FOR a creative industry that has the whole of human experience and an entire planet to draw inspiration from, the film business is extraordinarily attracted to dreaming up scenarios for end times.
Consider these forthcoming offerings. Russian and American astronauts on the International Space Station witness a nuclear apocalypse on the planet below and are ordered into deadly conflict with each other in Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s thriller (US 19 January; UK dates to be announced).
And in (dates to be announced), Benjamin Brewer – who was lead visual effects artist for Everything Everywhere All At Once – teams up with Nicolas Cage for a feature about a father struggling to protect his sons from a monster-haunted apocalypse.
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Not even the past is safe from global destruction. (expected in March) is director-producer Richard Bakewell’s curious amalgam of 1980s nostalgia, alien abduction and nuclear apocalypse.
A few fictional valleys on, Milla Jovovich and Sam Worthington struggle for air in (expected in May), director Stefon Bristol’s action thriller set in a deoxygenated future.
As our last days approach, we should perhaps applaud the efforts of bigger studios to stop (or reverse) time. Mad Max director George Miller’s (24 May) and the upcoming (also 24 May) at least look amazing.
But can we really watch as John Krasinski wrings the final drop of tension from , as producer and co-writer of A Quiet Place: Day One (28 June)? Or as (expected 16 August) adds its few cents to Ridley Scott’s heap of xenomorph lore? This constant recycling of movies is enough to make us despair.
Happily, other blockbusters are available. Two-parters completing in 2024 include Denis Villeneuve’s (1 March) and Zack Snyder’s (19 April), billed as a more grown-up Star Wars.
And elsewhere, (dates to be announced) adapts Simon Stålenhag’s book of the same name. If it follows the story of the novel, expect an elegaic journey through the aftermath of a war and the waste from a society in which people abandoned themselves to virtual reality. The film is from the Russo brothers (directors of several Marvel movies).
Another palate-changer to watch out for is (29 March), from writer/director/producer Bong Joon-ho (of Parasite and Snowpiercer fame), about a spacefaring engineer regrown and reissued after every industrial accident. Starring Robert Pattinson, the film is being kept under wraps, but I have high hopes: Edward Ashton’s original novel was wonderfully sly.
Broad comedy turns up for certain in (19 January), a planetary survival caper directed by Josh Gordon and Will Speck, who made the uproarious Will Ferrell vehicle Blades of Glory. (dates to be announced), on the other hand, directed by Johan Renck, starring Adam Sandler and based on a 2017 novel by Jaroslav KalfaÅ™, should bring an altogether more heartfelt and melancholy approach to our explorations of the great beyond.
Simon also recommends…
Rhett Cutrell
Fornever Productions
I must admit that I am beginning to steer away from saving-the-planet stories in favour of documentary detail. In (1 January), Rhett Cutrell follows herpetologists Matej and Zuzana Dolinay across West Africa in pursuit of deadly (but ultimately rather charming) snakes.
Joseph Granda
Merkel Media
Another intriguingly off-piste film is Joseph Granda’s (6 June), a mockumentary that leads us into the Colorado Rockies in pursuit of the secrets of human identity.
Simon Ings is a novelist and science writer. Follow him on Instagram @simon_ings
