25 sequels to look forward to in 2020

Will Smith and Martin Lawrence are back. Director Michael Bay is not. Will the saga of detectives Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett retain its cartoonishly vulgar charm without an unhealthy overdose of Bay-hem? It’s up to the highly touted Belgian filmmaking duo of Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah to bring the ruckus for this long-in-development third installment, which arrives 17 years after the gloriously excessive “Bad Boys 2."

Margot Robbie’s adorably unhinged Harley Quinn was the one effective element of David Ayer’s horrid “Suicide Squad," so DC Films is doing the smart thing for once and giving the character her own franchise. Harley joins up with Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) and Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez) to foil an assassination plot set in motion by the nefarious Black Mask (Ewan McGregor). The Cathy Yang-directed feature looks to be as wild and colorful as its protagonist.

The creepy porcelain resident of Heelshire Mansion returns to terrorize a whole new cast of characters, though it’s unclear as to how they’ll rework the original’s premise — which, if you haven’t seen it, builds to a single-serving twist. This time out, a family moves into the big, spooky house, and their youngest son strikes up an unsettling friendship with Brahms. Though the film is a little over a month away, the studio has yet to release a trailer, which verily reeks of confidence.

With its homestead in a flaming shambles, the Abbott family is forced to contend with the sound-sensitive monsters in the outside world. Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe are back as is writer-director-but-not-actor-for-obvious-reasons John Krasinski. Judging from the trailer, it appears that the Abbotts are going to discover that most of the human survivors are every bit as vicious and dangerous as the creatures.

Including Josh Boone’s “The New Mutants” in a preview of upcoming films is a Charlie-Brown-kicking-the-football scenario: Every time you think Fox is finally going to release this movie, it pulls it off the schedule. This horror-tilting entry in the “X-Men” franchise was supposed to hit theaters two years ago, but reshoots and the sale of the studio to Disney complicated matters. Boone recently confirmed via Instagram that the theatrical cut of the film is in keeping with his original “haunted house” vision; whether these characters will find their way into the larger MCU is probably contingent on the movie’s box office performance.

Daniel Craig’s final hurrah as James Bond finds 007 searching for a kidnapped scientist who evidently possesses knowledge of global importance (i.e. the location of The Wu-Tang Clan’s “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin”). That’s all we know thus far, and it’s likely all we’ll know until the film is screened for critics. Cary Joji Fukunaga (“Beasts of No Nation," “True Detective” Season 1) feels like an inspired choice to take over the directorial reins from Sam Mendes, but it’s the involvement of Phoebe Waller-Bridge in the rewriting process that’s most intriguing. Rami Malek plays a baddie named Safin (“a nasty piece of work” per 2019’s Best Actor winner), while Lashana Lynch and Ana de Armas join the fun as, respectively, a new “00” agent and a loose-cannon CIA operative.  

The 24th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is set just after the events of “Captain America: Civil War” and finds Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff, aka Black Widow, on a side mission that finds the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent at odds with her KGB past. The extent to which this film will impact the next phase of Marvel movies feels limited, given that it’s a prequel and Romanoff is remarkably dead at the end of “Avengers: Endgame." But Kevin Feige and his cadre of collaborators have always been adroit at upending expectations —meaning this is as good a time as any to give Howard the Duck an expanded role in the MCU saga.

Seventeen years after the disappointing “Legally Blonde: Red, White & Blonde," Reese Witherspoon is taking effervescent attorney Elle Woods out of mothballs to see if she can breathe new life into this long-dormant franchise. One good sign: Witherspoon has reunited with the first film’s screenwriting duo, Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith (who also wrote the wonderful “10 Things I Hate About You”). Here’s hoping this trio can recapture the lightning-in-a-bottle chemistry that made the first movie such a thorough delight.

Little is known about this ninth entry in the “Saw” franchise save for its working title (“The Organ Donor”), its talented cast (Chris Rock, Samuel L. Jackson, Max Minghella and Marisol Nichols) and the fact that it’s not a sequel nor is it a reboot. The story is credited to Rock, who’s been a “Saw” super-fan since the first movie and was eager to take the series to a “really intense and twisted new place." Three-time “Saw” director Darren Lynn Bousman is back in the fold as are “Jigsaw” screenwriters Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger. The writers liken Rock’s impact on the franchise to what Eddie Murphy did with the buddy cop genre in “48 Hrs.," which hopefully means we’ll get a Rube Goldberg sequence set at Torchys.

The first straight-up “Fast & Furious” film since the Vin Diesel-Dwayne Johnson schism reunites most of Dominic Toretto’s team while adding John Cena, Finn Cole, Anna Sawai, Ozuna and Cardi B to the mix. The series’ wildly improbable vehicular shenanigans were starting to feel like they had a couple of movies ago, so it’s encouraging that Justin Lin, who directed the franchise’s best installment by far (“Fast Five”), is back behind the wheel.

The follow-up to DC Films’ best-reviewed movie of the post-Nolan era whisks Diana Prince off to 1984 to do battle with Cheetah (Kristen Wiig) and Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal). Thanks to the narrative magic/convenience of time travel, Chris Pine’s Steve Trevor is back. After the blunder of “Justice League," the DC Extended Universe has gotten itself back on track thanks to the bubbly and fun “Aquaman” and “Shazam!." The secret seems to be making self-contained movies, which director Patty Jenkins promises is the case with “Wonder Woman 1984."

Bernard Rose’s 1992 horror classic, based on a short story by Clive Barker, has grown only more relevant and disturbing over the last 28 years. The sequels unfortunately got away from the original’s unique setting (the housing projects of Chicago’s Cabrini Green), so it’s exciting to learn that producer and co-writer Jordan Peele has brought the series back to the old neighborhood — which has been thoroughly gentrified. How Peele and director Nia DaCosta contend with and comment on these changes could make the new “Candyman” one of the year’s most provocative entertainments. And, yes, Tony Todd is back. There’s only one Candyman.

In this year of long-awaited sequels, this follow-up to Tony Scott’s flyboy blockbuster takes the cake: It’s been 34 years since Tom Cruise donned his flight jacket as the sexy, skilled and reckless Pete “Maverick” Mitchell. This time out he’s training a group of Top Gun grads for a mission that’s a tad more thrilling than the benign “crisis situation” that closed out the first movie (fond memories of a time when the U.S.  wasn’t at war anywhere on the globe). One of his new charges (Miles Teller) is the son of his deceased former co-pilot, and he wants to know where the hell his dad’s dog tags went.

After throwing a fit over the female-driven “Ghostbusters: Answer the Call," the babies are finally getting their bottle. Granted, Paul Feig’s 2016 movie was a disappointingly uneven affair, but the loud response from a minority of fandom was so mindlessly misogynistic that it feels like capitulation to hit the reset button. But let’s keep an open mind and see how Jason Reitman bridges this film to his father’s 1984 classic. Though major plot details are still under wraps, it seems logical to conclude from the trailer that the two young heroes (Finn Wolfhard and McKenna Grace) are the grandchildren of Egon Spengler (the late Harold Ramis). Paul Rudd plays a Ghostbusters-worshipping teacher, and much of the original cast is on board to at least cameo — though it certainly wouldn’t be a surprise if Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray and Ernie Hudson team up with the kids for a cross-generational, ectoplasmic finale.

Franchise creator James DeMonaco is back for the fifth and, he claims, final 12 hours of terror. The series began as a nightmarish vision of a dystopian future where law and order is maintained by granting citizens one night a year to satiate their most vicious desires, but it’s feeling more like a docudrama with each passing day. As such, it’s hard to work up much enthusiasm for another installment, but these movies are cheap to produce and popular with their base, so have at it!

“Be excellent to each other” is a message that is direly in need right now, and it will hopefully come as a joyous, tear-jerking salve this August when William “Bill” S. Preston Esq. (Alex Winter) and Ted “Theodore” Logan (Keanu Reeves) reunite one last time to save the future. The characters’ creators, Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon, have teamed with “Galaxy Quest” director, Dean Parisot, to recapture the most non-bogus magic of the previous two movies. Awards bloggers are already predicting William Sadler will win a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for reprising his role as the Grim Reaper.

Samuel L. Jackson and Ryan Reynolds will squabble and shoot bad guys anew in this follow-up to the apparently successful 2017 two-hander, “The Hitman’s Bodyguard." The twist this time out involves Reynolds’ efforts to protect not  just the hitman (Jackson) but also his wife (Salma Hayek). How positively nutty.

This is the seventh overall entry in “The Conjuring” universe, and the third film to be built around the demonology exploits of Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga). James Wan has ceded the director’s chair to Michael Chaves (“The Curse of La Llorona”), which is a little disappointing because the premise of this film centers on the most fascinating real-life instance of alleged paranormal activity, the “Devil Made Me Do It” case, investigated by the Warrens.

Garb yourself in your nattiest suit, and get ready for the third film in Matthew Vaughn’s adaptation of the graphic novels by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons. This prequel installment is set in the early 1900s and concerns the creation of the organization by the Duke of Oxford (Ralph Fiennes) and a youngster named Conrad (Harris Dickinson, who was excellent in “Beach Rats). Beyond that, all that is known is that it will be profane, gory and probably not feature selections from Lynyrd Skynyrd’s back catalog. 

David Chase once again delves into the New Jersey underworld with this prequel to “The Sopranos," the title of which translates in part to “The Moltisantis of Newark." Alessandro Nivola stars as Dickie Moltisanti, the father of Michael Imperioli’s Christopher, while Jon Bernthal and Vera Farmiga will co-star Giovanni and Livia Soprano. In keeping with the familial theme of the show and this film, James Gandolfini’s son, Michael, will play the young version of the role that made his father an acting icon. We can’t wait.

One of the most welcome pop cultural developments of the last two years is that whodunits are the rage all of a sudden, so bring on Kenneth Branagh’s second go-round at Agatha Christie! The filmmaker will once again star as Christie’s hyperperceptive sleuth, Hercule Poirot, and he’ll be joined by an all-star cast taht includes Gal Gadot, Annette Bening, Armie Hammer, Letitia Wright, Russell Brand and Jennifer Saunders.

Blumhouse has already announced the sequel to this follow-up to the 2018 direct sequel to John Carpenter’s 1978 “Halloween” (which was also titled “Halloween”), so don’t expect a great deal of closure from this movie. If it follows the trilogy model of “Star Wars," Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode will end up embedded in carbonite by the end. If it takes “The Matrix” route, it’ll be the “Halloween 5” of “Halloween” retcons. Confused yet? At least we can trust director David Gordon Green and co-writer Danny McBride to guide us to a smooth landing. Probably.

Alas, this is not a continuation of Brian De Palma’s Atlantic City saga, but it's the third entry in the big-screen “G.I. Joe” saga. On the plus side, Snake Eyes has always been the most dynamic character in this universe, and director Robert Schwentke was churning out decent studio products until he hit the creative skids in the mid 2010s with “R.I.P.D.” and a couple of “Divergent Series” movies. Let’s hope comic book writer Larry Hama, who understands this assassin character better than anyone, was consulted prior to shooting.

Legendary Pictures’ “MonsterVerse” series hit the commercial wall hard with 2019’s “Godzilla: King of the Monsters," which doesn’t bode well for the production value on this heavily hyped clash of the unusually large animals. Fortunately, director Adam Wingard is adept at making the most out of small budgets, so even if he got squeezed on the budget he could easily give this film the look of a $200 million picture. And that’s all fans want: a movie scaled to its combatants’ absurd size.

Eddie Murphy had bigger box office hits, but the big-hearted “Coming to America” has emerged over the years as his most enduring and beloved film. So it makes sense that the superstar would want to dial down the profanity to a PG-13 level so that audiences of (mostly) all ages can enjoy the multi-character mayhem. And realism be damned: We’re assuming the barbershop gang will be back because what’s the point in revisiting this world without them? We’ll just assume they lied about their ages, like Joe Louis.