by Jacob Jones Hello, all, and welcome back to The Friendly Film Fan! While 2025 has already begun, and most of last year’s films have wrapped their openings, there’s still a lot of ground to cover before the year in cinema can take on even half a shape. There have only been a few new releases to cinemas nationwide thus far, and 2024 still has a few expansions opening at some point next month, so there’s plenty left to look forward to as the year progresses and we move ever onward towards the 2026 awards season (even writing those words gets me excited about it). To that end, while much of that season’s contenders have yet to emerge from the woodwork, as so often happens with these things, a decent chunk of film has already been unveiled, and it’s looking like the year in movies will have cinephiles all over eating well for a good long while. Here are our picks for the Top 10 Most Anticipated Movies of 2025! 10. Wicked: For Good Wicked Part One’s sensational box office success was almost a foregone conclusion, considering the ubiquitous nature of the Broadway musical’s titanic popularity amongst the theater world, and the cultural foothold of the material as it related to the source texts and Wizard of Oz film. But if the movie adaptation from John M. Chu didn’t take great care to show real work and genuine effort went into making it, that box office success could have come with a much lower price tag. Luckily for Universal, the film received loads of critical acclaim for its use of practical sets, masterful makeup and costume design, and the quality of its two central performances, making it by far 2024’s biggest success story in terms of both having a cultural footprint and making a ton of money right as the holiday season began. Part Two, re-titled Wicked: For Good for entirely unnecessary and frankly rather stupid reasons, looks to replicate that success at the same time this year, concluding the story of Wicked with a genuine Part Two as its closer. Wicked was one of my favorite surprises of 2024, giving me the same feeling I had when I walked out of Dune (2021) for the first time in that I couldn’t believe they had actually managed to pull off the adaptation successfully with only a few hiccups along the way. If For Good can manage the same heights as its predecessor – and that is a BIG if – we can expect another major hit for Universal, and for the soundtrack to be blaring through young and gay households for months to come. 9. Marty Supreme While I have yet to revisit Uncut Gems or Good Time since finding them to be a little bit less baked than the impression I was given at first, I am fully aware of the cultural chokehold the Safdie brothers have on movie fandom as a whole, and with Timothée Chalamet on one of the all-time young movie star runs right now, I’m inclined to think that this is yet another inspired choice for the advancement of his already incredible career. While plot details are being kept under wraps, the idea seems to be that Chalamet is playing some sort of ping pong expert, co-starring alongside Gwenyth Paltrow, Fran Drescher, and even Tyler the Creator. Josh Safdie is directing solo on this one as Benny has leaned more into his acting work over the last few years, but with a Christmas Day release date and A24 distributing, we can certainly expect this one to be something very special. 8. The Battle of Baktan Cross You may not have known it if you’re not deep into the movie-sphere the way a lot of us cinephilic sickos are, but Paul Thomas Anderson has a new movie opening this year, and who’s his star but the one and only Leo. Yes, that Leo. DiCaprio is joined by Benicio Del Toro, Sean Penn, Teyana Taylor, Regina Hall, and returning PTA alum Alana Haim in a new film, the plot details of which remain under wraps, just like the last entry on this list. Licorice Pizza, for all the controversy that surrounded the age gap between its two lead characters, was one of my favorite movies released in 2021, and given PTA’s nearly impeccable track record, this one makes the top 10 on cast and director alone. 7. Mickey 17 After continuous delays and release date resets, including the most recent one which saw the film move back onto March 7, swapping dates with Ryan Coogler’s vampire thriller Sinners, Bong Joon Ho’s first movie after the sensational Parasite is finally (maybe) coming to the big screen. Starring Robert Pattinson as a man who volunteers to be what is essentially a death test dummy because his life on Earth sucks, the trailer indicated a wildly different tone than we’re used to from the Korean writer/director, but after Parasite’s historic Oscar wins all the way back in 2020, I’m fairly sure any fan of that film will show up for whatever he wants to make now. Of course, it does help that the supporting cast includes Steven Yeun, Naomi Ackie, Toni Collette, and Mark Ruffalo, who all seem like they’re having as much of a blast as the movie looks to be. 6. F1 Here’s my only concern when it comes to F1, which stars Brad Pitt and is directed by Top Gun: Maverick helmer Joseph Kosinski: despite the incredible racing footage and the sense of practicality involved in every element, plus the involvement of Kerry Condon, Javier Bardem, and Tobias Menzies in the film, and the mid-summer release date placing everyone’s eyes on the project (which shows faith in its ability to succeed), Kosinski doesn’t have the best track record as a director when it comes to original stories. Maverick was as much a success because of its star – if not more so – than because of its director. While this new “in the actual vehicle”…vehicle is not produced by Tom Cruise, however, who has an incredible track record as a producer in choosing which stories he tells and getting movies made, it is partly produced by Brad Pitt, who has nearly as strong a track record. Given all that, plus the film’s first trailer boasting that amazing racing footage, there’s reason enough to be especially excited for the mere experience of watching F1 on the big screen. 5. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning With a first trailer full of exciting imagery, a remixed version of the now classic theme, and a few tidbits of vague but epic sounding dialogue the way this franchise knows how to do, the ostensibly final Mission: Impossible movie – formerly titled Dead Reckoning – Part 2, as it largely deals with the fallout (wink wink) of its predecessor’s plot – looks to be packing in and wrapping up the entire series and everything it’s represented to movies since 1996 in one last epic ride. It’s clear that between Top Gun: Maverick and this, plus the actor and producer’s new collaboration with Alejandro Gonzales Iñárritu, Tom Cruise is thinking about his legacy, his age, and how he wants this era of his stardom to be remembered. We see glimpses of the original Mission: Impossible film, what looks to be the rabbit’s foot from Mission: Impossible III, and a lot of adrenaline-pumping footage of Cruise hanging out of planes, being at the bottom of the ocean, doing shirtless close-quarters knife fights, and finally, asking his team to trust him “one last time.” I doubt this one reaches the highs of Fallout – itself one of the best examples of action filmmaking in modern history – but if it even comes close to something like Rogue Nation or even Ghost Protocol, Cruise and company will be sending this franchise off on an all-too-rare ending high note. 4. Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein In the perfect marriages of directors and ideas, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard one as perfect as Guillermo Del Toro and Frankenstein. Starring Oscar Isaac as Dr. Victor Frankenstein, as well as Mia Goth, Ralph Ineson, Christoph Waltz, Burn Gorman, Charles Dance, Lars Mikkelsen, and Jacob Elordi as The Monster, the film is due to be released later this year, and while no official date has been set, the presence of a set photo from the production having been released does lead me to believe a 2025 release is very much in the cards. According to IMDb, the plot concerns Christoph Waltz' Dr. Pretorius, who tracks down Frankenstein's monster, believed to have died in a fire forty years prior to this film’s start, in order to continue Frankenstein’s experiments. With that premise, and one of the most visionary and artistic directors cinema has to offer behind the camera fresh off an Oscar win for his Pinocchio adaptation, there’s more than enough reason to include this one in the top five. 3. Avatar: Fire and Ash Is it now considered basic to have one of the Avatar movies on one’s most anticipated list? Or to have them on the list for every year they’re due to release, regardless of the length between them or the supposed plot details not always being the most original ideas, functioning primarily as allegories for environmentalism in the modern age? If so, I guess I’m just a regular basic bitch. The fact is, James Cameron is one of the most sure-fire hit makers in the business, claiming both the number one, three, and four spots for the highest-grossing movies of all time with both his Avatar films and Titanic (the second-highest is Avengers: Endgame). People love to claim that the Avatar films have no cultural footprint, but consistently forget what an international phenomenon they are every time they hit theaters, even on re-releases. Cameron is a visual storyteller through and through, showing moviegoers things they’ve either never seen before, or never seen before in quite that way, and has become the gold standard for blockbuster storytelling on a massive scale. It’s true that The Way of Water felt narratively more stretched and had more pacing issues than the first Avatar, but so much of that excess was dedicated to the most stunning visual effects I’ve ever seen that it was far from bothersome. And with a whole new world to explore and develop as the title suggests, following Jake Sully and his family through the rest of Pandora is sure to be yet another billion dollar roller coaster ride. In fact, the only reason this movie isn’t higher up on the list is because of exactly two movies that I can hardly contain my excitement for. 2. Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery The third film in Rian Johnson’s Knives Out Mystery series (and second Netflix collaboration), which features an ensemble cast as packed and loaded with talent as the last two, already has an air of intrigue around it so thick that it would make Benoit Blanc’s mouth water. The plot – like many of these films – is currently under wraps, but suffice it to say, with nothing more than a black-and-white photo of Daniel Craig with an entirely different hair style than he had in the previous films, I’m more than ready for a new murder mystery from the man who practically resurrected the genre from an Agatha Christie-less grave. 1. Superman To absolutely no one’s surprise, my most anticipated movie of 2025 is the one that brings back the man of steel in his own solo movie that has nothing to do with Man of Steel, a film that I have a light amount of affection towards for its efforts to take a different approach, but which nonetheless utterly fails in making that approach compelling or even worth continuing for the character. What Superman – my favorite superhero character of all time – needed was someone who understood both the super and the man, and if the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy taught us anything, James Gunn understands duality within characters better than most comic book movie storytellers. But more than simply understanding Clark Kent and Superman, Gunn’s approach looks to be an answer not simply to all the ideas of what people assume Superman has to be but what comic book storytelling over the past twenty years has had to be. If the fantastic teaser trailer is any indication, gone is the cynicism of the DCEU, gone are the sarcastic wit-driven machinations of the MCU, and here is hope, sincerity, the big blue boy scout as he was always meant to be understood: a new, better way forward, for a better tomorrow. That’s something both superhero movies and superhero media over the past decade or so has been sorely missing in terms of plot or thematic resonance, and although the plot of Superman itself is nowhere to be found in the teaser, the iconic John Williams theme is, as are the red trunks that the character wears specifically to make him less intimidating to children. If Superman is truly meant to be a savior figure in superhero storytelling, then showing him saving someone, or showing people asking to be saved by him, shouldn’t be that novel of an idea, and yet when it happens, all I can think is what a relief that the darkness of Zack Snyder’s version of the character is nowhere to be found here. There’s a very large asterisk around whether or not this movie is a success, leading to a footnote that says “box office success and artistic success are two entirely different things,” but if this works as well as it could, it would be a meta event that could shake the foundations of this kind of storytelling for the next twenty years – as Superman saves the DCU from cynicism, James Gunn will be saving Warner Bros. and DC as a filmmaking studio from eating their own tails. And if that happens, we may just have hope again for the future of superhero movies. For all of that and so many other reasons – not the least of which is the debut of Krypto the Superdog – James Gunn’s Superman is my most anticipated movie of year. And those are our picks for the Top 10 Most Anticipated Movies of 2025! What are you most excited for this year? See anything in the Honorable Mentions you think should be on the list? Let me know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading! - The Friendly Film Fan Honorable Mentions:
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AuthorFilm critic in my free time. Film enthusiast in my down time. Categories
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