Is there a 2009 film that can equal the colossal success of The Dark Knight? Which hot franchises will step up to fill the spaces left by Batman, Bond and Indy?
We’ve taken a look through the studio schedules and picked out the most promising prospects for the coming year.
History tells us that when times are tough, box office takings boom. Here’s our selection of the best films Hollywood has to offer us in 2009.
50: Monsters vs. Aliens (April)
A CGI mock-B-movie with a distinctly eclectic cast list – Kiefer Sutherland, Hugh Laurie, and Stephen Colbert lend their voices., Monsters v Aliens will go some of the way towards sating the enormous demand for a second Incredibles movie.
Reese Witherspoon provides the voice of a young Californian woman who grows to gigantic size, after a freak meteorite encounter, and is recruited into a secret agency of super-freaks who are sent to battle a gigantic alien robot.
49: Bride Wars (January)
Bride Wars is evidence that blockbuster movies aren’t always for the boys. With a near-unbeatable chick flick cast (Kate Hudson, Anne Hathaway, Candice Bergen), it’s an implausible tale of best friends clashing over a wedding day scheduling conflict.
With the release date close enough to Valentine’s Day to warrant inclusion on the schedule of a fair percentage of early February dinner dates, it stands a reasonable chance of a strong mid-table performance on the box-office charts for the year.
48: Watchmen (March)
Alan Moore’s superlative comic book finally, against the author’s will, reaches the big screen. There’s little doubt for anyone who’s read the original comic that this movie will be a huge triumph.
We know the ending has been amended but every scene that’s been seen so far is slavishly faithful to Dave Gibbons’s original drawings, with just a few costume tweaks to make Nite Owl look a little less ridiculous and Silk Spectre a little bit sexier.
How Watchmen will play to audiences who haven’t already been seduced by Moore’s vision of a parallel universe Cold War showdown between the members of a disbanded hero team remains to be seen. You can be sure, however, that every comic geek in the western world will see this film, and either rave about it or rail against it on the internet for evermore.
47: Terminator Salvation (June)
The long-awaited ‘future war’ segment of the Terminator saga, previously only hinted at in the first three movies, dominates proceedings in Charlie’s Angels director McG’s bold reawakening of the killer robot franchise.
Christian Bale, fresh from his spectacular triumph as one fanboy hero in Dark Knight essays another – John Connor, charismatic leader of the anti-Skynet forces who the Terminators have been trying to eliminate for the last three films.
Roland Kickinger will be the principal Terminator this time because Arnold Schwarzenegger is said to be too busy running California to appear as the iconic cyborg killing machine and Anton Yelchin, Sam Worthington and Helena Bonham-Carter are along for the ride.
46: Avatar (December)
James Cameron’s long-awaited high-technology blockbuster shares some basic ideas with The Surrogates (Humans use humanoid remote drones, in this case to explore an alien planet) and some with Planet 51 (we are the invaders). In terms of technological ambition and cinematic reach though, this movie should be without equal.
Sigourney Weaver, who combined so well for Cameron in the past reunites with her Aliens director As long as Cameron doesn’t allow the story to become too cerebral for mainstream audiences Avatar stands a fair chance of being the biggest movie of the year.
45: Red Sonja (No release date announced)
Despite months of rumour about a new Conan movie, it’s his female counterpart Red Sonja who seems to be returning to the big screen first. There’s some confusion about a release date for this film although the generally reliable IMDB has it hitting screens in late 2009.
Planet Terror and Sin City director Robert Rodriguez re-teams with Grindhouse alumna Rose McGowan, who seems a somewhat unlikely choice as the Xena-type who fights her way across a sword-and-sorcery Hyborian landscape wearing as little as the censors will allow.
44: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (no release date announced)
A Terry Gilliam film is always something of a curiosity: ploughing his own off-kilter furrow away from the calcified strictures of Hollywood cliché, he has made films that, while differing wildly in subject matter (Brazil, The Fisher King, Baron Munchausen), share a distinctively baroque surrealism.
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is a curiosity even among Gilliam films, containing as it does the final performance of Heath Ledger. Because Ledger did not survive to complete the movie, Gilliam has enlisted Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law to share the lead role with the departed star. Adding an extra surreal twist to the Faustian fantasy, this is sure to be one of the most talked-about films of 2009.
43: G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra (August)
G.I Joe is a bigger name in the US: the toy line that we called Action Man gave rise to a popular 1980s cartoon series and long-running comics franchise.
Without the solid bed of nostalgia that will give it a running start in its homeland, the movie’s appeal over here stands or falls on its star director – Stephen Sommers from the enjoyably silly Mummy films – and stellar cast, including Christopher Eccleston and Sienna Miller as well as Sommers’s old Mummy pals Brendan Fraser and Arnold Vosloo.
If August 2009 is as much of a washout as 2008’s, summer legions of staycationers will be flocking to cinemas looking for some easygoing escapism, and this might just be it.
42: The Spirit (Christmas 2008/January)
Will Eisner was one of the first comics writers to achieve personal fame and his best known creation, The Spirit, is considered by aficionados to be one of the great heroes of comics’ Golden Age.
It’s surprising that we’ve had to wait this long to see the lighthearted Noir detective on the big screen. The director who has brought The Spirit to life is Frank Miller, himself a star comics writer (he wrote 300 and completely reinvigorated the industry in the 1980s with his Dark Knight Batman miniseries). Continue reading ›
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