top movies 2020

Top Gun: Maverick (2020) Directed by: Joseph Kosinski
Starring: Tom Cruise, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Val Kilmer, Jay Ellis, Miles Teller, Monica Barbaro
Opening on: June 26, 2020

Great balls of fire, we’re getting a Top Gun sequel after 31 years! Not a whole lot is known about the movie, except that the filmmakers have recruited a cast of some of the most in-demand young actors in Hollywood – including Miles Teller, who will play Goose’s son – and that Val Kilmer is officially back as Iceman. And as the trailer released during Comic-Con promises, it will again feature Tom Cruise riding motorcycles, playing volleyball, and flying jets like a madman.

---

(Photo by ©Universal Pictures, (c) Orion/courtesy Everett Collection, Warner Bros. Pictures)

JULY

Free Guy (2020) Directed by: Shawn Levy
Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Taika Waititi, Jody Comer, Joe Keery, Lel Rel Howery
Opening on: July 3, 2020

Ryan Reynolds brings his sarcastic wit and boyishly good-looking everyman charm to this self-referential, special effects-driven comedy. He stars as Guy, a nondescript bank teller non-player character (NPC) in a violent, open-world video game who suddenly becomes self-aware and decides to take his destiny into his own hands. Expect a lot of ironic, self-referential humor and over-the-top action shenanigans, which, when Ryan Reynolds is involved, is essentially its own genre these days.

---

Minions: The Rise of Gru (2020) Directed by: Kyle Balda, Brad Abelson
Starring: Pierre Coffin
Opening on: July 3, 2020

We last saw the minions wreaking havoc in 1960s England before they met up with a young Gru. Perhaps their next adventure will be their first with him. Whatever shenanigans the yellow ones, voiced by Pierre Coffin, get up to, expect them to be at it again for Minions 3 and Minions 4 and so on: the first Minions movie made more than $1.5 billion globally and helped the Despicable Me franchise become the highest grossing animated franchise of all time.

---

Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2020) Directed by: Jason Reitman
Starring: Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, Paul Rudd
Opening on: July 10, 2020

Jason Reitman will direct a sequel to the original Ghostbusters franchise, unrelated to the all-female reboot directed by Paul Feig in 2016. We still don’t know much about what the story will be, but as casting news trickled in, we did learn that Finn Wolfhard and Mckenna Grace will play a brother and sister, with Carrie Coon as their single mother, and Paul Rudd is in the film in an undisclosed role. We’re still waiting on word if, as Sigourney Weaver stated in an interview, the remaining original Ghostbusters will appear in the film.

---

Tenet (2020) Directed by: Christopher Nolan
Starring: John David Washington, Elizabeth Debicki, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Robert Pattinson, Kenneth Branagh, Michael Caine, Himesh Patel
Opening on: July 17, 2020

We knew for a while that Christopher Nolan’s next film would be called Tenet, and we knew who was on board to star in it, but outside the fact that the story would have something to do with international espionage, we knew little else. We finally got the first trailer for it in mid-December, and though it’s cryptic enough that we still kind of don’t know what’s going on, we do know that John David Washington will play some sort of agent who is able to experience time both forwards and backwards, sometimes simultaneously…? We think…?

---

Jungle Cruise (2020) 
Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Édgar Ramírez, Jack Whitehall, Jesse Plemons, Paul Giamatti
Opening on: July 24, 2020

Following the path that Pirates of the Caribbean charted so successfully, this new film (franchise?) is based on the Disney theme park attraction of the same name. Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt star, respectively, as a riverboat captain and a scientist on a hunt for a magical cure in this Depression-era action adventure. Comedian Jack Whitehall also joins in the fun, playing Blunt’s character’s brother. Collet-Serra has had a string of action-thriller hits working with Liam Neeson (Commuter, Non-Stop, Unknown), so there’s a chance this one could be slightly darker than anticipated. The movie was originally slated to premiere in 2019, but was bumped in fall 2018.

---

Morbius (2020) Directed by: Daniel Espinosa
Starring: Jared Leto, Jared Harris, Adria Arjona, Matt Smith, Tyrese Gibson
Opening on: July 31, 2020

The first true test of Sony’s break with Marvel over Spider-Man and the various characters related to him will come in the form of Morbius, based on the Spidey villain who suffers from a rare blood disease and inadvertently turns himself into a vampire in a misguided attempt to cure himself. Jared Leto, who sparked a lot of online chatter with his portrayal of the Joker in 2016’s Suicide Squad, will play the title character.

---

AUGUST

Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020) 
Directed by: Dean Parisot
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, Samara Weaving, Jillian Bell, Kristen Schaal, Anthony Carrigan
Opening on: August 21, 2020

Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Ted “Theodore” Logan have all grown up, but their time-traveling adventures aren’t over yet. In this decades-later sequel, the goofy duo are visited by someone from the future who tells them they must create a song to save the world. Will the Wyld Stallyns be up to the task? Of course they will.

---

The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard (2020) Directed by: Patrick Hughes
Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L. Jackson, Salma Hayek, Richard E. Grant, Morgan Freeman, Antonio Banderas, Frank Grillo
Opening on: August 28, 2020

2017’s The Hitman’s Bodyguard didn’t exactly wow the critics, but it was a moderate hit at the box office, so why not give it another go? As indicated by the title, it’s Salma Hayek’s Sonia who now needs rescuing, so Michael (Ryan Reynolds) and Darius (Samuel L. Jackson) team up again to save her.

---

SEPTEMBER

Monster Hunter (2020) Directed by: Paul W.S. Anderson
Starring: Milla Jovovich, Meagan Good, Ron Perlman, Tony Jaa
Opening on: September 4, 2020

Based on Paul W.S. Anderson’s track record, we’re going to go ahead and guess this isn’t going to be some revelation in the video game adaptation genre. Nevertheless, being that Monster Hunter is a hugely popular property that promises huge spectacle on the big screen, this movie may just have the same appeal that something like Godzilla: King of the Monsters has.

---

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2020) Directed by: Michael Chaves
Starring: Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Ruairi O’Connor, Sarah Catherine Hook, Julian Hilliard
Opening on: September 11, 2020

Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga return to reprise their roles as real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren in this third chapter of the original Conjuring franchise, focusing on a real case they investigated in which a murder suspect invoked demonic possession as a defense for his crimes. Michael Chaves, who directed 2019’s Conjuring-adjacent spinoff The Curse of La Llorona, takes the reins as director, while James Wan remains attached to the film as a producers.

---

The King's Man (2020) Directed by: Matthew Vaughn
Starring: Harris Dickinson, Ralph Fiennes, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Gemma Arterton, Matthew Goode, Charles Dance, Daniel Brühl, Stanley Tucci, Djimon Hounsou
Opening on: September 18, 2020

While both a third installment of the Kingsman franchise and a Statesman spinoff are still on the way, audiences will first get a taste of how the whole thing came to exist in the first place with this prequel, set in the early 1900s. Ralph Fiennes leads an all-star cast in an origin story that will show how a group of ex-soldiers formed the spy agency.

---

The Many Saints of Newark (2020) Directed by: Alan Taylor
Starring: Michael Gandolfini, Vera Farmiga, Jon Bernthal, Billy Magnussen, Ray Liotta, Corey  Stoll, Alessandro Nivola
Opening on: September 25, 2020

Whether you feel that the end of The Sopranos — you know, that controversial fade to black — was fitting and poignant or anti-climactic and unsatisfying, you probably jumped at the news that a Sopranos movie was in the works. With the late James Gandolfini no longer around, however, the only way to go was a prequel, and who better to portray a young Tony Soprano than Gandolfini’s son himself, Michael? Alan Taylor directs this look back at the early years of the iconic TV mobster, with Vera Farmiga, Jon Bernthal, and Ray Liotta in supporting roles.

---

Last Night in Soho (2020) Directed by: Edgar Wright
Starring: Anya Taylor-Joy, Matt Smith, Thomasin McKenzie, Diana Rigg, Terence Stamp
Opening on: September 25, 2020

Any time Edgar Wright has a new movie coming out, it’s something to look forward to. But throw in the fact that he’s assembled a cast that includes up-and-coming young stars like Anya Taylor-Joy and Thomasin McKenzie, as well as legendary vets like Diana Rigg and Terence Stamp? And the fact that it’s a horror film inspired by both Don’t Look Now and Repulsion? Yes, please, and thank you.

---

The Trial of the Chicago 7Directed by: Aaron Sorkin
Starring: Sacha Baron Cohen, Eddie Redmayne, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Frank Langella, Mark Rylance, Jeremy Strong, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Michael Keaton
Opening on: September 25, 2020 (Limited)

Aaron Sorkin began writing the script for this historical drama back in 2007, but the project suffered several setbacks that delayed it for more than a decade. Now, with an impressive cast on board and Sorkin in the director’s chair, we’ll finally get his retelling of the controversial trial of seven men who were charged with conspiracy and inciting to riot during the anti-Vietnam War protests in the late 1960s.

---