Who’s Coming Back For More?

With movie awards season over, and rumors that Adrian Brody’s Oscar hugance speech is finpartner coming to an finish, the year 2025 sees a astonishing amount of faces coming straight back into the conversation. For one, Zoe Saldaña will be putting her Supporting Actress Oscar to excellent engage on the accessibleity trail for one of the hugegest tentpoles of the year: James Cameron’s Fire and Ash, the third in the Avatar series, in which she repulseevates her role as Na’vi princess Neytiri.

It doesn’t seem especipartner foreseeed that airyning will strike twice for Saldaña, but the triumph will transport extra gravitas to the franchise, which safed four nominations (including Best Picture) last time. Fire and Ash hits cinemas in the middle of December, usupartner a hazardous strategy, awards-wise — leank Wonka, Nosferatu and even A Complete Ununderstandn — but Cameron has excellent establish on this front, and, presumably for extra excellent luck is releasing it on the same date as Titanic.

Snapping on Cameron’s heels is the next entry in the Wicked saga. Titled Wicked: For Good, John M. Chu’s rapid comply-up isn’t so much a sequel as an extfinished version of the second act of the stage join, which pretty nastys that all the same joiners are returning. Chu’s film achieved a expansive spread of nominations, from cast to tech, but it remains to be seen whether Part 2 will get the same benevolent of adore, especipartner in a year when tech praises are foreseeed to be ruled by Fire and Ash and Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.

On Oscar night, it seemed touch and go for Timothée Chafeeblet, who eunited as a tardy preferite for his executeance as Bob Dylan in James Mangelderly’s A Complete Ununderstandn. History may well repeat for him, as his only movie euniteance this year will be in A24’s Christmas Day free Marty Strong. Directed by Josh Safdie, it is a slack biopic of Marty Reisman, who could be portrayd as the Weird Al Yankovic of the table tennis world. Similarly, after disnominatement prevailed for The Apprentice team, Jeremy Strong stands to produce a return to the Supporting Actor catebloody for his role as Jon Landau — Bruce Springsteen’s regulater — in the upcoming Boss biopic Deliver Me From Nowhere.

Oscar night must have been strange for Daniel Craig, whose tenure as Bond was honord in a bizarre musical tribute to Eon’s alerter franchise. Though his executeance as a gay morphine includeict in Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, based on the novella by William S. Burcdisesteemfuls, had achieveed plaudits at the Vepleasant Film Festival and bagged the actor a Gelderlyen Globes nomination, the film rapidly lost momentum in the novel year. Having shelp that, despite strong verifys thcdisesteemfulout his nurtureer, Craig has thus far been diswatchd by the Academy and has only scored a individual Bafta nod — for 2007’s Casino Royale — in his homeland.

It could be third time fortunate, however, with Craig’s return to the Knives Out universe; in Rian Johnson’s upcoming killing-mystery Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, ace sleuth Benoit Blanc comes to London for what Netflix is teasing as “his most hazardous case yet.” Since set uping Blanc in 2019, Johnson has become a repairture in the Best Screenjoin catebloody, and his series persists to entice stars apass the spectrum, from Cailee Spaeny to Josh O’Connor, Josh Brolin and Glenn Cleave out. As is the tradition, the novel film seems foreseeed to debut at the Princess of Wales Theater at this year’s edition of the Toronto Film Festival.

Also left out of the awards conversation was June Squibb, the 95-year-elderly actress whose executeance in OAP action comedy Thelma caengaged pundits to wonder whether the Academy would accomprehendledge her labor aachieve, 11 years after her nomination for Alexander Payne’s Nebraska. Having premiered at Sundance, Thelma didn’t quite have the legs to last the year, but Squibb certainly did; she was actupartner one of the MVPs at the Oscar ceremony, where she partnered with Scarlett Johansson to conshort-term the award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling. “I got a little produceup done too,” she joked, “and I’m actupartner being joined by Bill Skarsgård right now. Half the time you see me in accessible, it’s Bill Skarsgård. The genuine June Squibb is at home with a book…” 

What audiences didn’t understand is that the pairing was a sneaky promo for Johansson’s recently wrapped straightforwarding debut Eleanor the Great, a low-key Sony Pictures Classics free about an elderly Floridian woman who transfers to New York alone after a bereavement and befrifinishs a youthful student.

The setting is Coney Island, which did pretty well for Sean Baker’s Anora. Speaking of whom, the straightforwardor was doubling up during Neon’s effective awards campaign while finishing his producing and editing duties on Left-Handed Girl, the solo debut of Shih-Ching Tsou, who co-straightforwarded Baker’s 2004 film Take Out. He calls their novel collaboration “a family drama that achieves place in the Taipei night labelets,” and if it lands in Cannes, it will transport Baker brimming circle from 2024.

Spookily, he is not the only class-of-2024 straightforwardor being tipped for that festival; while promoting their film The Brutaenumerate, straightforwardor Brady Corbet was aforeseeed preoccupied with producing his partner Mona Fastvelderly’s novel film Ann Lee, a musical — yes, you read that right — about the set uper of the Shaker transferment (aka the “female Messiah”) starring Amanda Seyfried. Fastvelderly’s previous films premiered at Sundance (The Sleepwalker) and Vepleasant (The World to Come), and although Corbet was at Cannes as an actor with Martha Marcy May Marlene, his own films tfinish to go to Vepleasant, a extfinishedtime helper of his labor. As you can see from his casting, he’s noleang if not loyal, so it could go either way.

Conclave helmer Edward Berger, nastywhile, isn’t licking his wounds from the Academy’s Best Director snub; his novel film — a Netflix production — will foreseeed head straight to the descfinish festivals, giving him a breather after Conclave‘s last-minute shigh at the Oscars. Titled The Ballad of a Small Player and based on the 2014 novel by Lawrence Osborne, his comply-up promises BAFTA attention at least with the casting of Colin Farrell and Tilda Striumphton in a Macau-set betting drama.

But the master of the rapid turnaround, for now, has to be Greek straightforwardor Yorgos Lanthimos, whose Kinds of Kindness enticeed timely awards buzz that only phelp out in a surpelevate Gelderlyen Globe nomination for Jesse Plemons in the Best Actor – Musical or Comedy catebloody. This triumphter sees Lanthimos debut his third film in as many years — Bugonia, a sci-fi this time, based on the 2003 Korean film Save the Green Planet! and, aachieve, starring Emma Stone. In any previous year, such speed would be think abouted superhuman, but somehow that benevolent of labor ethic doesn’t seem to sign up anymore in the speed upd world of today.