Mad about the movies? Here are 2025’s biggest new titles

Though the headlines might suggest otherwise – pandemics and strikes and delays, oh my! – the movie-making machinery of Hollywood has apparently not drawn breath in the last few years. Though very little of the IP is original – there’s a lot of remakes, reboots and sequels to be found – 2025 is shaping up to be a fantastic year at the flicks.

WOLF MAN

Attempts to rekindle Universal’s iconic horror catalogue from the 1930s have proven challenging, especially when led by the slightly overcooked top liners, such as Dracula or The Mummy. In 2020, director Leigh Whannell started from a very off-piste entry point – The Invisible Man –- and it paid off. Whannell returns with Wolf Man, a reboot of 1941’s The Wolf Man, about a werewolf, minus some of the gimmicks of both the original film and the legend on which it is based.

BRIDGET JONES: MAD ABOUT THE BOY

A new chapter in the Bridget Jones story, which runs a little bit like the Sex and the City sequel And Just Like That. You’re not quite sure whether they’re making the right choices, but it’s just lovely to be back. Much fuss will be made of sexy Roxster (Leo Woodall), who is wooing Bridget, but in truth we’re just relieved to see Bridget’s mum Pam (Gemma Jones), Una (Celia Imrie) and her three pals Miranda (Sarah Solemani), Shazzer (Sally Phillips) and Tom (James Callis).

SNOW WHITE

Is it all about timing? On the heels of a tedious culture war over the film’s casting, Snow White might benefit from a splash of green, delivering a fantastical adventure film into the space vacated by the mega-hit Wicked. Rachel Zegler is Snow White, the prettier-than-pretty young girl who lives with seven short men – don’t ask – and former Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot plays the Evil Queen, whose jealousy of Snow White is ignited when her mirror tells her the younger woman is prettier. Sounds weird when you write it out like that.

MICKEY 17

Edward Ashton’s novel Mickey7 gets a cinematic treatment from Oscar-winning Parasite director Bong Joon-ho. Robert Pattinson, lately The Batman, sheds his cowl here to play Mickey Barnes, who escapes a future Earth by signing up as an “expendable”, a kind of disposable worker who gets a new body each time the old one breaks. The snag? Mickey 18 is created without anyone realising that Mickey 17 survived.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING

Here perhaps out of sentiment rather than actual right, the eighth – and surely final? – Mission: Impossible film lands at a time when it feels cinema storytelling has actually shifted away from the kind of pure action and brain-bending stunts that the Mission: Impossible franchise is best known for. Christopher McQuarrie directs what is essentially a direct sequel to the last film, Dead Reckoning Part One, which finished with Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) searching for the stealth submarine, the Sevastopol, and destroying the cyber-weapon, “the Entity”.

SUPERMAN

Rebooting the reboot-weary and tonally damaged DC Comics movie library was a massive ask, but if the trailer of Superman – complete with his four-legged co-star, the super-dog Krypto – is any indicator, then James Gunn knows what he’s doing. David Corenswet plays Superman (alias mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent), Rachel Brosnahan plays reporter (and love interest) Lois Lane and Nicholas Hoult plays supervillain-in-the-making Lex Luthor.

THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS

It’s interesting that in a year when there are still some last gasps from what feels like the earlier iteration of the Marvel Cinematic Universe – notably, a Captain America movie – the 1960s-vibe retro-future Fantastic Four feels wholly future-focused. The F4 are not Marvel top liners, but that’s Marvel’s cinematic knack, turning B-tier comic book franchises like Guardians of the Galaxy into something to rival Star Wars. It’s also packing star power: Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach.

MICHAEL

One of the most anticipated films of the year. Antoine Fuqua directs the life of pop icon Michael Jackson, with Jackson’s nephew Jaafar Jackson in the title role, and Oscar-winning Australian cinematographer Dion Beebe handling the camera. The film promises to span his life – from a child performer with The Jackson Five to his death in 2009 – and the film’s producer Graham King says the film will not skirt around the sexual abuse allegations which dogged the pop star in the final years of his life.

WICKED: FOR GOOD

I mean, come on, we’ve only just got our breath back and the sequel is coming? Well, less sequel, and more “rest of the film”. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande will be back on the promo trail, clutching each other’s fingernails and holding space, whatever that means, as the second half of the biggest half-a-movie in history (or at least, of 2024) lands in an explosion of green and song.