BY Eric Rezsnyak
As 2023 comes to a close, we’re not only looking back at the great pop culture that was released this year (you HAVE listened to our Best of 2023 episodes, haven’t you?), we’re also looking forward to the movies, music, TV series, and more scheduled to come out in 2024.
Below find the 10 films the crew at the Great Pop Culture Debate are most excited about going into 2024, plus a few honorable mentions. Did we miss your most anticipated upcoming movie? Drop it in the comments so we can make sure to be on the lookout for it!
10. Argylle (February 2)
We’re so intrigued by the new original film by Matthew Vaughn (The Kingsman), starring Bryce Dallas Howard as a spy-thriller author who is targeted by actual espionage squads because her books somehow reveal actual spycraft secrets before they happen. Also starring Sam Rockwell, Catherine O’Hara, Samuel L. Jackson, Bryan Cranston, John Cena, Ariana DeBose, and Henry Cavill and Dua Lipa as the smoking-hot spies of the author’s dreams. And also a cat!
9. Nosferatu (December 25)
A trailer is reportedly coming soon for Robert Eggers’ (The Northman) adaptation of the 1922 silent horror by F.W. Murnau (pictured), which continues to entrance audiences more than a century after its debut. Starring Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, Willem Dafoe, Emma Corrin, and Bill Skarsgard as the titular vampire, this film won’t release until the very end of the year — but it’s still at the top of our must-see list.
8. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (March 29)
We were caught up in the proton stream of emotions released by 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife, so we have high hopes for this sequel to the franchise reboot. Jason Reitman is writing, but not directing this film — Gil Kenan, who did the 2015 Poltergeist reboot is, which is…worrying — and the action moves from the Midwest back to New York City, where a brand new big bad is haunting Manhattan via the death chill, literally scaring people to death by freezing. The new crew of Paul Rudd, Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, and Carrie Coon — no longer wasted as the damsel in distress! — will suit up alongside the OG Ghostbusters as Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, and Annie Potts make appearances.
7. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (May 24)
George Miller gives us his fifth Mad Max film — a property he has helmed over six decades — this time a prequel showing the origin story of Furiosa, the bad-ass character played by Charlize Theron in 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road. Anya Taylor-Joy plays the younger Furiosa, abducted from her family and entangled into the brutal world of post-apocalyptic nihilist punks. Chris Hemsworth co-stars.
6. Joker: Folie a Deux (October 4)
No trailer yet for Todd Phillips’ sequel to his 2019 Joker origin story, which somehow won Joaquin Phoenix an Oscar for Best Actor. I’ll be honest: I never watched the first one. I find the Joker boring and the casual nihilism increasingly hard to take given the world we live in. But! This will be the live-action debut of Harley Quinn, and she will be played by Lady Gaga. And it’s a MUSICAL. I’m in. I may even force myself to watch the first one before this releases in October.
5. Inside Out 2 (June 14)
It’s been nearly a decade since Pixar’s original Inside Out, and time has also passed for the protagonist of the film, as the five central emotions of childhood are now being overwhelmed by the host of new feelings that come with being a teenager, among them Anxiety, voiced by Maya Hawke. While Amy Poehler returns as Joy, a chunk of the original voice cast declined to return due to a pay dispute, meaning Liza Lapira will replace Mindy Kaling as Disgust, and Tony Hale replaces Bill Hader as Fear. But Phyllis Smith as Sadness and Lewis Black as Anger are still on board. The other new emotions have yet to be revealed.
4. Dune: Part Two (March 1)
The sequel to Denis Villeneuve’s 2021 sci-fi epic, bringing to life Frank Herbert’s initial book (or at least, giving it more room to breathe than David Lynch’s brutally truncated 1984 version). Timothee Chalamet is back as Paul Atreides, leading the Fremen of Arrakis in revolt against the murderous House of Harkonnen. In addition to the surviving cast of the first film, this one adds Florence Pugh, Christopher Walken, and Lea Seydoux to the mix. And hopefully Zendaya is actually in the film for more than 15 minutes. We look forward to the symphony of beige, which is actually a compliment to the exquisitely sand-blasted production design of this property. We’re also not convinced this is actually the conclusion, as there are rumblings of additional spinoffs exploring Herbert’s books.
3. Wicked Part 1 (November 27)
Director Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians) takes on the very big ruby slippers that come with adapting the beloved Broadway musical prequel to The Wizard of Oz. The cast is stacked, with Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, Ariana Grande as Galinda, Bridgerton hunk Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero, Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard, Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible, and Bowen Yang as a school chum of Galinda’s presumably invented for the movie. Note that the musical has been split into two, with the second part scheduled to be released in 2025. Can a film with expectations this high defy gravity? We’ll see.
2. Deadpool 3 (July 26)
Speaking of films with high expectations, in some circles Deadpool 3 is being seen as a make-it-or-break-it film for the once unimpeachable Marvel Cinematic Universe. No trailer exists for the film, but based on the buzz — and leaks from the set — we know that Ryan Reynolds is back as the Merc with the Mouth, and Hugh Jackman is out of retirement as Logan/Wolverine, and the duo reportedly will bounce around the multiverse running into all manner of characters from both the Sony-verse (the existing X-Men films, Fantastic Four) and other non-MCU Marvel properties, paving the way for those concepts to be finally officially integrated into the MCU proper going forward. It is the ONLY Marvel movie being released in 2024, a big change from original plans and likely a reaction to the cries of over-saturation. Can Deadpool save the Marvel Universe? Or will he kill it?
1. Beetlejuice 2 (September 6)
A whopping 36 years after the original Beetlejuice turned up the juice and saw what shook loose, director Tim Burton returns to the world that made the paranormal somehow normal. Returning from the original cast are Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, and Catherine O’Hara, who will be joined by new Burton muse Jenna Ortega, current Burton paramour Monica Bellucci, and Willem Dafoe. Not much is known about the film beyond the cast, but since we’ve been waiting for this movie since the first Bush Administration, yeah, it’s gonna top our most-anticipated list. We’ll be in line to see it on opening DAY-O!
Don’t miss our other Top 10 Lists, including Most Anticipated TV Shows, Albums, and Games of 2024. Click here for more!
Honorable Mentions:
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (April 12)
Bad Boys 4 (June 14)
Borderlands (August 9)
Alien: Romulus (August 16)
Transformers One (September 13)
Gladiator 2 (November 22)
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim (December 13)
Click here for more Top 10 lists!
