WHAT ELSE 2020 HAS IN STORE?
LOOKS AHEAD TO SOME OF THE MAJOR RELEASES HOPING TO TEMPT AUDIENCES BACK TO THE BIG SCREEN THIS YEAR
IGHTS, cameras, hand sanitiser. Almost five months after Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the lockdown, in response to the growing threat from the Covid-19 pandemic, increasing numbers of cinemas are reopening across the UK and Ireland with safety protocols designed to keep masked audiences safe in the soothing dark of the auditorium.
Beginning on August 26 with Christopher Nolan’s ingenious sci-fi thriller Tenet, the rest of the year boasts high-profile releases that can only be enjoyed on the big screen.
Here’s what we’ll be watching...
TENET (12A) Released:
IT IS 10 years since British writerdirector Christopher Nolan gleefully twisted the minds of audiences with his high-stakes espionage thriller Inception. Nolan’s new adventure, which is shrouded in secrecy, is the first major studio blockbuster to storm multiplexes since the pandemic and promises another jaw-dropping feast for the senses.
Tenet follows a tenacious and highly skilled operative (John David Washington from BlacKkKlansman) as he attempts to avert Armageddon.
A Russian oligarch (Sir Kenneth Branagh) is connected to a mystery that can only be solved by abandoning preconceived ideas about the linear flow of time.
Robert Pattinson and Sir Michael Caine co-star.
THE NEW MUTANTS (TBC) Released:
ONE year after Dark Phoenix failed to re-energise the X-Men franchise, director John Boone and co-writer Knate Lee journey inside the minds of five youngsters with extraordinary abilities in The New Mutants.
Dr Cecilia Reyes (Alice Braga) brings these gifted patients to a secret institution, claiming she can cure them. The volunteers are Danielle Moonstar aka Mirage
(Blu Hunt), who harnesses other people’s fears to create illusions; Illyana Rasputin aka Magik (Anya Taylor-Joy), younger sister of Colossus who can amplify her psychic abilities to devastating effect; Rahne Sinclair aka Wolfsbane (Maisie Williams), who metamorphoses into a werewolf; Sam Guthrie aka Cannonball (Charlie
Heaton), who can project himself forward at jet speed, and Roberto da Costa aka Sunspot (Henry Zaga), who channels solar energy. As they share stories about when their powers manifested, they begin to doubt the sincerity of Dr Reyes’ actions.
THE KING’S MAN Released:
EMBOLDENED by the commercial success of the James Bond-esque caper Kingsman: The Secret Service and 2017 sequel Kingsman: The Golden Circle, director Matthew Vaughn steps back in time to the early 1900s for a prequel that traces the origins of the world’s first independent intelligence agency.
A group of “civilised but merciless” operatives will do whatever it takes to defeat greed and corruption.
When the world’s worst tyrants and criminal masterminds, including Grigori Rasputin (Rhys Ifans) and Erik Jan Hanussen (Daniel Bruhl) hatch a plot to wipe out millions of innocent souls, the debonair Duke of Oxford (Ralph Fiennes) and his son Conrad (Harris Dickinson) lead the charge to avert a world war.
The gentlemen are accompanied on their daredevil mission by nanny-turned-code breaker Polly (Gemma Arterton) and their bodyguard Shola (Djimon Hounsou).
WONDER WOMAN 1984 (12A) Released:
IN 2017, the first big screen outing for Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman became the highest grossing film of all time from a solo female director. Patty Jenkins returns to helm the eagerly anticipated sequel, which relishes the dubious fashion choices and toe-tapping music of the 1980s.
At the end of the first film, Amazonian warrior Diana Prince embraced her destiny as Wonder Woman but lost her sweetheart, dashing American pilot Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), in the climactic melee.
Here, Diana is reunited with
Steve and seeks to make her mother Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen) proud by protecting mankind. However, she faces a new threat from media mogul Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal) and archaeologist Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig), who is reborn as the super-powered Cheetah.
CANDYMAN (TBC) Released:
THE supernatural hook-handed bogeyman returns to stalk the big screen almost 30 years after his first killing spree in director Nia DaCosta’s sequel, which boasts Oscar winner
Jordan Peele (Get Out) as one of the scriptwriters.
Many years ago, the Cabrini Green Housing Projects gave birth to the urban legend of Candyman (Tony Todd), who could be summoned by saying his name five times into a mirror.
Struggling artist Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Maheen II) and his gallery owner girlfriend Brianna (Teyonah Parris) live on the heavily gentrified site of the old project and Anthony channels his fascination with the murderous myth into his work, creating canvasses that unleash a torrent of violence. The artist is reconnected with his past, testing the strength of his relationship with his mother (Vanessa Estelle Williams).
BLACK WIDOW (12A) Released:
FOR this stand-alone superhero mission from the Marvel universe,