Rotten Tomatoes has officially cut the ribbon on its most anticipated movies of 2025, and while there’s something to be said about the beauty that comes with approaching everything with curiosity instead of skepticism, there’s a certain theme to this roundup that may result in some being none-too-pleased.
Indeed, while there’s enough exceptions to be had, the overwhelming majority of next year’s most anticipated movies have taken the form of remakes, sequels, and adaptations of intellectual properties that range from safe to “how the hell are they going to pull this off without it being disastrously vapid?”
Now, that’s not to say a movie should be judged by its cover; Wicked: Part Two and The Fantastic Four in particular are shaping up to be some of the most genuinely interesting developments in the world of Hollywood, with the former set to be teed up magnificently by its 2024 predecessor (whose trailer indicates that we’re in for an emerald-tinted grand slam of a musical adaptation) and the latter coming smack-dab in the middle of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s creative shift, with a unique setting and a juggernaut cast list to boot.
But then you have the likes of Snow White as the latest entry in the Unnecessary Disney Remake Cinematic Universe (why not remake movies that actually need one? Treasure Planet, perhaps?), and The Black Phone 2, which can only avoid being read as a cash-grab if it ends up being a standalone sequel with an almost entirely new set of characters, at which point it might as well be an original film. Other such bold decisions include Zootopia 2, Mortal Kombat 2, a live-action How to Train Your Dragon remake, and a Minecraft movie (which, worst case scenario, could end up being another Five Nights at Freddy’s situation).
All hope is not lost for you Scorsese disciples, though; Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17 will surely be one hell of a sci-fi vehicle for one Robert Pattinson, and Robert De Niro will be indulging one of his many bread-and-butters in the crime film Alto Knights (in which he’ll simultaneously portray two competing mob bosses). Paul Thomas Anderson, meanwhile, is cooking up an untitled original feature for a summer release, and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! is bound to be a deliciously subversive take on the 90-year-old creature feature.
And at the end of the day, folks, cinema is not and will probably never truly be dead; some Hollywood executives just speak a tragically different language than actual creatives, and sometimes that means major studios put out a soulless movie here or there (pejoratively, one might even call these movies “content”). But, there’s almost always a great film to be found in many a corner of the world ⏤ some of them are just hiding behind a streaming subscription, a miniscule theatrical window, or an IP sheen that may ultimately prove to be worth your curiosity (can you imagine how much more miserable we’d all be if we had written off Barbie?).
