The 25 most anticipated movies of 2022

Every preview of upcoming movies comes with an invisible disclaimer: “These release dates are subject to change.” But that’s especially true at our current moment, when the ongoing rise and fall of infection rates has turned the coming-attractions calendar into a perpetual rough draft, as studios move their major titles to later dates, often with just a few weeks’ notice. All of which makes the following list of our most anticipated movies of 2022 fundamentally tentative and even optimistic; it would be something of a miracle if all of these films came out when their distributors are currently saying they will.Still, if only some of the 25 pictures we’ve singled out see the light of day before the dawn of 2023, it will still be an exciting year for cinema. And that’s without accounting for the films that will premiere on the festival circuit sometime over the next 12 months, or the ones that haven’t yet been issued a spot on the calendar, even a premature one. In making our selections, we stuck to movies that currently do have a release date, however likely it is to change—a choice that makes this list heavier on studio fare than indies. But we also made room at the end for a bunch of exciting projects currently expected to open sometime before the ball drops next December. Right now, we all need something to look forward to. The following movies provide it and then some.

Steven Soderbergh updates Blow Out for the age of COVID and Alexa, casting Zoë Kravitz as an agoraphobic tech wiz who believes she’s captured audio evidence of a murder. Though the script is from go-to blockbuster blueprinter David Koepp (, ), the material seems perfectly tailored to Soderbergh’s career-spanning interest in the places where commerce, corruption, and technology insidiously intersect.

An adaptation of a YA tearjerker is not what we expected next from Josephine Decker, whose last movie, , was a fictionalized portrait of an author much more fixated on blood than tears. But Decker has proven herself keenly invested in the interior lives of young women (it was the focus of her breakthrough, ), which could make her a fine fit for Jandy Nelson’s bestseller about the love triangle that forms around a teenager (Grace Kaufman) mourning the death of her older sister.

Yes, it’s another trip to the spires and flaming avenues of Gotham City. But the pedigree of this latest caped-crusader adventure is promising: It’s directed and cowritten by Matt Reeves, who reinvigorated another exhausted franchise with his two , and the stacked gallery of rogues and heroes includes Paul Dano, Zoë Kravitz, Jeffrey Wright, John Turturro, a prosthetically unrecognizable Colin Farrell, and our newly minted dark knight, Robert Pattinson. Plus, Reeves promises a greater focus on investigative shoe leather—the kind of detective work that most Detective Comics adaptations tend to forgo in favor of fisticuffs.

It’s not just Spider-Man and Doctor Strange diving into the multiverse this year. The concept also lies at the center of this presumably offbeat A24 sci-fi/action movie from Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (a.k.a. Daniels), the directing duo behind the proudly uncommercial Sundance curiosity (a.k.a. Farty Boner Corpse, at least around these parts.) Michelle Yeoh plays a seemingly ordinary woman whose attempt to complete her taxes (?!) leads to an adventure across numerous realities, each containing a different version of her. The film is slated to open SXSW.

Over two days in April of 1996, a young man shot and killed 35 people in Tasmania—a massing shooting that provoked sweeping gun-control reform in Australia. Naturally, the dramatization of this national tragedy comes courtesy of Justin Kurzel, a writer-director who’s spent half his career chronicling a history of Aussie violence, from to the infamous exploits of . Caleb Landry Jones plays the perpetrator in a drama that purports to lay out the events leading up to that fateful day.

Add 10th-century Iceland to the list of grimly unforgiving eras Robert Eggers (, ) has meticulously recreated. That’s the barren setting of this thriller about a Viking prince (Alexander Skarsgård ) out to avenge the years-earlier murder of his father (Ethan Hawke). It looks like a major uptick in scale for the writer-director, who trades the minimalism of his single-setting horror outings for an action-heavy story that spans multiple countries and decades, with a much larger cast that includes Nicole Kidman, Willem Dafoe, and the Icelandic pop queen herself, Björk.

Nicolas Cage reaches the ouroboros stage of his meme-embracing period with this action-comedy that casts him as cash-strapped Hollywood actor “Nicolas Cage,” who accepts a $1 million offer to attend a wealthy fan’s birthday party on a private island, only to find himself mixed up in a CIA operation. The trailer is only mildly funny, but after his unexpectedly restrained work in last year’s , hasn’t Cage earned the right to goof on his own reputation and shameless career decisions? He deserves a of his own.

Okay, we’ve actually seen this one already—it was our . So just take our word that you should be excited for Jane Schoenbrun’s eerie, transfixing genre whatsit about an alienated teenager (first-time actor Anna Cobb) who becomes increasingly absorbed by a creepypasta role-playing game. Few movies are as perceptive on the way the internet has reshaped how we communicate and think.

Fox’s second most beloved animated family leaps to the big screen to face an adversary worthy of the expanded runtime: a giant sinkhole that opens up outside the restaurant, threatening to destroy business for good. A dozen seasons in, remains one of TV’s safest bets for a laugh or a singalong. That’s reason enough to be excited for a feature-length showcase for the Belchers and friends (minus Jimmy Pesto, presumably).

For his first feature since that lavish adaptation of nearly a decade ago, Baz Luhrmann returns to his musical roots, sort of, with a film about the King of Rock ’n’ Roll. Former child actor Austin Butler plays Presley, while Tom Hanks lends his movie-star authority to the role of the King’s famous manager, Colonel Tom Parker. Here’s hoping this avoids the tired musical biopic conventions so expertly spoofed—or at least that Luhrmann swirls them into a signature caffeinated confection.

We weren’t big fans of Taika Waititi’s last movie, the irksomely huggable Nazi comedy . But before that misstep, the Kiwi director made one of the funniest movies to roll off the Marvel assembly line, . Love And Thunder looks to land him back in that silly blockbuster wheelhouse with a reportedly rom-com-leaning plot that will reunite Chris Hemsworth’s hammer-wielding Asgardian with Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster, who acquires her old flame’s godlike powers (a development borrowed from Jason Aaron’s run on the Mighty Thor comic). Also back: Tessa Thompson, the Guardians Of The Galaxy, and that hilarious, Waititi-voiced pile of sentient rocks, Korg.

Several assassins, some played by Brad Pitt, Brian Tyree Henry, and Zazie Beetz, board a Japanese bullet train, only to discover that their respective kill lists may be related somehow. If the cast and intriguing premise (pulled from Kōtarō Isaka’s novel Maria Beetle) don’t spark action fans’ interest, the byline surely will: This is the latest shoot-’em-up from ex-stuntman David Leitch, one half of the directing duo that made , before he went solo to orchestrate the mayhem of and .

Little is known about the plot of Jordan Peele’s latest horror movie, which reunites the Oscar-winning filmmaker with Oscar-winning star Daniel Kaluuya. But between the pair’s last collaboration, , and Peele’s expertly crafted sophomore feature, , this could be about basically anything and we’d be first in line opening night. Intriguing poster, too.

After two separate mini-series (as well as a feature-length sequel to one of them), Hollywood is finally taking a stab at bringing Stephen King’s favorite of his own novels to the multiplex. And while we have mixed feelings about the – adaptation of King’s It that writer-director Gary Dauberman co-scripted, his work on the suggests he could bring a properly spooky sensibility to this tale of a writer (Lewis Pullman) who discovers that his hometown is being stalked by a vampire.

Having made the better of two recent movies about eternal ass-kickers, Gina Prince-Bythewood turns now to some less fictional action: the real-life victories of an all-female military force in 18th- and 19th-century Africa. Viola Davis appears as the leader of the Dahomey Amazons, while star Thuso Mbedu plays a young recruit. Rounding out the cast is John Boyega, Lashana Lynch, and Hero Fiennes Tiffin.

Olivia Wilde could have made any number of star-studded comedies in the wake of her celebrated directorial debut, . Instead, the actress-turned-filmmaker is trying something quite different with movie No. 2, which is billed as a psychological thriller about a disillusioned housewife (Florence Pugh) in 1950s suburbia who begins to suspect that her husband (Harry Styles) is hiding something from her. Just don’t totally discount laughs, even if they’re of the gallows humor variety; the script comes courtesy of Katie Silberman, who co-wrote Booksmart and .

Hollywood’s greatest ongoing action franchise (sorry, Vin and family) returns for another round of blessedly suspenseful espionage and elaborate, ludicrously dangerous Tom Cruise stunt work. Joining returning cast members Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, and Vanessa Kirby is writer-director Christopher McQuarrie, whose stellar work on and mitigates the ever-so-slight disappointment that this series has stopped handing the reins to a new auteur with each new installment. No word yet on the plot or official title, but who cares about those anyway?

For all the fun has mixing and matching characters from multiple franchises, something tells us it will pale in comparison to the cross-dimensional jamboree cooked up for this highly anticipated sequel to 2018’s terrific, Oscar-winning . As the title suggests, it’s the first half of a two-part sequel that finds teenage Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) leaping into the same inter-dimensional stream that deposited a bunch of fellow Spider-people into his universe last time around. We’re betting on beautifully kaleidoscopic animation, primo Lord-Miller jokes, and affecting coming-of-age storytelling—you know, everything that elevated the original Spider-Verse above its live-action contemporaries.

It’s been 16 years since director Todd Field made a movie. He’s back this fall with a new drama starring Cate Blanchett as a famed Berlin musician weathering professional pressures while caring for her six-year-old daughter. Field isn’t a Malick-level returning legend or anything—his last movie, , is far from perfect—but we’re still curious to see what he’s come up with after so much time away, especially given that Tár is his first feature not based on a novel or a short story.

Speaking of filmmakers going away for a while, the infamously volatile David O. Russell has allegedly finished shooting his belated follow-up to 2015’s , about which we know very little. (“A doctor and a lawyer form an unlikely partnership” reads the slim synopsis making the rounds.) It’s possible, of course, that Russell is still finding the plot—he has a habit of shaping a movie as he goes, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. But the cast alone should be worth the price of admission, with returning Russell players Christian Bale and Robert De Niro joined by (big breath) Margot Robbie, Rami Malek, John David Washington, Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy, Zoe Saldana, Mike Myers, Timothy Olyphant, Michael Shannon, Taylor Swift, and more. What is this, a new Wes Anderson movie?

Reconfigured in the wake of Chadwick Boseman’s death (and Marvel’s decision not to recast T’Challa), the inevitable sequel to the world-quaking superhero sensation is a big question mark on the MCU slate. Will the film now function like one of the studio’s team pictures, with no central character headlining the ensemble? Will there be a new Black Panther? Will Letitia Wright be promoted to lead, even after some of the she’s made? However it shakes out, this is the new movie written and directed by Ryan Coogler. We’re thinking that eclipses however Marvel decides to keep the franchise wheels in motion.

From the school of newspaper procedurals comes this behind-the-scenes chronicle of the first major Harvey Weinstein exposé, starring Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan as the New York Times reporters who broke the story of his decades of abuse. Behind the camera is German actor-director Maria Schrader, who helmed every episode of the Netflix series Unorthodox. If any recent triumph of investigative journalism deserves the treatment, it’s probably this one.

Steven Spielberg has never been coy about the way his own life has influenced the blockbusters he’s made. (What, you thought was just about a weird alien with an appetite for Reese’s Pieces?) But with The Fabelmans, the world’s most famous director veers closer to straightforward autobiography than ever before, returning to the Arizona of his childhood for a coming-of-age story about a young, aspiring filmmaker (Gabriel LaBelle) and the fractious relationship between his parents (Michelle Williams and Paul Dano). Increasing the suspicion that this could turn out to be Spielberg’s most personal movie is his name on the script for the first time since in 2001; he co-wrote this one with now-regular collaborator Tony Kushner.

However you feel about the biggest hit of all time (yes, still holds that title, globally speaking), there’s reason to be excited for the very belated release of its sequel. James Cameron, after all, is a pro at sequels, having made two of the best ones ever. He’s also got a habit of pulling a monster success from the apparent wreckage of a protracted, troubled production. (See . Or, you know, Avatar.) Will it be any good? Who knows, but we’d be lying if we said we weren’t curious to see how the director spent the five years that have passed since he finished shooting the movie. The more pressing question at this point is: Will this thing actually open in 2022?