Every year, hundreds of movies are released. Some are good, some are bad, and some are plain forgettable. Generally speaking, by the end of any year, only around 60-ish movies really matter in general discourse, and even the majority of these won’t really stand out to the general public.

What’s been this year’s big films that have stood the test of the year? Barbie, Oppenheimer, Poor Things, Past Lives, The Holdovers, Killers of the Flower Moon, Anatomy of a Fall, The Zone of Interest. With the exception of Past Lives and (maybe) Anatomy of a Fall, you could have guessed the rest by December 2022, so that’s what I’m trying to do here. List the 60 most anticipated films and evaluate their chances. I’m not going down the standard anticipated route of listing the movies that could break box office records as that doesn’t really interest me; instead, I’m expecting the films that will still be standing come December 2024.

Some will fail to achieve the lofty standards set on them, but hopefully, they’ll all be worth paying attention to. We’re generally staying away from debuts or indie films as they’re much more unpredictable.

Quite a few major directors’ potential films for this year aren’t 100% likely to be released in 2024, like Spielberg’s Bullitt, so we’ve generally steered clear of those without any solid news reports around them.

Below are the films; I’ll create posts for each title detailing the movie and why they might be worth making room for on your calendar.

1. Dune: Part Two – Denis Villeneuve
2. Mickey 17 – Bong Joon-ho
3. Nosferatu – Robert Eggers
4. Furiosa – George Miller
5. Megalopolis – Francis Ford Coppola
6. Kind of Kindness – Yorgos Lanthimos
7. Blitz – Steve McQueen
8. The Way of the Wind – Terrence Malick
9. Joker: Folie a Deux – Todd Phillips
10. Gladiator 2 – Ridley Scott
11. MaXXXine – Ti West
12. Civil War – Alex Garland
13. The Bikeriders – Jeff Nichols
14. Beetlejuice 2 – Tim Burton
15. Horizon – Kevin Costner
16. Drive Away Dolls – Ethan Coen
17. Father Mother Sister Brother – Jim Jarmusch
18. Bird – Andrea Arnold
19. The Perfumed Hill – Abderrahmane Sissako
20. The End – Joshua Oppenheimer
21. Hard Truths – Mike Leigh
22. The Shrouds – David Cronenberg
23. Anora – Sean Baker
24. Juror #2 – Clint Eastwood
25. Hope – Na Hong-jin
26. Maria – Pablo Larrain
27. We Shall Be All – Jia Zhangke
28. The Empire – Bruno Dumont
29. Here – Robert Zemeckis
30. Rebel Ridge – Jeremy Saulnier
31. The Actor – Duke Johnson
32. Oh Canada – Paul Schrader
33. Presence – Steven Soderbergh
34. The Apprentice – Ali Abassi
35. Challengers – Luca Guadagnino
36. Queer – Luca Guadagnino
37. In the Hands of Dante – Julian Schanbel
38. Emilia Perez – Jacques Audiard
39. Trey Edward Shults’ Untitled A24 Film
40. Materialists – Celine Song
41. Twisters – Lee Isaac Chung
42. The Governess – Joe Talbot
43. Mother Mary – David Lowery
44. Partenhope – Paolo Sorrentino
45. C’est Pas Moi – Leos Carax
46. Love Lies Bleeding – Rose Glass
47. Eden – Ron Howard
48. Untitled Jordan Peele Film
49. Polaris – Lynne Ramsay
50. We Live in Time – John Crowley
51. A Quiet Place: Day One – Michael Sarnoski
52. The Fall Guy – David Leitch
53. Havoc – Gareth Evans
54. The Gorge – Scott Derrickson
55. IF – John Krasinski
56. Mufasa: The Lion King – Barry Jenkins
57. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes – Wes Ball
58. Mother’s Instinct – Benoit Delhomme
59. Nightbitch – Marielle Heller
60. Wizards – David Michod
61. In The Blink Of An Eye – Andrew Stanton
62. Humane – Caitlin Cronenberg
63. Longlegs – Osgood Perkins
64. Y2K – Kyle Mooney
65. Hors de Temps – Olivier Assayas

There are many filmmakers who might have been able to make a film made by the end of the year which could/should appear on this list (For 2024, I’d anticipate Paul Thomas Anderson, Richard Linklater, Pawel Pawlikowski, etc could get one made by December) but at the moment there isn’t much concrete reasoning behind this. Although hopefully they manage to pull it off.