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Frame Related #5: New Year, New Films, New Start
Welcome to 2025, everyone!
Let’s tie up some loose ends from last year and take a sneak peek ahead at what cinema has to offer over the next 12 months…
🎟 Global Box Office: December 2024
What did worldwide audiences watch last month to cap off the year?
- Moana 2 — $324
- Mufasa: The Lion King — $214M
- Wicked — $113M
- Red One — $111M
- Gladiator II — $63M
- Kraven the Hunter — $31M
- The Lord of the Rings: The War of Rohirrim — $9.5M
- Anora — $6.7M
- Venom: The Last Dance — $5.7M
- Interstella 5555: The Story of the Secret Star System — $4.3M
🎞 2025’s Most Anticipated Movies
Some of Frame Rated’s writers were asked what films they’re most looking forward to in 2025, and the results are below:
Battle of Baktan Cross — Lance Li
“Paul Thomas Anderson may be the only American writer-director alive who can achieve the heights that was thought no longer possible in Hollywood. A protege of Robert Altman, he’s developed his style and themes over the years, but he’s also constantly changing, shapeshifting, refusing to be pegged in a round hole. His works are as violent and compulsive as it comes in There Will Be Blood (2007), as free-spirited and open as Jonathan Demme in Boogie Nights (1997) and Licorice Pizza (2021), yet also capable of much delicacy and reserved passion as Max Ophüls in the likes of Phantom Thread (2017).
He’s one of those directors whose work can only either impress me or depress me. There has never been anything in between, never half a success or half a failure for me. But even the failures are enigmatically fascinating. Allegedly an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, which deals with the chaos and uncertainty of the time that marked the transformation from liberalism of the 1960s to the conservatism of the 1980s, Battle of Baktan Cross marks the first time one of his films will be shown in IMAX, and the first with a reported budget of over $100M in the banks, a bold choice for Warner Bros. considering that his films were consistently losing money on the market, even with the big stars like Joaquin Phoenix and Daniel Day-Lewis fronted in the advertising. Speaking of stars, this film will also be Leonardo DiCaprio’s first collaboration with Anderson. It will be a point of interest how Anderson’s film might challenge him, stir up the dead water that he’s stuck in recent years.”
Mickey 17 — James Y. Lee
“Six years after the success of Parasite (2019), Bong Joon-ho is back with Mickey 17, an exciting return to the days of Snowpiercer (2013), the filmmaker’s first foray into larger-budget sci-fi and an English-speaking cast. Mickey 17 charts the misadventures of Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson), enlisted as an “expendable” in the distant future for dangerous, life-risking interplanetary labor who’s cloned repeatedly after each iteration of him dies. But after Mickey’s 17th rendition accidentally survives a colonising expedition to the planet Niflheim, bedlam ensues with the ensuing colonisation efforts as he and his 18th clone cross paths and collide, throwing personal and corporate interests into total disarray.
Pattinson seems poised to offer up yet another bravado performance, armed with another hilariously intriguing accent and what will most likely be a physically investing performance in terms of embodying multiple versions of the same character. And it’s most likely hard to go wrong with an ensemble cast this prolific under the helm of a filmmaker like Bong, who has such a specific mastery of tone, comedy, and narrative direction. If there’s any one sign that this film’s likely to be a massive effort with outsized ambitions worth looking forward to, it’s the fact that Edward Ashton’s original 2022 novel is titled Mickey7. So with 10 more clones’ worth of expansion on Bong’s mind, it’s time to see what enormous form his Parasite follow-up will take.”
Superman — Remy Dean
“I got a big kick of genuine excitement, plus a delightful frisson of nostalgia, when the first trailer for the forthcoming Superman reboot dropped. Excitement because Guardians of the Galaxy is my favourite fragment of the MCU, though generally I find the DC movies more satisfying. So, having the same director at the helm bodes well, especially as it promises to reinvent Kal-El’s pet pooch Krypto. James Gunn did a great job of bringing consistent credibility to the whole set of quirky characters but Rocket Raccoon’s arc, and the tragedy of his fellow experimentally enhanced animals, was astonishingly emotive. I anticipate Krypto attaining the same dimensionality. Nostalgia because I remember reading about the making of Richard Donner’s 1978 version and anticipating its release long before seeing it in the cinema. Not only was it visually stunning for the time, but it also treated comic book characters with refreshing respect. From the snippets in the trailer, it looks like Gunn’s cribbed plenty from that version and whether it’s better or worse, it’s still going to be great fun to compare and discuss. Plus… superdog!”
Frankenstein — Dan Perrin
“Apart from being a huge horror film nerd, the only other reason as to why my most anticipated movie of 2025 is Frankenstein has to be because its director is none other than Guillermo del Toro. This genius Mexican filmmaker, in my mind anyway, is one of the most brilliant directors of the last 30 years. Looking back over his filmography, I don’t think he’s ever made a bad movie — and what’s even more special about him, is that he’s truly a master of the macabre. His entire output rests in the dark fantasy/horror genre, and aside from his sumptuous eye-popping set designs that he always creates for his tales, he genuinely loves creating monsters — practically if he can help it — so, of course, he’s the perfect choice for creating a new vision of Mary Shelley’s classic Gothic novel.”
Zootopia 2 — Barnaby Page
“Compulsory elements for any Hollywood animated feature these days include not only an uplifting moral message, but also a touch of knowing humour for the adults — even the seemingly kid-focused The Wild Robot (2024) had its wry nod to artificial intelligence large language models, for example. Few films have done it as well as Zootopia (2016, a.k.a Zootropolis and Zoomania), where the lesson was a pretty standard one about tolerance but the witty asides were exceptionally well-crafted, from references to the drug-brewing “Walter and Jesse”, the skit on The Godfather (1972) and the joke about the elephant in the room (there really is an elephant in the room) to the hilarious sloth-bureaucrats.
Now, one of the original directors (Byron Howard) and one of the original writers (Jared Bush) team up again with voice stars Ginnifer Goodwin and Jason Bateman — as a crime-fighting rabbit and fox — for Zootopia 2, released in November. The original had an unusually sophisticated take on government, too, with the lion mayor facing some difficult policy choices: this year, I’m hoping we’ll see some more of that, and some more inspired gags, as Howard, Bush and co. Make Zootopia Great Again.”
Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning — Conall McManus
“As one of the greatest action film franchises of the last 25 years, with each subsequent instalment managing the rare feat of improving upon its predecessor, the conclusion to the Mission Impossible franchise this summer has me uncommonly excited. Set to be another daring filmmaking endeavour with action set pieces that will make jaws drop and stomachs churn, I trust that Christopher McQuarrie can turn the culmination of this high-octane saga into yet another thrilling masterpiece.”
📈 2024’s Most Popular Reads
What did most of you enjoy here last year? Let’s take a look!
- Midnight Cowboy by Conall McManus
- True Lies by Dan Owen
- Poor Things by Thomas Burchfield
- The Wild Bunch by Conall McManus
- Society of the Snow by Barnaby Page
- “How Tarantino Writes a Scene” by Conall McManus
- Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom by Conall McManus
- Monty Python’s Life of Brian by Conall McManus
- The Shawshank Redemption by Conall McManus
- Eyes Wide Shut by Conall McManus
Huge congratulations to new writer Conall, whose abundant and well-written output in 2024 obviously resulted in him dominating this chart.
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