Hollywood studios are about to bombard the big screen with tried-and-true sequels, spin-offs and remakes to get bums back on cinema seats. Here's our preview of blockbuster movie season.
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Look! Up on the big screen! Is it a bird? Is it a plane?
Actually, it's another Superman movie.
And that bird you can see? It's a pterodactyl swooping for Scarlett Johannson in Jurassic World: Rebirth.
And the plane? It has Tom Cruise dangling from it (again!) in Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning.
Welcome to the 2025 popcorn movie season, when the Hollywood studios unleash their big guns - the mega-budget, star-spangled, special effects extravaganzas - for the US summer.
Ever since the monster success of Jaws 50 years ago, when Steven Spielberg's killer shark thriller chewed through box office records in the northern summer of 1975, mid-year "event" films have become the main money-makers for Hollywood.
The pop culture bite of Jaws redefined the scheduling of big-ticket movie releases, beginning with the now-famous debut of Star Wars on May 4, 1977, and followed in June 1981 by Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark.
And the major studios are still following that blockbuster playbook today.
Dominated by marquee-name stars, familiar franchises and heavy marketing, films released between May and September now account for as much as 50 per cent of annual movie ticket revenue - making it the cinema industry's most profitable period.
In Australia cinema operators are counting on the next few months to boost 2025 ticket sales, which have remained below pre-pandemic levels as competition has grown from at-home streaming platforms such as Netflix and studio production has recovered from the 2023 writers' strike.
Some of the highest-grossing movies of recent years were US summer releases that opened in Australia's corresponding colder months, including 2024's No. 1 movie Deadpool & Wolverine, which sold $67.8million worth of tickets, the top movie of 2023 Barbie (with $86.5million) and 2022's Top Gun: Maverick ($95.5million).
Of course, with the desperation to deliver crowd-pleasers that can put bums on cinema seats comes risk-averse repetition: Hollywood's "coming soon" schedule for the next four months includes nine sequels, seven remakes and two spin-offs - outnumbering such originals as Brad Pitt's Formula 1 action film F1 and Rebel Wilson's Bridesmaids-meets-Die Hard mash-up, Bride Hard.
Film critics may despair that sequels and remakes prove Hollywood has officially run out of ideas but cinema operators are rubbing their hands together in anticipation at this year's selection because, they say, movie-goers see these types of films as a safer bet when deciding where to spend their entertainment dollar.
Scott Seddon, president of Independent Cinemas Australia and proprietor of Scotty's Cinemas Raymond Terrace and Heddon Greta Drive-In, points to the current success of A Minecraft Movie, which has earned more than $51million through the Easter break.
The film adaptation of the popular video game enjoyed the highest-grossing Australian opening for a video game film, overtaking last year's The Super Mario Bros.
"We need these tent poles to hold up the canvas," Mr Seddon said.
Kieren Dell, CEO and managing director of Regional Cinemas Australia, which operates cinemas in Port Macquarie, Kempsey and Armidale, says: "Audiences are being more selective with their hard-earned dollars and so are seeking not only quality but also familiarity".
So, get ready for nostalgia bombs as Jamie-Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan do a mother-daughter body swap all over again in Freakier Friday and 1990s slasher horror I Know What You Did Last Summer is recut for Gen-Z. Animated family favourites Lilo & Stitch and How To Train Your Dragon also get make-overs - as live-action romps.
Battling the superhero fatigue of audiences will be dueling reboots of Superman and Fantastic Four from rival comic book movie production lines Marvel Studios (owned by Disney) and DC Studios (owned by Warner Bros).
Meanwhile, Universal Pictures has more dinosaurs running amok and Paramount Pictures has more Tom Cruise running, running, running as only Tom Cruise can.
Mr Dell says he will be running Tom Cruise-style to see the new Mission Impossible and reckons romantic comedy Materialists is a potential sleeper hit ("not enough rom-coms in the list," he notes).
But he's tipping Jurassic World: Rebirth and Lilo & Stitch will be the big hits.
"The latter might be a surprise to many, but as my four-year-old granddaughter will attest, this show is an enduring hit to the younger generation and looks fantastic," he says. "Her laughter at the trailer at the cinema last Saturday was the final clincher in my mind."
The original offering that has cinema operators revved up?
Pitt putting the pedal to the metal in F1, which counts Formula 1 ace Lewis Hamilton as an executive producer.
The film's producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, boasted at the US cinema industry's annual CinemaCon in Las Vegas recently that F1 would be "the cinematic event" of the season, right up there with his high-flying Top Gun: Maverick, which brought in $US1.5 billion worldwide in 2022.
"We're here to tell you that we're ready to do it again," Bruckheimer said.
Here's your guide to the 25 hottest popcorn movies coming from Hollywood this winter:
THE SPIN-OFFS
Thunderbolts* (May 1): Marvel Studios assembles a low-rent Avengers of B-list sidekicks and unhinged antiheroes, including Sebastian Stan (from the Captain America movies) and Florence Pugh and David Harbour (from Black Widow), to fight under a name with an asterisk because it's apparently a placeholder until they come up with a better one (comic book fans speculate the team will end up called the Dark Avengers).
Ballerina (June 5): From the ultra-violent John Wick universe comes Ana de Armas (Oscar nominated for her Marilyn Monroe in 2022's Blonde) playing a tiny dancer with silky assassin skills. Keanu Reeves and Angelica Huston co-star.
THE SEQUELS
Final Destination: Bloodlines (May 15): The sixth film in the horror franchise that has cheated death for 25 years finds a whole new array of imaginatively awful ways to kill people through seemingly accidental but elaborately ordained mishaps.
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (May 17): "I need you to trust me, one last time," Tom Cruise declares in the trailer for his eighth outing as super spy Ethan Hunt, who runs through London and hangs off planes for a mission that picks up right where 2023's Dead Reckoning left off.
Karate Kid: Legends (June 5): It's kung fu versus karate as Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio team up to train a new martial arts brat in the franchise's sixth film.
28 Years Later (June 19): Two decades after 28 Days Later, director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland reunite to reanimate more zombie-virus chills.
M3gan 2.0 (June 26): The killer doll with the killer dance moves unleashes more murder-bot mayhem.
Jurassic World: Rebirth (July 3): It's Scarlett Johansson versus T-Rex as the dino franchise roars back with installment No. 7 directed by Gareth Edwards (of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story acclaim).
Smurfs (July 3): What the smurf?! Rhianna lends her Grammy-winning voice to Smurfette and Nick Offerman is Papa Smurf's surly brother as the cartoon characters jump into the real world.
Freakier Friday (August 7): Two decades after they endured a Freaky Friday (2003), mother-daughter duo Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan body-swap all over again.
Nobody 2 (August 14): The bloody, bare-knuckled surprise comedy gut-punch of 2021 goes another round with Bob Odenkirk (star of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul) back in action as a hitman-turned-family man reluctantly dragged back into his violent former life.
THE REMAKES
Lilo & Stitch (May 22): A live-action re-do of 2002's sweet animated romp about a rascally blue alien and the little Hawaiian girl who adopts and somehow tames him.
How to Train Your Dragon (June 12): The original 2010 Dreamworks animation was a blast of emotion and exhilaration as a scrawny Viking teen befriends a fearsome black-winged dragon to save his village. Dean DeBlois, who helmed the original cartoon trilogy, directs this live-action retelling.
Superman (July 10): Written and directed by James Gunn, who made Marvel's rollicking Guardians of the Galaxy movies, this ambitious DC Studios reboot stars David Corenswet as the Man of Steel, whose dog Krypto joins the battle with Nicholas Hoult's dastardly Lex Luthor.
I Know What You Did Last Summer (July 17): The 1997 slasher horror gets a Gen-Z do-over, filmed in Australia and featuring cameos by originals Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps (July 24): Marvel goes retro for the third live-action revamp of the blue-clad comic book characters. Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach play 1960s astronauts who gain super powers after exposure to cosmic rays.
The Naked Gun (August 28): Half remake, half sequel, this spoof casts Taken hardman Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr, the son of deadpan legend Leslie Nielsen's bumbling police detective in the 1980-90s Police Squad! movies.
The Roses (August 28): Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch fall in love and then go to war in a black comedy directed by Jay Roach (Meet The Parents), scripted by Tony McNamara (The Favourite) and based on the Warren Adler novel that Danny DeVito turned into 1989's The War of the Roses starring Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas.
THE ORIGINALS
The Surfer (May 15): Nicolas Cage rages with Nicolas Cage intensity against Julian McMahon's gang of violently territorial Aussie surfers who won't let him surf on their beach.
Hurry Up Tomorrow (May 15): A surreal psychological thriller starring Abel Tesfaye (aka singer The Weeknd) as a musician brought undone by insomnia and fame. Also stars Wednesday's Jenna Ortega and Saltburn's Barry Keoghan.
Materialists (June 12): Rom-com directed by Celine Song (Past Lives) with Dakota Johnson as a professional matchmaker torn between the handsome and wealthy Pedro Pascal and the handsome and broke Chris Evans, the ex she just can't let go of.
Elio (June 19): Pixar shoots for the moon with the story of a young boy who becomes the intergalactic ambassador of planet Earth when he's beamed up by aliens eager to understand our planet and its inhabitants.
F-1 (June 26): Feel the need for speed? Director Joseph Kosinski, who piloted Top Gun: Maverick to blockbuster success, reteams with producer Jerry Bruckheimer to steer Brad Pitt as a burnt-out Formula 1 driver racing a hotshot young rookie.
Bride Hard (July 17): It's Bridesmaids meets Die Hard as secret agent Rebel Wilson agrees to be the maid of honour at her best friend's wedding.
The Life of Chuck (August 21): Tom Hiddleston stars in a Stephen King adaptation in the mode of his hit heartwarmers The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile and Stand By Me.
James Joyce
James Joyce is executive editor of ACM, the publisher of this masthead. Based in Canberra, he is a former editor of ACM's The Canberra Times and began his journalism career as a cadet reporter for his hometown paper, ACM's Newcastle Herald, where he spent two decades moonlighting as the masthead’s movie and TV critic while working his way up to the position of deputy editor.
