Culture Crash: The 2020 Blockbuster Lineup

With a month or more of best-of-2019 and best-of-the-2010s lists behind us, it’s finally time to start looking ahead into 2020. This year is likely not going to match last year at the box office. 2019 was a special breed of movie year, which saw the culmination of 11 years worth of Marvel movies and the finale of the Skywalker saga, plus the rousing success of Joker and more.

Still, there is plenty to look forward too at movie theaters this year. First and foremost, I am eagerly anticipating Christopher Nolan’s new movie, Tenet, which is set for release on July 17. Tenet will be the director’s first wholly original movie not based on history that is entirely written and directed by Christopher Nolan himself since 2010’s Inception. As a result, I’m expecting the unexpected, with twists, turns and some spectacular action.

In June, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first musical, In the Heights, is scheduled to move from stage to screen with a long-anticipated adaptation. Miranda will also be directing a musical this year when he tackles the show Tick, Tick, Boom – a show from Jonathan Larson, the writer of RENT, for Netflix. And, speaking of musicals, Steven Spielberg will be brining a new adaptation of West Side Story to audiences in December.

2020 is also set to see Tom Cruise return to one of his most iconic roles in Top Gun: Maverick, while Daniel Craig will return for what seems to be his final outing in the role of James Bond in No Time to Die.

This year will also see DC try to continue its string of well-received hits that began with Wonder Woman with Birds of Prey, and John Kraskinski is writing and directing a sequel to his horror hit, A Quiet Place.

As with any year, the tentpole films are the ones we know about early, but 2020 should hopefully bring plenty of unexpected surprises along the way, too. 2019 may be impossible to live up to at the box office, but plenty of exciting options are on the horizon, and with a little luck, a few may stick with us and land on the inevitable lists that will come at the end of this new decade.

I’m Evan Rook.