10 Upcoming Movies With Insane Concepts

Harry's post-Hogwarts days haven't gone quite as well as he'd hoped...

Guns Akimbo Daniel Radcliffe
Madman Films

Considering a lot of the mediocrity that's churned out by Hollywood these days, it's easy to forget that nobody sets out to make a bad movie, and that somewhere along the line, every film ever produced begins life with a small group of individuals who are passionate about an idea.

That being said, it's sometimes hard to see why a movie got greenlit off the core idea alone ("Let's spend nearly $200 million on a Doctor Dolittle reboot! What could go wrong?") but elsewhere, there are some premises that sound so cool or insane on paper that it would've been foolish to not give them a go.

Looking ahead, there are a whole crop of movies that fit this bill, projects with bonkers or unique-sounding concepts that can be described in a single sentence and will immediately grab your attention, from time-twisting sci-fi actioners to some disturbing and brutal horror scenarios.

We're not saying these movies will join the ranks of some of the all-time-great concept-driven films like The Sixth Sense and Groundhog Day, but the general stories and ideas they're playing with means that they should definitely, at least, be on your radar.

10. Everything Everywhere All At Once

Guns Akimbo Daniel Radcliffe
A24

We're starting off with Everything Everywhere All At Once because it's the project that we know the least about, but it qualifies as one of our "insane concepts" for three big reasons.

Firstly is the fact that it's being billed as an "interdimensional action film", which sounds pretty wild even though it doesn't tell us anything about the plot. That description makes us picture something crazy like Doctor Strange crossed with John Wick (not a total impossibility, considering that Avengers: Endgame helmers the Russo Brothers are on producing duties here), even though the movie won't have anywhere near the budget that those two flicks did.

Secondly, it's being distributed by A24, a studio known for its unique, high-concept pictures - The Lobster, Hereditary, Midsommar, A Ghost Story, The Witch and Ex Machina, to name just a few, are among its recent efforts.

And lastly, the writers and directors of the bonkers Swiss Army Man - Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert - are writing and directing this one too. If we did this exact same list a couple of years ago, Swiss Army Man would've easily been near the top, with the idea of Daniel Radcliffe as a multi-purpose farting corpse kind of speaking for itself in the offbeat department.

Combine these factors together and it's highly likely that Everything Everywhere All At Once will be a pretty nuts movie overall, and even if it totally sucks, Kwan and Scheinert aren't known to play by the rulebook in any way, so it should be an interesting movie at worst.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.