All we know for sure: It’s the new Paul Thomas Anderson film. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Wood Harris, Sean Penn, and at least two members of Anderson’s informal repertory company, Inherent Vice‘s Benicio del Toro and Licorice Pizza‘s Alana Haim. It was shot in Sacramento, California and parts of Humboldt County in early 2024, and is said to have cost as much as $140 million, which makes it the biggest-budget film PTA’s ever directed. That it’s also reportedly a riff on Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland—not the most obvious big-budget-blockbusterish source material in the postmodern maestro’s oeuvre—makes all this even weirder. Even the title is a zone of confusion—The Battle of Baktan Cross and the more-recently-rumored One Battle After Another might both be placeholders for all we know.
Michael
October 3
To their credit, director Antoine Fuqua and the makers of this Michael Jackson biopic have stated their intention to cover everything, good and the bad. Jackson’s legacy is still huge, of course, but it’s a tad more complicated than it was before. Which makes it all the more fascinating that—in a cast that also includes Miles Teller and the always-excellent Colman Domingo—Jackson himself will be played in this film by his nephew, Jaafar Jackson.
Predator: Badlands
November 7
2022’s Prey, which pit a Native American warrior against one of the Predator franchise’s extraterrestrial sport-hunters, was a breath of fresh air in the age of IP—a spin-off that did something interesting, and exciting with a familiar movie brand rather than sticking to the script. Predator: Badlands is also directed by Dan Trachtenberg, who’s teased a storyline involving Elle Fanning playing multiple characters and a Predator who’s the hero of the story, not the antagonist.
Wicked: For Good
November 21
Part one has had theater kids cavorting in the aisles and filmgoers posting tear-streaked before-and-after videos for a solid month while racking up more than $500 million globally. Part Two, directed like the first one by Jon M. Chu, will follow Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba and Ariana Grande’s Glinda as they become the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good we all know from the story’s classic source material. The Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and even a certain displaced Kansas farm girl will also reportedly make an appearance.
The Running Man
November 21
Director Edgar Wright’s reimagined take on Stephen King’s story about a murderous dystopian-future game show, which previously inspired a 1987 Paul Michael Glaser action extravaganza starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and actual former game show host Richard Dawson. This time, the man doing the running is Glen Powell and the master of ceremonies is Josh Brolin; the fall release date should give audiences time to shake off whatever murderous-game-show fatigue they’re left with after bingeing the second season of Squid Game over Christmas.
Avatar: Fire & Ash
December 19
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