Check out what’s coming to the big screen
Sequels and more superheroes, of course. But also more variety for the summer screen
Summer cinema is at best a mixed blessing. On the one hand: Summer blockbusters! On the other, bloated sequels that either have large numbers in their titles or, more often, are hiding them. The season begins with Avengers: Endgame, which is either Avengers Part 4 or Iron Man Part 22. Also coming soon: Fast & Furious 8.5 and X-Men 12 and 13. So let’s start by looking at what’s new. (All dates are subject to change.):
ORIGINAL CONTENT
Quentin Tarantino, who has never made a sequel (Kill Bill doesn’t count), is back with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (July 26), starring Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio, and set in 1969. Late Night (June 7) stars Emma Thompson as a talk-show host. Poms (May 10) delivers the story of a senior-citizen cheerleading squad. Rebel Wilson and Anne Hathaway are scam artists in The Hustle (May 10), while Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish and Elisabeth Moss are gangsters’ wives in The Kitchen (Aug. 9). Dave Bautista and Kumail Nanjiani team up for the Uber comedy Stuber (July 19). Chadwick Boseman plays a New York cop in 21 Bridges (July 12). Cate Blanchett is the titular missing woman in Where’d You Go, Bernadette? (Aug. 9). Kids get into all kinds of mischief in Booksmart (May 24) and Good Boys (Aug. 16). And if you’re in the mood for romance, there’s The Souvenir (June 7), Long Shot (May 3) and Photograph (May 31). Then there’s Yesterday, in which a struggling musician (Himesh Patel) realizes he’s the only person on Earth who can remember the Beatles’ music — so he “writes” the songs himself. It’s this critic’s most-anticipated film of the summer.
SUPERHEROES
After the debut of Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame, you can look forward to another helping of Spider-Man in Far From Home (July 2). And more than two years since the last non-comedy X-Men movie (i.e., Logan, not Deadpool), this summer delivers two. Dark Phoenix (June 7) features Professor Xavier and friends and is set in 1992, while The New Mutants (Aug. 2) presents just that.
SEQUELS
Sequels of every stripe are coming to screens this summer. Gerard Butler’s Secret Service agent is back for a third go-round in Angel Has Fallen (Aug. 23). So too is Keanu Reeves in John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum (May 17), and wouldn’t a crossover of those two be something? An all-new cast including Chris Hemsworth, Tessa Thompson, Liam Neeson and Emma Thompson heads up Men in Black: International (June 14). Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham star in the spinoff Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (Aug. 2). Samuel L. Jackson returns in Shaft (June 14). And a mere five years after his latest reboot, Godzilla is back in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (May 31). If you like quieter sequels, check out A Dog ’s Journey (May 17), latest in the canine reincarnation series. Or see Denys Arcand’s The Fall of the American Empire (May 31), which is not a direct sequel to his 1986 film The Decline of the American Empire, but shares some thematic elements. It’s the Hobbs & Shaw of indie Quebec drama!
ANIMATED
Can Pixar make magic again with Toy Story 4 (June 21)? It seems unlikely, but we said that the last time, and were then reduced to tears by Toy Story 3’s closing scene. Less likely to produce sobbing — except perhaps in frustration and anger — is The Angry Birds Movie 2 (Aug. 14) and The Secret Life of Pets 2 (June 7). Untested and therefore possibly brilliant are UglyDolls (May 3) and Pokémon Detective Pikachu (May 10), which puts computer-generated Pokémons in a live-action movie.
FORMERLY ANIMATED
Disney continues to turn cartoons into live action (give or take) with Aladdin (May 24) and The Lion King (July 19), based on the 1992 and 1994 films, respectively. Meanwhile, Dora the Explorer, who got her animated start on TV in 2000, comes to life as Isabela Moner in Dora and the Lost City of Gold (July 31).
SCIENCE FICTION
Brad Pitt travels the solar system looking for his father in James Gray’s Ad Astra (May 24), while Ferdia Shaw is on a similar quest in Artemis Fowl (Aug. 9). A Swedish take on interstellar travel arrives with Aniara (May 17), while Frank Grillo gets caught in a time loop in Boss Level (Aug. 16). Meanwhile, Brightburn (May 24), about an alien child with an evil streak, straddles the line between science fiction and ...
HORROR
Not sure why, but this summer delivers three movies about creepy dolls. There’s the sequel Brahms: The Boy II (July 26), the part 3 Annabelle Comes Home (June 28) and a remake of the 1988 film Child’s Play (June 21). If you prefer fleshand-blood villains, check out Octavia Spencer in Ma (May 31), Dennis Quaid in The Intruder (May 3), and alligators in Crawl (July 12). Also opening, Ari Aster’s followup to Hereditary, Midsommar (July 3), the self-explanatory Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (Aug. 9), and Jim Jarmusch’s zom-com The Dead Don’t Die, which opens the Cannes Film Festival before opening wide a month later, on June 14.
BIOPICS
Clearly hoping for a Bohemian-Rhapsodic reception is Rocketman (May 31), the story of Elton John, starring Taron Egerton. Judi Dench stars in Red Joan (May 3), based on the life of British KGB source Melita Stedman Norwood. The White Crow (May 10) features Oleg Ivenko as Rudolf Nureyev. Mike Leigh dramatizes the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 in Peterloo (May 17). A complicated bookish scandal is told in J.T. LeRoy (May 3). And if you like towering literary figures, Kenneth Branagh plays Shakespeare in All Is True (May 24), while Nicholas Hoult stars in Tolkien (May 10). It’s worth noting that is neither a trilogy nor directed by Peter Jackson.
DOCUMENTARIES
The classy cousin of the biopic, documentaries this summer include musicians Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind (May 24) and David Crosby: Remember My Name (Aug. 2), author Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am (July 5), journalist Mike Wallace in Mike Wallace Is Here (Aug. 9), activist group The Satanic Temple in Hail Satan? (May 3) and, um, water, in the film Aquarela (Aug. 23).