation: Alex Garland’s follow-up to Ex Machina. In a flipped take on Tarkovsky’s Stalker, four women enter a environmental disaster zone in search of a missing husband, played by Oscar Isaac. The expedition team includes Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, and Tessa Thompson.
A Wrinkle in Time: With A Wrinkle in Time, Ava Duvernay — writer, director, creator, and all around feminist hero — will be attempting a visually stunning, big budget, Oprah-starring, inclusive version of a favorite childhood story.
Alita: Battle Angel: The anime was Jim Cameron’s jam for decades. And now he’s finally adapting it for Western audiences, directed by Robert Rodriguez.
The Incredibles 2:
A sequel to Pixar’s 2004 animated The Incredibles, the new film will also be written and directed by Brad Bird. Holly Hunter, Craig T. Nelson, and Sarah Vowell return to voice their roles as superhero family Helen, Bob, and Violet Parr, with Huck Milner taking over as Dash. Samuel L. Jackson again voices Lucius Best (superhero Frozone), while John Ratzenberger is villain The Underminer.
Isle of Dogs:
After whackbatting it out of the park with Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson returns to stop-motion animation with a tale of a Japanese boy who arrives on a junkyard heap island looking for his lost dog.
Crazy Rich Asians: Based on the Kevin Kwan novel of mega-upper class Singaporeans and the mega-upper class nonsense they get up to.
Ready Player One:
Leave it to Steven Spielberg to adapt the Spielbergiest story ever. Ready Player One is set far in the future, where humans have abandoned the decaying Earth for a virtual world where every major figure of ’80s pop culture lives on.
Rampage:
Because we’ve got to hang our hopes on something every year to potentially break the video game movie curse. Might as well as be this monkey-fighting adaptation of the 1986 Midway arcade game, starring Dwayne Johnson (who helped make Jumanji a surprise holiday hit) and directed by Brad Peyton (proven with large-scale destruction in San Andreas).
Avengers: Infinity War:
The culmination of the most ambitious 10-year moviemaking scheme in cinema history. The Avengers and The Guardians of the Galaxy (and Spider-Man) team up to fight Thanos, who don’t need no helmet to feel like a complete despot.
Slender Man:
Director Sylvain White (I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, The Losers) directs the morbid tale of the tall, skinny, gloomy guy with no face based on the viral Creepypasta. The story’s bizarre power also spawned the real life children’s attempted murder case, as documented in Beware the Slenderman. This new version of the fictional story’s written by David Birke (Elle, 13 Sins).
Ocean’s 8:
Sandra Bullock leads an all-female reboot of Steven Soderbergh’s hit Ocean’s heist trilogy. Cate Blanchett, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, Mindy Kaling, Sarah Paulson, Rihanna, and Awkwafina round out the titular eight who plan a grand Met Gala theft. Gary Ross (The Hunger Games) takes over directing duties.
Where’d You Go, Bernadette: Richard Linklater’s latest in his late-mid prolific period, starring Cate Blanchett as a misanthropic shut-in who must venture out into the world to find her lost mother.
Sicario 2: Soldado:
Director Denis Villeneuve and DP Roger Deakins may not be returning, but the script is from Sicario‘s Taylor Sheridan, and Benicio del Toro and Josh Brolin are back as CIA’s most unlikely effective duo. Del Toro looks to be the real focus of the story once more, who seems to have no shortage of past scores to settle.
The Predator:
Every movie Shane Black has directed we’ve marked Certified Fresh, certainly a positive factor when approaching the notorious Predator movies. The franchise has seen only spurts of competence since 1987, so we’ll see if the eclectic cast Shane (who played the bespectacled Hawkins in the first) has put together can live up to the original.
Venom:
Spider-Man spin-off finds Tom Hardy, who played Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, crossing the DC-Marvel divide to play Eddie Brock. The disgraced journalist hosts an alien symbiote that, in the comics, is at different times antagonist and antihero. Michelle Williams ( All the Money in the World) is set to appear as love interest Anne Weying, while Riz Ahmed (The Night Of) is Dr. Carlton Drake.
Captive State:
With Rise of the Planet of the Apes, director Rupert Wyatt pitched viewers into a world in crisis — and he’s up to his old tricks with Captive State, which focuses on the residents of a Chicago neighborhood in alien-occupied America, a decade after the invasion. And if his rich premise isn’t enough to hook you, Wyatt’s lined up quite the cast: John Goodman, Vera Farmiga, and Moonlight vet Ashton Sanders are just a few of the noteworthy names in this picture’s eclectic ensemble.
The Little Stranger:
Lenny Abrahamson directs Lucinda Coxon’s haunting script about a 1947 country doctor who enlists to care for a patient at his housemaid mother’s former place of employment and begins unravelling horror and mystery as his own life becomes a mangled crisscross with those living there. This one oughta bring some summer chills.
The Girl in the Spider’s Web: Based on series started by Stieg Larsson, Claire Foy will be taking over the Lisbet Salander role.
Cloverfield Movie: Because it’s not a Cloverfield movie without a mysterious lead-up to release. And this one’s the most mysterious: Paramount has given zero information, from the title to premise to release date.
The House with a Clock in its Walls:
The fact that someone is adapting John Bellairs and his fastidious brand of YA horror is enough to make it on this list. The film is being directed by Eli Roth, and stars Cate Blanchett and Jack Black, who helped spearhead Goosebumps onto the big screen. Daddy’s Home‘s Owen Vaccaro leads as the fussy Lewis Barnavelt.
Boy Erased:
With widespread reports of gay conversion therapy, Boy Erased will present the true story of a young preacher’s son and his experience undergoing the controversial practice. The movie’s adapted from a memoir by Garrard Conley, and will star Nicole Kidman, Lucas Hedges, and Russell Crowe. Joel Edgerton — who also stars — is helming and also wrote the screenplay.
Widows:
After their husbands are killed in a botched robbery, four women – Viola Davis, Elizabeth Debicki, Michelle Rodriguez, and Cynthia Erivo – band together to finish the job. Steve McQueen follows up his Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave with this adaptation of the popular 80s British TV series, featuring a script co-written by Gone Girl‘s Gillian Flynn. Our one wish for this intriguing project? A heist sequence to rival the legendary scene in Rififi.Summer of ’84:
Turbo Kid was a bloody fountain of DIY creativity (if not actual filmmaking competence), so we’re ready for more from the triple directorial team of François Simard, Anouk Whissell and Yoann-Karl Whissell. In our post-Stranger Things world, the time is right for a movie about four teenagers who set out to solve a serial killer mystery in mid-’80s suburbia.
Game Night: Rachel McAdams and Jason Bateman’s fun night of parlor games goes completely bonkers.
Psychokinesis:
The director of Train to Busan takes on the superhero genre with Psychokinesis, a black comedy about a father who recieves special powers and proceeds to mess it up while assisting his daughter and society at large.
Suspiria:
While the idea of remaking Dario Argento’s Suspiria would typically make any horror fan recoil, director Luca Guadagnino’s forthcoming take on the 1977 classic has fantastic potential. Guadagnino’s lush, sensual filmmaking style ( Call Me by Your Name,A Bigger Splash) implies that his version may well match the original film’s dazzling visuals and operatic build in terror. Meanwhile, the lineup of leading ladies rivals the cast of Ocean’s 8, and include Dakota Johnson, Chloë Grace Moretz, and Tilda Swinton as the sinister Madame Blanc.
The Public:
It only took 32 years after The Breakfast Club, but Emilio Estevez is back at the library! Along with writing and directing, Estevez plays a librarian who becomes an unwitting social leader when the homeless stage an Occupy-style sit-in during a deadly winter storm.
A Star is Born: Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut, a remake of the classic story most famously made in 1957 with Judy Garland.
Tag: Based on the true story of a tag game between friends that has gone on for decades.
God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness: Because you need multiple movies to get the word on God’s status update.
Lean on Pete: A teenager gets a summer job at a race track and befriends an aging horse.
Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again!: 10 years after the fact, the ABBA-inspired musical gets a sequel with all major stars returning.
Mortal Engines: Apparently not burnt out after the Hobbits, Peter Jackson continues his path in mega-budget fantasy adaptations.
The War with Grandpa: Based on the noted kid’s novel, a kid schemes and dreams up a bunch of pranks to kick grandpappy (Robert de Niro) out of his bedroom.
Creed 2: Creed goes after the son of Ivan Drago, the man who killed his father Apollo in the ring.
Robin Hood: Because it’s only been eight years since the last Robin Hood movie. Taron Egerton stars in this one.
Unsane: Because Steven Soderbergh didn’t come out of retirement to be predictable, the director shot this horror film in secret and entirely on an iPhone.
The Equalizer 2: Denzel Washington’s nigh unstoppable vigilante is back to mete out more justice.
The Nun : The Conjuring cinematic universe just got a little bigger.
Thoroughbreds: A dramatic thriller starring Olivia Cooke and Anya Taylor-Joy, doubling as Anton Yelchin’s final film to see release.
Truth or Dare : Blumhouse’s new quality horror offering, which probably cost $5 and will clear a billion dollars at box office.
The 15:17 to Paris: Clint Eastwood makes another movie ripped from the headlines, this time about the thwarted 2015 Thalys train attack.
Midnight Sun: Bella Thorne stars as a 17-year old with a deadly aversion to the sun, and falls in love with Patrick Schwarzenegger.
Alpha : A survival story set 20,000 years ago, from director Albert Hughes.
A Quiet Place: It’s dead silence for Emily Blunt and John Krasinski, a couple who live in complete silence lest something unknown comes out to kill them.
Cadaver: Stana Katic takes a graveyard shift at the morgue, where an evil spirit stalks the corridors.
Bohemian Rhapsody: Despite the acrimonious split between Fox and original director Bryan Singer, this Freddie Mercury biopic starring Rami Malek is still set for this year.
Death Wish: Remake of the Charles Bronson classic, directed by Eli Roth and starring Bruce Willis.
7 Days in Entebbe : The true story of the 1976 hijacking of an Air France flight and the daring rescue mission.
Every Day: A romance about a soul who inhabits a different body every day.
The Grinch: See the Grinch as a wee youngin’ before the weight of the world broke his spirit.
Overboard: Remake of the Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell 1987 original.
Night School: Tiffany Haddish and Kevin Hart must go back to school in order to get their GED.
Holmes & Watson: Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly team up again for an irreverent take on the classic case-solving duo.
Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation: Dracula (Adam Sandler) falls in love with a Van Helsing descendent while on a cruise ship.
I Feel Pretty: After a head injury, Amy Schumer wakes up with enormous confidence and belief in herself, allowing her to live the life she’s always dreamed of.
Peter Rabbit: Just what everyone wanted to see: Peter Rabbit making it rain with literal green lettuce.
Hellfest: On one of them Halloween horror nights at a theme park, attendees start getting killed, though to everyone else it’s all part of the show.
Johnny English 3: Everybody’s favorite British spy (?) is back for another bumbling go!
Maze Runner: The Death Cure: Perhaps the final gasp of the YA dystopia trend that started with The Hunger Games.
Goosebumps: Horrorland: Jack Black’s back in this sequel to the hit freaky kids’ adaptation.
Teen Titans Go! To The Movies: The quirkily reborn Teen Titans are getting its first big-screen treatment.
The Meg: Shark movie starring Jason Statham.
The Spy Who Dumped Me: Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnion are besties whose lives are turned upside down when one of their ex-boyfriends (who happens to be a spy) returns.
Mission: Impossible 6: Christopher McQuarrie becomes the first guy to direct two movies in this Tom Cruise franchise.
Fifty Shades Freed: The climax!
Mowgli: Having mercifully dropped original title Jungle Book: Origins, this Andy Serkis-directed film is the latest adaptation of the Rudyard Kipling classic.
Overlord: J.J. Abrams produces this WW2 action-horror film of American soldiers discovering secret Nazi evildoings in a small village.
The Purge: The Island: Curious how America’s annual legal murderfest got started? This prequel reveals all.
Samson: Here’s your chance to see Billy Zane on the big screen again!
Sherlock Gnomes: Long-awaited, highly anticipated sequel to Gnomeo & Juliet.
Skyscraper: It’s like Die Hard but in China. And starring Dwayne Johnson.
Smallfoot: A Yeti sets out to find a fabled and legendary creature: the human.
Winchester: Let us tell you of a terrifying, far-off realm known as San Jose, California, and the guilt-driven heiress who kept adding rooms to her mansion lest she be killed by ghosts.
Barbie: The iconic Mattel doll leaves her plastic world and sets off for adventure in the real world.
Scarface : Joel and Ethan Coen penned the new version of the dorm room classic, with Diego Luna attached.
