From Oscar chances to blockbusters: The movies still to come in 2024 we’re excited about

With less than three months of the year to go, we’re nearing the tail end.

Everyone is starting to feel the drag of the final stretch but instead of feeling the stress of the holidays and all the obligations that come with it, why not take yourself off to the cinema?

We’re heading into awards season and even if that’s not your bag, there are also still huge blockbusters to come.

Here’s what we’re excited about for the rest of this year.

SATURDAY NIGHT (October 31)

Saturday Night Live turned 50 this year so its very first show must feel like ancient history. But when you look at the list of who has been involved, it speaks to the brand’s enduring power and influence, and, now in retrospect, that it was definitely onto something.

Jason Reitman directed this dramatisation of that fateful first taping with a cast of today’s hot stars portraying the likes of Lorne Michaels, Gilda Radner, Chevy Chase, Jane Curtain, Andy Kaufman, John Belushi and George Carlin.

A DIFFERENT MAN (October 24)

Billed as a dark psychological comedy, A Different Man is the story of Edward (Adam Pearson), an aspiring actor who has neurofibromatosis who becomes infatuated with his new neighbour, Ingrid (Renate Reinsve from The World Person in the World).

He takes radical action by undergoing transformative surgery and emerges looking like a movie star (Sebastian Stan). But it’s bittersweet as Edward comes to regret his “upgrade”.

GLADIATOR II (November 14)

Swords, sandals and bloody, bloody revenge is on the cards for Ridley Scott’s follow-up to his 2000 epic, Gladiator. In the sequel, Lucilla and Maximus’s son Lucius is now an adult with a family of his own. Or, he had a family until the conquering Roman army invades and pillages his town.

At this point, it’s a family legacy to swear vengeance against those responsible, as Lucius returns to Rome, fuelled by rage, and becomes a weapon in the arsenal of a former slave (Denzel Washington) who has designs on the throne.

WICKED PART ONE (November 21)

The Broadway and West End stage production has captured the hearts of musical theatre lovers for 20 years with its revisionist story (adapted from Gregory Maguire’s book) of The Wicked Witch of the West.

She was once Elphaba, a student with a strong sense of social justice in a land sliding into fascism before she was cast as one of fiction’s greatest villains. This first part of Wicked stars Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, Ariana Grande as Glinda the Good Witch and Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero.

HERETIC (November 21)

Hugh Grant is really leaning into his villain era so it was only a matter of time before he goes full-tilt murderer. This time, there’s no delicious roguish charm, as we saw in Paddington 2 or Dungeons & Dragons. In Heretic, he is just pitch-black bad.

He plays a man who allows two Mormon missionaries into his home, only to trap the unsuspecting women in his lair of horror. The film comes from Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who co-wrote A Quiet Place.

MOANA 2 (November 28)

How far will she go? Very far! Moana returns in an all-new adventure that was originally made to be a streaming series before Disney realised they had a big-screen story on their hands.

The film is set three years after the first one, which remains one of the most streamed titles on Disney+, and involves Moana reuniting with Maui to break a curse that keeps seafaring peoples apart. Auli’i Cravalho and Dwayne Johnson return in their voice roles while Kiwi comic and actor Rose Matafeo joins the cast.

MUFASA (December 19)

If you’re sceptical about a CGI prequel to The Lion King, you’re well within your rights. Many of Disney’s “live-action” remakes have been cynical duds designed to cash in on nostalgia and familiarity.

But here’s why Mufasa might be its own thing – it’s directed by Barry Jenkins, the esteemed filmmaker and Oscar winner behind Moonlight If Beale Street Could Talk and the under-watched but excellent miniseries The Underground Railroad. If anyone is going to do justice to the origin story of Mufasa and how he and Scar fell out in their youth, it’s Jenkins. Oh, and Lin-Manuel Miranda is on songwriting duties. Yes, please.

ANORA (December 26)

The winner of the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the first American flick since 2011, Anora is the latest film from indie filmmaker Sean Baker, who shot an entire film, Tangerine, on an iPhone and won hearts with The Florida Project.

Anora stars Mikey Madison (a favourite of the youth) as an exotic dancer who is fixed up with the son of a Russian oligarch because she knows the language. The reactions out of Cannes were raves, which is what you expect from Baker, a filmmaker with great compassion for marginalised characters and spaces.

A REAL PAIN (December 26)

Hot off his scorching run on the last season of Succession, Kieran Culkin joins Jesse Eisenberg in A Real Pain, which Eisenberg also wrote and directed. They play two cousins who join a Holocaust tour group through Poland after the death of their grandmother.

It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and was immediately hailed for its blend of comedy and pathos and for the odd couple dynamics of Culkin and Eisenberg.

THE ROOM NEXT DOOR (December 26)

The first English-language feature film from Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar, The Room Next Door won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival where it premiered.

The film stars Tilda Swinton as Martha, a renowned war journalist who has cervical cancer. Her news of her diagnosis reaches Ingrid (Julianne Moore), a former friend. Though the two had drifted apart, Martha’s challenges bond them together as the dying woman asks of Ingrid to help her with euthanasia.

PADDINGTON IN PERU (January 1)

OK, so maybe it’s cheating because obviously January 1 is next year but that week of Christmas and New Year’s basically morphs into one. There are high expectations for this third film in the Paddington franchise especially given number two was pure perfection.

In this chapter, Paddington and the Browns return to his homeland of Peru to search for his aunt Lucy. Olivia Colman and Antonio Banderas join the cast.

NOSFERATU (January 1)

If someone is going to remake Nosferatu, F.W. Murnau’s seminal 1922 German expressionist horror derived from Dracula, it would have to be Robert Eggers.

The American filmmaker is an auteur himself, having already mightily impressed with his visceral and provocative films The Witch and The Lighthouse, experiences that leave you feeling sick and enthralled. Expect this to be equally F-ed up. It stars Bill Skarsgard, Nicholas Hoult and Willem Dafoe.