50 films to look for­ward to in 2017 – part 2

It’s time to get your diary out and start not­ing down some of the cin­e­mat­ic delights head­ing our way over the next 12 months. When you’ve scrib­bled down all your must-sees, check back over the first part of our 2017 preview.

Eta 31 March

Based entire­ly in an aban­doned ware­house with a shoot-out occur­ring between two rival Boston gangs, Ben Wheatley’s lat­est has all the mak­ings of an hon­est-to-good­ness genre clas­sic. Brie Lar­son and Cil­lian Mur­phy star along­side Sam Riley, Armie Ham­mer and Wheat­ley reg­u­lar Michael Smiley.

Eta 15 December

Pick­ing up exact­ly where The Force Awak­ens left off – with a recre­ation of that film’s final scene and the prop­er funer­al for a fall­en hero – Episode VIII sees Rey (Daisy Rid­ley) con­tin­ue her jour­ney along­side Finn (John Boye­ga), Poe (Oscar Isaacs) and Uncle Luke (Mark Hamill). Adam Dri­ver will also return to the dark side of the force, with Beni­cio del Toro also in vil­lain mode. There are even rumours that Yoda will make a posthu­mous appearance.

Eta unknown

Car­ol direc­tor Todd Haynes is work­ing with Bri­an Selznick to adapt the latter’s book for the screen. Set 50 years ago, Won­der­struck will fea­ture the likes of Michelle Williams and Julianne Moore and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly fol­lows a young boy in the Mid­west and a young girl in New York as they both seek the same mys­te­ri­ous connection.

Eta 13 October

Tomas Alfred­son directs Michael Fass­ben­der as Detec­tive Har­ry Hole, who inves­ti­gates the dis­ap­pear­ance of a woman after her pink scarf is found wrapped around an omi­nous-look­ing snow­man. Shot in Nor­way, this creepy sound­ing crime dra­ma will also star Rebec­ca Fer­gu­son and Chloë Sevigny.

Eta unknown

A remake of Dario Argento’s 1977 hor­ror clas­sic, this fea­tures Til­da Swin­ton, Chloë Grace Moretz and Dako­ta John­son and tells the sto­ry of a young bal­let dancer who trav­els to a pres­ti­gious dance acad­e­my in Berlin. How­ev­er, she soon realis­es that some­thing far more sin­is­ter and super­nat­ur­al is going on. A Big­ger Splash​’s Luca Guadagni­no is directing.

Eta 2 June

Gal Gadot takes cen­tre stage DC’s hot­ly-antic­i­pat­ed sum­mer block­buster, hav­ing already made her debut in the role in Bat­man v Super­man: Dawn of Jus­tice. The sto­ry tells of the tit­u­lar Ama­zon­ian princess leav­ing her par­adise island home to save mankind from war and extinc­tion, while sav­ing love inter­est Chris Pine from var­i­ous scrape along the way.

Eta ear­ly 2017

Finnish mas­ter Aki Kau­ris­mä­ki is embark­ing on the sec­ond chap­ter of his ​‘Port City Tril­o­gy’ fol­low­ing on from the very charm­ing Le Havre. As the title sug­gests, the film is informed by the ongo­ing refugee cri­sis in Europe. Fre­quent Kau­ris­mä­ki col­lab­o­ra­tor Sakari Kuos­ma­n­en is report­ed­ly play­ing the role of a pok­er play­ing restau­ra­teur and for­mer trav­el­ling sales­man. The Berlin Film Fes­ti­val is the des­ti­na­tion for this one.

Eta unknown

This social satire, writ­ten and direct­ed by Alexan­der Payne, was put on hold so he could focus on The Descen­dants and then Nebras­ka. It fol­lows the sto­ry of a guy who realis­es his life would be much bet­ter if he were to shrink him­self. If that’s not intrigu­ing enough in itself, the film was shot in Nebras­ka, Cana­da and Nor­way. Kris­ten Wiig, Alec Bald­win and Christoph Waltz are set to star along­side Matt Damon.

Eta 27 January

Dan­ny Boyle is onboard along with the orig­i­nal cast, and if the trail­er is any­thing to go by, anoth­er great sound­track. Although Irvine Welsh wrote a sequel to ​‘Trainspot­ting’, titled ​‘Porno’, this adap­ta­tion is said to be an orig­i­nal sto­ry. It will be inter­est­ing to see how the char­ac­ters have man­aged to sur­vive through the vast cul­tur­al and tech­no­log­i­cal changes that have occurred in the past 20 years.

Eta 20 October 

The Shal­lows direc­tor Jaume Col­let-Ser­ra returns to more famil­iar ter­rain with this urban action thriller. Star­ring Liam Nee­son (of course), Vera Farmi­ga and Patrick Wil­son, it fol­lows the plight of a busi­ness­man who gets caught up in a crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cy dur­ing his dai­ly com­mute home.

Eta 3 March

Kel­ly Reichardt’s stun­ning new film Cer­tain Women chron­i­cles the inter­sect­ing lives of three women in North­west Amer­i­ca. Lau­ra Dern, Michelle Williams and Kris­ten Stew­art all fea­ture as Reichardt’s female trail­blaz­ers, forg­ing their own paths through life against the dai­ly strug­gles of work and family.

Eta sum­mer 2017

Dun­can Jones sec­ond addi­tion to the ​“Mooni­verse”, which he has been work­ing on for over a decade, stars Alexan­der Skars­gård and Paul Rudd. The for­mer plays a mute bar­tender who goes in search of his miss­ing part­ner only to wind up in hot water with a Berlin gang. Report­ed­ly heav­i­ly inspired by Rid­ley Scott’s Blade Run­ner and with Clint Mansell pro­vid­ing the score, we are very, very excit­ed for this one.

Eta late 2017

Joachim Trier’s lat­est fol­lows a woman starts to fall in love and dis­cov­ers that she has pow­ers beyond the realms of human capa­bil­i­ty. There’s not much else to latch on to right now, but we’re sure there will be a lot more to this one than meets the eye.

Eta late 2017

After the suc­cess of Ex Machi­na, Alex Gar­land and Oscar Isaac return with an adap­ta­tion of the first book in Jeff VanderMeer’s ​‘South­ern Reach’ tril­o­gy. Natal­ie Port­man plays a biol­o­gist who leaves for a secret and dan­ger­ous expe­di­tion into a mys­te­ri­ous area labelled ​‘X’, where the laws of nature mys­te­ri­ous­ly don’t apply.

Eta unknown

Bale, Blanchett, Fass­ben­der, Gosling, Port­man. Wel­come to big school. Oh, and did we men­tion that Ter­ence Mal­ick is direct­ing? The long-ges­tat­ing Weight­less is said to com­prise two inter­sect­ing love tri­an­gles set against the back­drop of the Texas music scene. Pro­duc­er Ken Kao reck­ons it’s going to be ​“very edgy”. Count us in.

Eta sum­mer 2017

The win­ning sado­masochis­tic duo of Dako­ta John­son and Jamie Dor­nan are back with anoth­er heady con­coc­tion of hor­ror and thriller mixed in with all the hot romance from the pre­vi­ous film (which we kin­da loved). Shock­ing­ly enough, this sequel is slat­ed for a Valentine’s Day release.

Eta sum­mer 2017

Char­l­ize Theron joins Vin Diesel, Dwayne John­son and Michelle Rodriguez in the eighth (!) instal­ment in the mus­cu­lar auto fran­chise. We all know by now what to expect from the F&F films, and that’s no bad thing. Buck­le up and get set for more ker-azy car-based action.

Eta unknown

Often hailed as the worst film ever made, Tom­my Wiseau’s The Room is get­ting a faux behind-the-scenes look cour­tesy of James Fran­co. Broth­er Dave is on board along with Seth Rogen, Zac Efron and Bryan Cranston – the lat­ter pre­sum­ably involved on the back of Why Him? Seems a fun­ny enough premise, but we real­ly don’t know quite what to expect from this (un?)ironically titled film.

Eta unknown

Set in the mod­ern-day ship­ping indus­try, The Mod­ern Ocean explores the peo­ple who build trade routes. Sounds bor­ing, right? Well, the cast is top notch, with Keanu Reeves, Daniel Rad­cliffe, Asa But­ter­field, Tom Hol­land and Anne Hath­away all signed up. And even more excit­ing­ly, Shane Car­ruth is on writ­ing and direct­ing duties. Although cur­rent­ly list­ed as being in devel­op­ment, we’re ready to take the plunge.

Eta 29 September

Taron Egerton and Col­in Firth are back in the sequel to 2015’s Kings­man: The Secret Ser­vice. Some extra Hol­ly­wood star wattage sees Jeff Bridges, Chan­ning Tatum and Julianne Moore join in the very tongue-in-cheek British spy spoof shenani­gans. Matthew Vaughn is direct­ing again too, so all being well this won’t just be a shame­less cash-grab.

Eta unknown

Isabelle Hup­pert stars as a for­mer Euro­pean Song Con­test star who has fall­en vic­tim to the hands of time. After meet­ing and falling in love with a box­er, the pair set plans for her big come­back. We’re intrigued to see what Hup­pert and North Sea Texas direc­tor Bavo Defurne have in store for us.

Eta 20 October

Idris Elba and Kate Winslet are the star pair­ing in the lat­est film from Israeli direc­tor Hani Abu-Assad. Adapt­ed from Chris Martin’s acclaimed nov­el, it tells the sto­ry of a pair of strangers who sur­vive a moun­tain plane crash. Bad­ly injured, they are forced to trust each oth­er to make it to safety.

Eta 10 November

Our hearts were well and tru­ly warmed by Padding­ton back in 2014. Next win­ter the epony­mous bear will be back with Ben Whishaw again pro­vid­ing the voice and Paul King tak­ing the reins as direc­tor. This time Padding­ton picks up a series of odd jobs in order to buy the per­fect present for his Aunt Lucy’s 100^th birth­day, only for the gift to then be stolen. Hugh Grant, Julie Wal­ters and Hugh Bon­neville will co-star.

Eta sum­mer 2017

Based on Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist Michael Hast­ings’ 2012 book ​‘The Oper­a­tors’, which satiris­es the inside sto­ry of Afghanistan, War Machine fea­tures Brad Pitt, Til­da Swin­ton and Ben Kings­ley. Ani­mal King­dom and The Rover writer/​director David Michôd is the pri­ma­ry dri­ving force behind this one, which on paper looks like one of the year’s strongest propositions.

Eta 6 October

After Sicario and Arrival, direc­tor Denis Vil­leneuve will be hop­ing to make a big impact with this sequel, now offi­cial­ly titled Blade Run­ner 2049. Lit­tle has been revealed about the plot, but although Rid­ley Scott dropped out of direct­ing (he remains a pro­duc­er) Har­ri­son Ford is repris­ing his role as Rick Deckard. He’s joined by Jared Leto, Robin Wright and Ryan Gosling.

Which films are you most look­ing for­ward to see­ing in 2017? Let us know @LWLies