50 Most Anticipated Movies Of 2022
18. Aquaman & The Lost Kingdom
Assuming it isn't pushed into 2023 due to competition from Avatar 2, the Aquaman sequel is sure to be one of the year's big box office hits.
James Wan's original wasn't great, but it was a massive commercial success and warmly embraced by many who found it a refreshingly light-hearted, goofy entry into the DCEU.
Little concrete is known about the story so far, but basically every surviving character from the first film will be returning, for what's sure to be another splashy, bombastic superhero movie led by an endlessly charismatic Jason Momoa.
Hopefully Yahya Abdul-Mateen II gets more to do this time as returning antagonist Black Manta, though.
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom releases on December 16.
17. Blonde
Blonde is one of the year's most fascinating question marks - the passion project of acclaimed director Andrew Dominik (Killing Them Softly), albeit one which has had an "interesting" post-production journey.
Blonde stars Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe, and while de Armas is far from a conventional choice to play the iconic actress, she spent close to a year going through dialect coaching to make her voice more closely resemble Monroe.
But the real story here is that Netflix was reportedly surprised by the cut Dominik turned in, which far from the awards player they were expecting was actually a gritty, sexually graphic drama that could end up with an NC-17 rating.
Though the streamer was reportedly trying to convince Dominik to re-cut the film, the filmmaker apparently won out and Blonde will be released in his original intended form.
Joyce Carol Oates, the author of the novel on which the film is based, screened a rough cut of Blonde and called it "startling, brilliant, and very disturbing." This sounds like the anti-Oscar-baiting biopic, then, and that's most likely a good thing.
Blonde releases on Netflix later this year.