Mamma Mia here they go again
Get ready for the return of the dancing queens, an all-female Ocean’s 8 and – da-dum-da-dum! – a shark that makes Jaws look like a stickleback... with our guide to summer’s top 10 blockbusters
JURASSICWORLD: FALLENKINGDOM
June6 The Jurassic World theme park has been closed since that nasty business with the Indominus four years ago. But now the island’s volcano is erupting and the dinosaurs are threatened with extinction (again), so someone’s got to come up with an evacuation plan. Step forward former operations manager Claire Deering (Bryce Dallas Howard) and raptorwhisperer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt). Well it worked last time – although on that occasion the dinosaurs didn’t make it to the mainland...
OCEAN’S8 June18
If ever a film captured the spirit of the times it’s this one, with a classy allfemale cast going where no classy all-female cast has gone before: the classic caper movie. Sandra Bullock plays Debbie Ocean (sister of Danny – who knew?), who emerges from prison with a serious plan – to steal some of the jewellery on show at New York’s annual star-studded Met Gala. But first she’s going to need a crew… which is where the likes of Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway and Rihanna come in.
SICARIO2: SOLDADO
June29 No Emily Blunt this time, and no Denis Villeneuve calling the shots behind the camera. But Josh Brolin and Benicio del Toro are both back, along with newcomers to this intense, Mexican drug cartel franchise – Matthew Modine, Isabela Moner and Catherine Keener. Taking over directorial duties is highly respected Italian film-maker Stefano Sollima, the man responsible for the much-admired television crime series Gomorrah.
SKYSCRAPER
July12 Dwayne Johnson plays a former FBI hostage-rescue team leader who now assesses skyscraper security. So the day he finds that the world’s tallest building in Hong Kong ablaze after a terrorist attack, that he’s being blamed for it, and that his family is trapped inside… well it’s definitely not a good day at the office. Expect Die Hard meets The Towering Inferno.
INCREDIBLES2
July13 The folk at Pixar don’t like to be rushed – it took them 13 years to come up with Finding Dory, and one year longer now to deliver Incredibles 2. The future of the world is still dependent on how well Helen and Bob Parr – better known as Elastigirl and Mr Incredible – can share out the childcare. But with Elastigirl in full superhero mode and Mr Incredible stuck at home with their semi-superhero kids, it’s not looking good.
MAMMAMIA! HEREWEGOAGAIN
July20 What a year 2018 promises to be for Abba fans: the first new songs for 35 years and the long-awaited sequel to Mamma Mia!
It’s ten years on, Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) is pregnant, wondering what her mother, Donna (Meryl Streep), was like at the same stage in life and how she met her three lovers, Bill (Stellan Skarsgard), Sam (Pierce Brosnan) and Harry (Colin Firth). Expect flashbacks galore – with Lily James playing the younger Donna – and Cher belting out Fernando…
MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE– FALLOUTJuly26
The sixth film in the 22-year-old franchise and, judging by the return of Sean Harris as arch-baddie Solomon Lane and Rebecca Ferguson as baddie-turnedgoodie Ilsa Faust, something of a sequel to Rogue Nation. Paris features large as Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt rushes around Europe duelling helicopters and racing motorbikes and speedboats. The 55-year-old broke an ankle jumping from one building to another in London, but it hasn’t put him off the endless stunts.
ANT-MAN AND THE WASP
August 3 Come on, admit it, you smiled. It’s hard not to at the thought of an ant-sized superhero; even his fellow superheroes mocked the idea in Avengers: The Infinity War. But the surprise of the first film three years ago was that it was good enough to take such a silly story halfway seriously. Can they pull it off again? Well, with Ant-Man now joined by The Wasp (she’s got wings and can sting) and a cast led by Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer, you wouldn’t bet against it.
August 10 Actor-turned filmmaker Peter Berg makes top-class thrillers, as anyone who’s seen Deepwater Horizon or Lone Survivor can attest. Teaming up with Mark Wahlberg for a fourth time, their latest joint venture is the story of a resourceful and inevitably gun-toting intelligence officer who works off-the-grid on missions that defy normal military and diplomatic solutions. So when a policeman with highly sensitive information needs to be spirited out of a foreign country, James Silva (Wahlberg) is the man for the job. Any idea how far away the airport is?
THEMEG
August10 Summer just wouldn’t be summer without a shark movie to put us off our seaside paddle. The Meg pitches Jason Statham against something from the depths that is very big indeed. Scientists thought the megalodon – think a great white but twice the size – had been extinct for two million years. But guess what?