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Hello hello, and welcome to 2025, which my five-year-old son has boldly proclaimed “the year we’ve been waiting for.” Full disclosure: He also insists that “Elf” is a documentary and that he can see his grandparents’ house from our living room window (they live on the other side of the country), so I would advise against accepting any of his other declarations as the stuff of fact, but — when it comes to the movies of 2025, at least — the little guy might have a good point.
For one thing, this will be the first year since the pandemic started that the film industry is truly firing on all cylinders (whatever that means these days), as the strikes that left theaters barren throughout the last 12 months are poised to give way to a flood of movies large and small; James Cameron and Bong Joon Ho are coming back, but so are Mary Bronstein and “The Vast of Night” director Andrew Patterson.
For another thing, 2025 is poised to be the first time in history that “Mission: Impossible” and Paul Thomas Anderson films are both released in the same calendar year, an event the Bene Gesserit have been trying to engineer for the last several millennia (rumor has it the latter might get Zaslav-ed to 2026, but I’m choosing not to believe that until I have to). And while this is so obvious it hardly bears mentioning, it’s of course a scientific fact that odd-numbered years are better for cinema than the even-numbered ones — I mean, there’s a reason why you haven’t read a million listicles about the masterpieces of 1998.
IndieWire has already published a list of our most anticipated films of 2025, but since I have literally nothing else to write about at the moment, here are eight things I’m hoping will come to pass before the next time we all put on our over-sized Planet Fitness hats. I don’t know why almost all of them wound up being about the box office and/or the evils of streaming. Maybe I’m still hung up on the actual movies of 2024. Or maybe my brain is just completely fried after solo parenting two young kids whose mom has been sick with strep throat for the last six days. Possibly both! Anyway, here’s something.
1.) Netflix Stops Trying to Replace Theaters
Straight up: This won’t happen. Netflix is waging an ideological war against film culture as we’ve known it for the last 100+ years, and while the Oscars may have forced the streamer to four-wall a handful of its more prestigious movies for a week or two (often at theaters the company owns), such concessions shouldn’t be interpreted as a shift in corporate policy. Sane people might shake their heads at Netflix’s willingness to leave so much money on the table, or at the company’s apparent disinterest in allowing its best “content” to enter the zeitgeist, but so it goes when “the marketplace of ideas” or whatever has been hopelessly broken.
What use is “the moment” to a studio that prefers to measure its success in decades? While there will be tons of completely justifiable hand-wringing when Netflix cuts off the theatrical run of the new “Knives Out” after a boffo 7-day run, there’s no box office figure on Earth that would convince Reed Hastings to cede any ground to AMC in the fight over where people watch things, which — it bears repeating — is also the fight over how closely things demand to be watched.
All that being said, my (slightly) more realistic hope for 2025 is that Netflix stops making things that people would actually want to see anywhere else. Pivot away from $320 million slopfests and triple down on reality dating shows. Let someone — or no one! — else bankroll the Russo brothers’ “The Electric State” and give me 10 more seasons of “The Ultimatum.” There are still at least a dozen countries on Earth that don’t have their own version of “Love Is Blind,” and that just isn’t ethical. Proudly crowing that 954 million Americans “watched” “The Grey Man” during its “opening weekend” or whatever only makes the whole blockbusters-at-home end-run seem more embarrassing than it already is.
Netflix should focus on making the kind of movies that play well at home. The company’s highest-profile movie of 2024 was a glitzy Cannes acquisition (“Emilia Pérez”), but its biggest hit was a literal airport thriller that was silly enough to watch with one eye, and solid enough to reward watching with two. Sure enough, one of my favorite things about “Carry-On” is that I didn’t care that I was watching it on my computer. More of that, please.
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2.) A24’s Massive Bets Pay Off
A24 is spending at least $70 million on a Josh Safdie period epic starring Timothée Chalamet as an unconventional ping-pong player who takes the sport by storm during the middle part of the 20th century. It was shot by Darius Khondji, production designed by Jack Fisk, and boasts the kind of Mad Libs-ass supporting cast that Hercule Poirot would probably kill someone himself to have: You’ve got Fran Drescher and Sandra Bernhard of course, but also Abel Ferrara, Tyler the Creator, Penn Jillette of the “Penn & Teller” Jillettes), and newly minted Fox News star “Mr. Wonderful,” who was likely paid in royalty fees that will haunt A24 for the next 40 years.
All this is on top of the money A24 is also splashing out to pay for Benny Safdie’s “The Smashing Machine,” which will break the bank for the pleasure of being described as the cheapest movie that Dwayne Johnson has ever starred in.
For so many different reasons, my hope is that both of these films turn out to be great. I’d love to see A24 continue to scale up without losing the creative energy that made the studio feel like an auteur unto itself, I’d love to get killer Safdie projects at twice the speed, and I’d really love to see Johnson be rewarded for making something — anything — that isn’t remembered for its “multiple verticals” or its “strategic wins for Amazon.” Yes, you can (and should!) go to Hungary and make “The Brutalist” for less than $10 million, but it would also be great to see the mini-majors revive some essence of the old studio system right here at home.
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