Top 10 Most Anticipated Movies of 2024

by Jacob Thomas Jones​

​Greeting, all, and welcome back to The Friendly Film Fan! 2023 sure was a great year for movies, and 2024 looks to be another banger of a cinematic calendar. One of the lead stories of 2023 was the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, which led studios to push certain films into 2024 in order for actors and writers to continue and begin promotional work on both small and larger-profile projects. These projects ranged from the highly-anticipated Dune: Part Two to Luca Guadagnino’s tennis film Challengers, the latter of which was one of the first major moves off of the 2023 slate. However, as a result of those moves, we may be getting more quality cinema in 2024 than even we’re expecting.

​A few notes on the list order before we begin: given some of those films’ larger prominence and imminent release dates, they may appear lower on this list than you might expect. The fact is, there are others with more mystery surrounding them that adds a layer of excitement some of the lower-numbered entrants don’t necessarily lack, but no longer possess in quite the same way. As well, while some of the films higher on the list have less information available or a lack of current footage, the information that is available is elevates them above other, more obvious candidates. There are also any number of films due to release this year that simply don’t have enough information available yet to be included on this list, and some that may be expected to release this year could get pushed into 2025, so while it’s possible some of these end up on the Top 10 Best Movies of 2024 list, one can’t bank on that. 

​As with the Top 10 Best Movies of 2023 list, there are a few films in the Honorable Mentions section that are listed in numerical order of anticipation due to how much we’re looking forward to them over the other, non-numbered alphabetical entries, but all the films on this list carry some level of excitement for us, so let’s get started. Here are our picks for the Top 10 Most Anticipated Movies of 2024!

​10. Horizon: An American Saga 
 
Kevin Costner is back in the director’s chair with an epic western event that not only has a theatrical release but already has an announcement trailer from Warner Bros. Given that its multi-part stories have not yet separated themselves in either footage or plot details, I’m just including them both as just one big entry here. With Chapter 1 dropping in June and Chapter 2 finishing the job in August, there’s a lot to look forward to, especially as Costner has invested a lot of his own money into developing the project after having left the series Yellowstone in order to make it happen. We haven’t gotten a proper Western genre epic in a long time, and to see Costner back in the director’s chair on a Western project so long after Dances with Wolves is cause for excitement. Hopefully this will be one of the moviegoing events of the summer (provided its quality is as high as it can go).

​9. The Bikeriders
 
The first film on this list to fall victim to the SAG-AFTRA strike of 2023, Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders will be the first feature film the director has released in 8 years, following the severely underrated Loving in 2016. The film – which debuted at the Telluride Film Festival in August 2023 and was slated to release that December – was dropped by Disney following the strikes in what seemed like a revenge move against SAG-AFTRA, later being picked up by Focus Features for a June 2024 release. Inspired by the 1967 photo-book of the same name, the fictional story tracks a biker gang from the streets of Chicago all across America’s Midwest, and stars the likes of Jodie Comer, Austin Butler, Tom Hardy, and Mike Faist. Nichols is one of our greatest yet most under-sung filmmakers and this looks to be yet another film of his that utilizes a brilliant ensemble cast and likely excellent script to their fullest effect.

​8. Dune: Part Two
 
It may seem odd for Denis Villeneuve’s long-awaited follow-up to Dune to be this low on the list, but that doesn’t mean that we’re not still hotly anticipating its arrival. The first film in this two-part adaptation of Frank Herbert’s iconic novel was a remarkably well-crafted production of sci-fi glory that wasn’t afraid to take its time establishing everything we would need to know in order to understand this world, and every element from the cinematography to the score to the sound design heralded the arrival of a new genre classic. Part Two promises to add everything the first film missed – or at least, sort of missed – with a greater emphasis on action, a more thorough understanding of Zendaya’s character Chani and the Fremen people with which she is embedded, and the added cast powers of Florence Pugh, Austin Butler, and Christopher Walken. If these trailers have shown us anything, it’s that Villeneuve was exactly the right person to helm these adaptations, and if he’s snubbed for Best Director a second time, the Academy and I will have words.

​7. Mufasa: The Lion King
 
If you weren’t aware, director Barry Jenkins – the man behind Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk, and the Prime Video limited series The Underground Railroad – was tapped some time ago by Disney to direct a live-action Lion King prequel film centered around the character of Mufasa. The latter part of that description leaves a lot to be desired in terms of voter confidence, no doubt about it. However, while live-action Disney projects as of late have ranged from poor to not-as-poor in quality, Barry Jenkins is one of the highest-quality filmmakers we have, and unless a Dial of Destiny-level misfire occurs, this is likely to be yet another incredibly poetic, beautiful, and miraculous notch in the Barry Jenkins quality belt. If anything, it will be something to remember.

​6. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
 
It’s been nine years since we last had a Mad Max adventure on the silver screen, and if its first trailer is any indication, the theatrical space has sorely missed George Miller’s fast and furious apocalypse franchise. As a prequel to one of the most badass Best Picture nominees ever in Mad Max: Fury Road, Furiosa tracks the titular Imperator’s journey from her beginnings to her eventual rise within the ranks of Immortan Joe’s inner circle. Sure, some of the CGI in the trailer looks a bit wonky, but this thing comes out in May, so there’s plenty of time for improvements, and with superstar Anya Taylor-Joy stepping into Furiosa’s desert boots – tagging in Chris Hemsworth as the new Max – I have very little doubt that this Mad Max Saga won’t at least mostly satisfy.

​5. Blitz
 
You’d be forgiven for not even knowing what this was, since there’s very little publicly available information and absolutely zero footage yet, but what ultimately matters is that Steve McQueen, the man behind 12 Years a Slave, Widows, and the Prime Video short film series Small Axe, is directing a movie about the blitz of London during WWII, and has tagged in Saoirse Ronan and Harris Dickinson to play his two leads. McQueen is one of the most singularly talented and visionary filmmakers working today, and with leads like that – plus a likely Christmastime release date – this thing seems like a major awards player already. We’ll just have to wait and see how much of a player it is.

​4. Civil War
 
While Alex Garland’s Men was an unusual but nonetheless interesting miss for the director compared to his previous two works, his remains one of the most consistently quality careers in entertainment, both as a writer and in the head chair. And with A24 expanding their typically indie portfolio to larger-budget projects such as action films and IP-based adaptations, they couldn’t have chosen a better or more innovative filmmaker to launch with. Civil War looks intense, terrifying, and insanely well-put together, its first trailer jolting one into fight or flight almost as easily as its characters (Jesse Plemons might be too good at this job), and with secret weapon Stephen McKinley Henderson on the call sheet, there’s little doubt that this will be one of the most talked-about and impressive movies of the year.

​3. Mickey 17
 
Recently delayed “indefinitely” by Warner Bros. Discovery in order to move up Godzilla x Kong’s nationwide release, Mickey 17 is all but certain to debut in late 2024 as a major awards season player, thanks to the likes of Academy Award Winner Bong Joon Ho – who made a little movie called Parasite (the first non-English language movie to ever win Best Picture) – and superstar Robert Pattinson teaming up for a sci-fi movie that already has an announcement trailer available to watch. Plot details have been kept pretty close to the chest, but I’m hoping more is revealed soon, and I hope what is revealed is as weird and eclectic as the rest of Bong Joon Ho’s filmography. This will be the director’s first fully English-language film, and simply based on him and Pattinson alone, I’m more than confident in its overall quality being high, hence its placement this far up the list.

​2. Nosferatu
 
Nosferatu is one of the most iconic films ever made, the first to popularize the titular vampire as a horror icon, and still one of the best vampire films available even though it came out in 1922. There have been other film adaptations of the character before – most notably Werner Herzog’s 1979 film Nosferatu the Vampyre – but nothing quite like what visionary director Robert Eggers is sure to be cooking up. Bill Skarsgård stars as the character, with the additional cast of Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, and Willem Dafoe. Dafoe in particular has had some extremely praiseworthy words for Eggers’ directing, and with a Christmas Day release date, Focus Features seems extremely confident in their product. Robert Eggers films are some of the best around, always extremely well-crafted and brimming with commitment to whatever story is being told; this is a perfect fit for him, and I cannot wait to see how he envisions this world and this iconic character.

1. Megalopolis 
​
For the better part of two decades, Francis Ford Coppola has been building up his revenues with his and his daughter’s other companies – including a quite popular winery – to self-finance this passion project about an architect who wants to rebuild New York City as a utopia following an unprecedented disaster. There simply is no other spot on this list more befitting for the man behind The Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse Now, especially not when he’s working with Adam Driver – whose words of praise for his director should not go unnoted – as his leading man. With all of that information, plus the title itself being a play on Metropolis (another iconic film ripe for re-interpretation), my confidence is quite high. Any movie can suck, including those by some of the greatest filmmakers to ever be in the business; in fact, a few of Francis Ford Coppola’s more recent films have been rather poor. But my instincts on this one, and the knowledge that Coppola’s less quality films were made largely after he ran out of money to make movies on his own, tell me that we’re about to receive a film from Coppola the likes of which we haven’t seen before in the best possible way.

And those are our picks for the Top 10 Most Anticipated Movies of 2024! What movies are you looking forward to this year? Let us know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading!
 
- The Friendly Film Fan

​Honorable Mentions:
11. Challengers
12. Hit Man
13. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
14. The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim
15. Deadpool 3
16. Twisters
17. The Wolf Man
18. Joker: Folie à Deux
19. Wicked: Part One
20. Gladiator II
 

• Alien: Romulus
• Apartment 7A
• Apex
• Back to Black
• Ballerina
• Borderlands
• Burn
• Drive-Away Dolls
• Havoc
• Inside Out 2
• Janet Planet
• Maria
• MaXxXine
• A Quiet Place: Day One
• Sing Sing
• Weapons
• Wolfs