Heading into June, we’ve already seen some mega-blockbuster releases this year, chief among them Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Ready Player One, and Deadpool 2.
That’s an incredible list of massive movies, largely major franchises, with between them the box office receipts running well into the billions. In fact, Infinity War has takings comfortably over the billion-dollar mark all by itself – and that doesn’t even for a second consider all the additional merch (think posters, t-shirts, cardboard cutouts, toys).
Yet we’re still barely half way into 2018, so what major releases lie in wait around the corner for summer 2018?
Perhaps the next super-big-massive movie (in more ways than one) to hit cinemas will be June’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Them dinos just don’t know when they’re beat and among the things to get excited about in this latest instalment in our favourite mega-faun franchise extravaganza is the return of Mr Charisma himself, Jeff Goldblum. Will the Fallen Kingdom match our expectations, or will it be more a case of those Hollywood execs being so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should?
The next film to come out and get us queuing up and around the corner is Sicario 2: Soldado. Josh Brolin and Benicio del Toro return (no Emily Blunt this time round) with a sequel to Denis Villeneuve’s fantastic, finger nail-biting all-action crime thriller. Sicario 2 is directed by the highly talented Stefano Sollima, so we’re expecting great things.
With July comes another superhero blockbuster, Ant-Man and the Wasp. Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man has been consistently hilarious since the original film in 2015, and shared some fantastic on-screen chemistry with co-star, Evangeline Lilly. Expect some crazy goings on in the world of size-shifting Scott Lang, some fantastic one-liners from Michael Peña and the coolest guy in the room, Michael Douglas.
Mission Impossible – Fallout hits silver screens the world over as of July, but we’re altogether much more excited about Keanu Reeves’s sci-fi thriller Replicas. Keanu’s desperate synthetic scientist lives in a dystopian future, battling to save his families’ lives while pitted against all the classic foes: a government laboratory, a special police unit, and the laws of physics.
One final addition – ok, it’s not until autumn (14th September to be precise), but we’re too worked up about it for it not to get a mention: The Predator. Before you start rolling your eyes at the idea of some 80s rehash, consider the fact that this is to be directed by none other than Shane Black, whose groundbreaking screenplay for 1987’s Lethal Weapon broke the rules of script writing and helped to set in motion perhaps the defining film genre of the era. What else is Shane Black known for? Well, aside from a host of spectacular action-thriller writing and directing credits, he was also a script doctor for and starred in…. the original Predator. Shane, we are forever in your debt.