It seems like the appetite for sequels will never be satisfied,
and Hollywood is happy to provide as many retreads, revivals, and follow-ups as
audiences want. From obscure prequels to mega sequels, 2024 is filled with familiar stories.
While the nearly silent A Quiet Place stays entirely focused on one small family headed
by parents played by Emily Blunt and John Krasinski, who also co-wrote the script
and served as director, the sequel, A Quiet Place Part II zooms out. That
film brings the surviving characters from the first film into contact with a small,
peaceful community that's managed to stay isolated from the sound-seeking
monstrosities prowling the world around them. Now a third A Quiet Place film is on the docket.
Pig writer-director Michael Sarnoski will oversee A Quiet Place: Day One. And word
has it that Blunt and Krasinski won't appear. Instead, the leads will be played by Lupita
Nyong'o and Joseph Quinn of Stranger Things fame. We don't know much about the plot,
but we do know that A Quiet Place: Day One will be released on March 8, 2024.
The Kung Fu Panda franchise combined some potentially ill-fitting pieces — martial arts,
talking animals, an ancient setting, comedy, and action — but in terms of acclaim and box office,
the gambit worked. In the original Kung Fu Panda from 2008, Jack Black voiced Po,
an energetic panda in a fantastical ancient China where animals rule and people don't
exist. Po is selected as the chosen one, a kung fu master known as the Dragon Warrior.
"You."
"Me?"
"The universe has brought us the Dragon Warrior."
He trains under a red panda, Master Shifu, learns to be a hero,
and teams up with other animals to fight a bunch of bad guys in the film's two sequels,
released in 2011 and 2016, to complete the trilogy. Or so everyone thought.
But the Kung Fu Panda movies brought in $1.8 billion at the box office. And three spinoff
TV shows plus multiple animated specials proved an enduring interest in the brand, prompting
DreamWorks Animation to consider a revival. Plot details are scant, but we suspect that original
voice actors Black, Dustin Hoffman, Jackie Chan, Lucy Liu, David Cross, Angelina Jolie, and Seth
Rogan will reprise their roles. Kung Fu Panda 4 arrives in movie theaters on March 8, 2024.
Let's get ready to rumble – again! Everybody's favorite Titans — Godzilla and King Kong — are
in training for their rematch. The first film hit theaters and HBO Max in 2021,
earning $468 million and impressing critics. Adam Wingard is returning to direct, and this time,
he's teaming up with an old friend, Dan Stevens, who'll be playing the lead.
Stevens and Wingard previously worked together on the horror classic The Guest. If you haven't seen
it, you probably know Stevens from projects like Downton Abbey, Beauty and the Beast,
and Legion. He'll be joined by MonsterVerse veterans Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry,
and Kaylee Hottle, along with newcomers Rachel House, Fala Chen, and Alex Ferns.
"Okay, but when it comes to Kong, what I say goes."
The script is being penned by longtime Wingard collaborator Simon Barrett,
Jeremy Slater of Moon Knight, and Terry Rossio of Pirates of the Caribbean fame. The new feature
has the two famous screen monsters teaming up again to fight a new hidden threat that
is bent on destroying the world. It also dives into the histories of the two characters and
reveals what created these creatures, and why they are eternally linked to humanity.
In the original film, they teamed up to take out Mechagodzilla. This time around,
will they throw down against Mechani-Kong? Space Godzilla
perhaps? Whatever ends up happening, we're excited for the showdown.
In 2015, Mad Max: Fury Road reinvigorated the Mad Max franchise, which began in 1979 with Mel
Gibson in the title role. Fury Road offered a fresh spin on the post-apocalyptic tale,
shifting focus to Charlize Theron's rage-fueled Imperator Furiosa. Mad Max: Fury Road wowed
audiences and critics alike, with many considering it one of the best action films of all time.
Now there's a Fury Road prequel in the works. Titled Furiosa, it brings back the title
character, although Theron won't be appearing in the film. Director George Miller said that,
much as he loved Theron's performance in Fury Road, he doesn't have enough
faith in de-aging technology to have her reprise her role in the prequel.
Instead, the younger Furiosa will be played by Anya Taylor-Joy. She'll be joined by MCU
star Chris Hemsworth and Tom Burke of Mank. The movie will tell the tale of
how Furiosa came to be stolen from the Green Place of Many Mothers and wound up in the
hands of the Great Biker Horde and their leader Dementus. The main conflict of the
story revolves around the war that breaks out when Dementus finds Immortan Joe's Citadel.
Furiosa has to survive the conflict as she desperately tries to find a way to get home.
A fourth entry in the rebooted Planet of the Apes franchise is on the way from Maze
Runner director Wes Ball and screenwriter Josh Friedman. In 2020, Ball tweeted that the new
film would continue the legacy of Caesar, the leader of the apes in the first three films.
"Take your stinking paw off me, you damn dirty ape!"
"No!"
But Caesar ended the third movie mortally wounded, leading to speculation that Ball was referring
to Caesar's son, Cornelius. Further news on the project came in August 2022, when it was announced
that Owen Teague will play the lead primate. He'll be joined by costars Freya Allan, Peter Macon,
and William H. Macy. Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa — who wrote Rise and Dawn of the Planet of the
Apes — are back for the fourth installment. In an interview with FilmSpeak, they teased,
After bringing children's playthings to life with the Toy Story films and inviting viewers
into the secret worlds of fish, monsters, and superheroes with Finding Nemo, Monsters, Inc.,
and The Incredibles, Pixar gave us Inside Out in 2015. The film explored the triumphs
and agonies of adolescence, as experienced through the eyes of a kid named Riley and the
personified emotions that live inside her head. The film won best animated feature at the Academy
Awards and took in $857 million, prompting Disney to put Pixar to work on a sequel.
Kelsey Mann, a Pixar veteran who co-wrote The Good Dinosaur, will direct Inside Out 2,
and Inside Out screenwriter Meg LeFauve will write the script. Sadly,
we know for a fact that Mindy Kaling will not reprise her role of Disgust.
"Riley is acting so weird. Why is she acting so weird?"
As for the plot, Riley is now a teenager, which means there will likely be some new characters
taking up residence in her head. Inside Out 2 lands in theaters on June 14, 2024.
In January 2019, Mission: Impossible franchise creative leader Christopher McQuarrie announced
that the seventh and eighth installments in the enduring action-spy franchise would film
consecutively. But then delays brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic — and with it, Cruise's
contractual obligations to promote Top Gun: Maverick — pushed everything back. As Dead
Reckoning Part One is now scheduled for theatrical release in the summer of 2023,
its immediate sequel — and the eighth entry in the Mission:
Impossible series overall — has been pushed back. Details of the follow-up are under wraps. But we
know there will be a stunt involving a biplane 2,000 feet up in the air,
with Tom Cruise actually standing on the thing instead of sitting in it like a normal person.
Even before the release of the Despicable Me spinoff feature Minions: The Rise of Gru,
Universal is looking ahead to the next installment of the main franchise. Despicable
Me 4 is slated to hit theaters on July 3, 2024. The animated Despicable Me films center around a
reformed supervillain named Gru, voiced by a heavily accented Steve Carell who leaves
his dastardly ways behind after adopting a trio of adorable daughters and discovering the joys,
frustrations, and responsibilities of parenthood. Aided by his troupe
of gibberish-spouting yellow Minions, Gru has spent each Despicable Me film venturing
into unfamiliar territory to make the world a safer place for his family.
Along with Carell, returning for Despicable Me 4 are Kristen Wiig, Pierre Coffin, Miranda Cosgrove,
and Steve Coogan, along with director Chris Renaud, who helmed the first two films. He
will be joined by co-director Patrick Delage, who directed both Sing movies,
and the duo will be working off a script by School of Rock scribe Mike White. While we don't yet know
the plot for Despicable Me 4, we can only imagine it will once again see Gru face off against a
scheming villain to save the world, even though he admires their diabolical plan just a little bit.
After the massive commercial success of Disney's photo-realistic remake of The Lion King,
it seemed like only a matter of time before a sequel was announced. However,
the person taking over the directorial reins from Jon Favreau for Lion King 2 — now titled Mufasa:
The Lion King — is probably not a name most people would have expected to hear:
Barry Jenkins, the Academy Award-winning writer and director best known for making poignant
dramas with strong racial themes, including Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk.
Jenkins will be working from a script by Jeff Nathanson, who also wrote the first
Lion King. While no specific details of the plot have been revealed, we know the film will
be a prequel to the first film, following Mufasa and Scar in their younger years.
"Well, look who's come down to mingle with the commoners."
It will also introduce several new characters. However, no further information has been provided
about these characters, including what types of animals they are or whose side they might be on.
Although Lion King seems like an outlier in Jenkins' filmography,
the director sounds excited about working on the sequel for Disney, saying,
In 1996, Twister stormed its way to blockbuster status, offering
an irresistible combination of fantastic actors, romantic tension, science jargon,
and a frightening villain: the weather. Directed by action movie stalwart Jan de Bont,
Twister depicts a team of university scientists led by Dr. Jo Harding, played by Helen Hunt,
as they try to put a data-gathering device to work during an onslaught of tornadoes. She's
forced to team up with her ex-husband, played by Bill Paxton, to get everything operational,
especially when their sneering rival Dr. Jonas Miller plans to use a device he built himself.
Twister picked up $241.7 million at the box office, so a sequel makes sense. It
just took a long time for all the necessary pieces to come together. In October 2022,
Deadline reported that legendary filmmaker and Amblin Entertainment
boss Steven Spielberg loved a script written by Mark L. Smith, best known for The Revenant,
and put the film into pre-production. After Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski dropped out
due to a scheduling conflict, it was reported that Lee Isaac Chung of Minari fame will direct.
Producers are hoping to sign Helen Hunt, as the plot of the sequel — currently titled
Twisters — will emphasize her relationship with her daughter, whose father was the character
portrayed by Paxton, who died in 2017. The film will roar into theaters on July 19, 2024.
2019's Joker takes a daring new approach to Batman's most famous adversary,
as inspired by gritty '70s cinema as it is by comic books. Joaquin Phoenix plays Arthur Fleck,
a troubled wannabe comedian who suffers an emotional breakdown on the way to becoming
the clownish supervillain. Joker earned more than $1 billion at the box office,
and Phoenix took home the Best Actor Oscar for his work in the film. Clearly,
there's demand for additional movies about this Joker's rise to infamy.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, director Todd Phillips discussed tackling more DC Comics
movies mere days after Joker debuted. In June 2022, Phillips confirmed rumors of a sequel
when he posted a photo of the next Joker script to Instagram. The snapshot revealed
that the film will be titled Joker: Folie à Deux. "Folie à deux" is a psychological
term referring to a delusion shared by multiple people, which suggests a tantalizing team-up.
"Arthur, you're on seven different medications. Surely they must be doing something."
As it turns out, Phoenix will return in the title role, alongside Lady Gaga
as Harley Quinn. And in a fascinating twist, the new film will be a musical set in Arkham
Asylum. Providing at least some of the musical content will be composer Hildur Guðnadóttir,
who won an Academy Award for scoring the first Joker film.
As for the rest of the cast, Phoenix and Gaga will be joined by Brendan Gleeson,
Catherine Keener, and returning Joker actor Zazie
Beetz. The film will dance its way into theaters on October 4, 2024.
An allegory about environmentalism and imperialism, Avatar was a visually
stunning experience. Set in the distant future on the idyllic planet of Pandora,
the film saw an Earth-based contingent seeking a rare substance and interacting
with the indigenous, blue-skinned Na'vi. In the middle of all this,
paralyzed former Marine Jake Sully fully embraced the Na'vi culture by way of his
mental link-up with his avatar, a genetically modified Na'vi body that shares his DNA.
"It'd be a fresh start in a new world. You could do
something important. You could make a difference."
In 2009 and 2010, Avatar became a worldwide pop culture sensation and the highest-grossing
movie ever made. Writer-director James Cameron announced weeks after the first
film hit theaters that he was working on a sequel, and, by the end of 2010,
Cameron promised a third Avatar. By 2015, those plans had ballooned into a five-film series.
Of course, such complicated movies take a lot of money and time to realize, and the aquatics-heavy
Avatar: The Way of Water hit theaters 13 years after the original. But audiences packed theaters
as they had for the first film, to the tune of $1.9 billion in ticket sales. In the wake of
the first sequel's success, Cameron has dropped some details about Avatar 3, telling Deadline,
Evidently, the fire nation will be a bit different from your normal Na'vi. Led by
Oona Chaplin from Game of Thrones, the so-called "Ash People" will be
a villainous bunch. Cameron told the French news outlet 20 Minutes,
We also know that instead of Jake Sully doing voiceover, Avatar 3 will be narrated by his son,
Lo'ak. And we can also expect to see the return of Payakan the tulkun and Scoresby
the whaler. So far, word is the movie will officially be called Avatar: The Seed Bearer.
The third Avatar opens on December 20, 2024.
After the initial trailer sparked revulsion from fans and necessitated a hasty redesign
by the studio thanks to a bizarrely rendered version of Sonic the Hedgehog,
the first film to feature the character managed to win crowds over at the box office,
and earn itself a sequel. Yet before Sonic the Hedgehog 2 zoomed onto screens in April 2022,
a third film had already been greenlit by Paramount, which will once again bring together
Ben Schwartz as the voice of the titular hedgehog and James Marsden as his endlessly
patient and forgiving human best bud Tom, along with Jim Carrey as the villainous Dr. Robotnik.
Considering that Sonic the Hedgehog 2 hadn't hit theaters when the threequel was announced,
plot details about the third film are still sparse. However, considering that
Paramount and Sega have announced a spinoff television series centered around Knuckles,
a new character introduced in the second movie and voiced by Idris Elba, we wouldn't be surprised if
Knuckles also shows up in a third Sonic, along with Sonic's new sidekick Tails, Tom's wife,
Maddie, and Maddie's scene-stealing sister, Rachel. Much like the blue hedgehog himself,
Paramount is moving fast: Sonic the Hedgehog 3 will speed into theaters December 20, 2024.
In his Great Movie review, Roger Ebert hailed the
original This Is Spinal Tap as "one of the funniest movies ever made."
"It's very, very special, because, if you can see, yeah, the numbers all go to 11."
The 1984 mockumentary tells the story of fading band Spinal Tap, desperately searching for musical
glory in a world that's forgotten them. And the whole time, they're being filmed by the
not-so-talented documentarian Marty DiBergi — played by the film's actual director, Rob Reiner.
With its so-terrible-they're-amazing songs and improvised jokes, it's no wonder that
This Is Spinal Tap became an instant classic. And now, Reiner is getting
the band back together. Original stars Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, and Harry Shearer
will be picking up their guitars and rocking 'round Stonehenge in the film's upcoming sequel,
scheduled for release in 2024 — right in time for the original's 40th anniversary. Reiner will
return as both the film's director and DiBergi. Here's hoping they can turn this sequel up to 11.