2025 is shaping up to be a good year for cinema, with several big-name directors releasing exciting, original movies. As next year’s movie calendar starts to take shape, many fans are looking forward to 2025’s big franchise blockbusters, like Superman and Avatar: Fire and Ash. However, there are also a lot of original concepts which have just as much potential for certain fans, thanks to the high-profile directors attached.
Directors such as Wes Anderson, Spike Lee and Ryan Coogler are all returning in 2025 after a quiet 2024. Next year also has Bong Joon-ho’s hotly-anticipated follow-up to Parasite, and Paul Thomas Anderson is finally collaborating with Leonardo DiCaprio. Overall, next year promises an exciting mix of big franchise movies and smaller standalone projects, with many award-winning directors back in action.
10 Wes Anderson – The Phoenician Scheme
Release Date TBA
Wes Anderson had a big year in 2023, with the release of his Roald Dahl-inspired short films on Netflix and Asteroid City later that year. He has spent 2024 developing his next movie, The Phoenician Scheme, which is described as an espionage comedy-drama. No release date has been set yet, but filming wrapped back in June, so it seems likely that The Phoenician Scheme will come out in the first half of 2025.
Filming wrapped back in June, so it seems likely that
The Phoenician Scheme
will come out in the first half of 2025.
The Phoenician Scheme features a large ensemble cast which includes Wes Anderson regulars like Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman, but there are also a few new faces in the mix, like Riz Ahmed and Michael Cera. Wes Anderson’s movies all have a distinct visual aesthetic, so fans can expect more of the same from The Phoenician Scheme, even though the plot is still being kept under wraps at this stage.
9 Steven Soderbergh – Presence & Black Bag
Presence: January 25, Black Bag: March 14
Steven Soderbergh is probably most famous for his heist movies, such as Out of Sight, Logan Lucky and the Ocean’s franchise, but he’s been a prolific director in many genres for decades now. He has two movies being released in 2025, and it isn’t the first year of his career with a packed calendar. Presence is a horror movie shot from a first-person perspective starring Lucy Liu. It first premiered at Sundance in January 2024, but it’s taken a whole year for the movie to get a theatrical release date.
Shortly after the release of Presence, Soderbergh’s next movie, Black Bag, will be hitting theaters. Black Bag stars Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender in an espionage plot, with a supporting cast that includes Pierce Brosnan and Regé-Jean Page. While Soderbergh will certainly be fielding questions about the potential Ocean‘s 14, fans have plenty to look forward to in 2025 without thinking about his most popular franchise.
8 Ryan Coogler – Sinners
March 7
Since bursting onto the scene with 2013’s Fruitvale Station, Ryan Coogler has developed a strong working relationship with Michael B. Jordan. He directed the first Creed movie and Jordan’s scene-stealing performance in Black Panther. He directed the first Black Panther sequel, and he has continued working on the Creed franchise as a producer, but Sinners is based on an original idea.
The cast of Sinners features Michael B. Jordan playing two identical twins. The trailer doesn’t reveal too much about the plot, but Sinners has been described as a vampire movie that takes inspiration from Southern folklore, and its period setting is another interesting detail. Coogler hasn’t made a horror movie yet, but Sinners already looks like an exciting prospect thanks to Jordan’s dual role and the tense atmostphere of the trailer.
7 The Russo Brothers – The Electric State
March 14
Anthony and Joseph Russo are most famous for their work in the MCU, including the last two Avengers movies. Since Endgame, they have continued producing and directing movies, most notably The Gray Man, which quickly became one of Netflix’s most popular movies of all time. They have reunited with the streaming platform for their next movie, The Electric State, which is based on Simon Stålenhag’s 2018 graphic novel. Filming began in 2022, so fans of the graphic novel have faced a long wait for the adaptation.
The Electric State is coming to Netflix in March, and the trailer promises a visual sci-fi spectacle that imagines an alternate version of America in the 1990s. Millie Bobby Brown plays a woman who follows a robot in the hope of finding her long-lost brother, but the pain of the robot uprising still scars the landscape. The cast of The Electric State also includes Chris Pratt, Ke Huy Quan and Stanley Tucci, while there are many more big names who will be providing voices for the robot characters.
6 Ethan Coen – Honey Don’t!
Release Date TBA
Ethan Coen’s solo directorial debut Drive-Away Dolls is one of 2024’s underrated gems. It isn’t as tight or as impactful as many of the best Coen brothers movies, but it offers a good time and plenty of laughs. The Coens are set to reunite for an upcoming horror movie, but Ethan is still continuing his plans to create a ” lesbian B-movie trilogy”. The second movie in this trilogy is titled Honey Don’t!
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Honey Don’t! wrapped filming back in May, but no release date has been set yet. Still, there are a few details which have been revealed. Drive-Away Dolls star Margaret Qualley plays a private investigator, with Chris Evans, Aubrey Plaza and Charlie Day also confirmed to star. The title is a reference to the Carl Perkins song which was famously covered by The Beatles, but it’s unclear how this will factor into the story.
5 Bong Joon-ho – Mickey 17
April 18
After Bong Joon-ho won the Oscar for Best Director for 2019’s Parasite, he had a global audience waiting to watch whatever came next, but it has taken a long time for another movie to materialize. Mickey 17 started filming in 2022, but its release was repeatedly pushed back, and there were even some rumors that it could be scrapped altogether. Mickey 17 has finally got a release date, and a trailer has been released too.
Mickey 17 is one of the most exciting original movies that 2025 has in store, thanks to Bong Joon-ho’s pedigree and Robert Pattinson’s intriguing role as a man who is copied and reborn when he dies. The cast of Mickey 17 also features Mark Ruffalo, Steven Yeun and Toni Collette, and the trailer promises a hilarious ensemble comedy. The sci-fi black comedy is based on Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel Mickey7.
4 Paul Thomas Anderson – The Battle Of Baktan Cross
August 8
There have been rumors about Paul Thomas Anderson and Leonardo DiCaprio working together for many years, and 2025 will finally deliver the fruits of their highly-anticipated collaboration. Not much is known about The Battle of Baktan Cross, which was previously referred to as One Battle After Another, but it’s a crime thriller with a big budget and a cast that includes Regina Hall, Sean Penn and Alana Haim.
It’s been rumored that
The Battle of Baktan Cross
could be a loose adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel
Vineland.
It’s been rumored that The Battle of Baktan Cross could be a loose adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, a strange crime drama that takes place in the aftermath of Ronald Reagan’s re-election. Anderson previously directed Inherent Vice, which remains the only movie adaptation of the enigmatic author’s work, so it wouldn’t be a huge surprise for him to use another Pynchon novel for inspiration.
3 Yorgos Lanthimos – Bugonia
November 7
After Poor Things in 2023 and Kinds of Kindness in 2024, Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone are set to team up once again in 2025 for Bugonia. Stone plays Michelle, the CEO of a big pharmaceutical company who gets kidnapped by an unhinged conspiracy theorist who believes she’s an alien intent on destroying the planet. Jesse Plemons plays the conspiracy theorist, while Alicia Silverstone plays his mother.
It’s an English-language remake of Jang Joon-hwan’s 2003 sci-fi comedy
Save the Green Planet!
Although Bugonia‘s release date is still a long way off, some story details can be gleaned from the fact that it’s an English-language remake of Jang Joon-hwan’s 2003 sci-fi comedy Save the Green Planet! Emma Stone’s character is a man in the South Korean original movie, so it’s likely that Lanthimos has a few more idiosyncratic surprises in store, but it could be a long time until more story details and a trailer are released.
2 Edgar Wright – The Running Man
November 21
The Running Man doesn’t often get discussed alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger’s best movies, but there’s no denying the ludicrous fun that it provides. The dystopian sci-fi actioner is based on a Stephen King novel. Edgar Wright has promised that his remake will be far more faithful to the source material, since The Running Man focuses more on Schwarzenegger’s strengths than King’s writing.
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Glen Powell is set to star as Ben Richards in Wright’s adaptation, with William H. Macy, Josh Brolin and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World star Michael Cera, who is finally teaming up with Wright once again. Powell’s take on the character will obviously be much different to Schwarzenegger’s, since no actor can do exactly what Arnie does. Powell has had a few roles in action movies in recent years, but he isn’t in the Schwarzenegger mold.
1 Spike Lee – Highest 2 Lowest
Release Date TBA
Spike Lee and Denzel Washington always seem to get the best out of one another, and their new movie could be their most ambitious collaboration yet. Although a release date hasn’t been set, Highest 2 Lowest already has a lot of buzz around it due to the fact that it’s a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 crime classic High and Low. Few directors are bold enough to remake Kurosawa’s movies, but the change in the title suggests that Lee will be putting a unique spin on High and Low.
Highest 2 Lowest
already has a lot of buzz around it due to the fact that it’s a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 crime classic
High and Low.
Highest 2 Lowest seems like the latest movie in Apple TV+’s trend of giving prestigious directors a big budget to work on passion projects, like Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon and Ridley Scott’s Napoleon. Hopefully, the results will be better than Spike Lee’s last English-language remake of a foreign classic, Oldboy, which endured a barrage of poor reviews.