10: Mother Mary (Dir; David Lowery)

The latest from David Lowery has felt like it’s been in the pipeline forever, with rumours that he could never quite get it to work/give A24 a cut they liked. It’s now ready and I’m (somewhat trepidatiously) very excited – after A Ghost Story and The Green Knight, Lowery still has plenty of good will to burn with me. A strange, psychological two-hander between Anne Hathaway’s pop star and Michaela Coel’s costume designer, the trailer has atmosphere in spades and this kind of stripped-back scale has always been something Lowery works wonders with.

9: Wild Horse Nine (Dir; Martin McDonagh)

A fitting spot for the new Martin McDonagh, which sees him follow up the career high of Banshees of Inisherin with another period-piece island-set dark comedy about a relationship between two difficult men. In this case, it’s 1973, off the coast of Chile, and with Sam Rockwell and John Malkovich as two CIA agents whose trust in one another is fraying. Filming across some of the most remote islands in the world, this is a real step up for McDonagh in terms of scale – as long as he’s kept his magnificent writing intact on the journey, this is a thrilling prospect.

8: Cry To Heaven (Dir; Tom Ford)

It’s been nearly 10 years since Tom Ford’s openly provocative (and, I thought, completely fantastic) Nocturnal Animals, but he’s finally making the leap back to movies by adapting Anne Rice’s historical fiction novel, set in the fascinatingly unfamiliar world of the 18th Century Italian opera scene. It’s an obviously perfect milieu for Ford’s sensibilities and he’s populated it with maybe the most headline-grabbing ensemble cast assembled for any film next year. From old collaborators like Nicholas Hoult, Colin Firth, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson to rising stars like Adolescence‘s Owen Cooper and Euphoria‘s Hunter Schafer to the cinematic acting debut of Adele, expect to hear about this one constantly come next year’s awards season.

7: Burning Rainbow Farm (Dir; Justin Kurzel)

From True History of the Kelly Gang to Nitram to The Order, stylish and queasy true crime has been Justin Kurzel’s bread and butter for the last six years and it’s a genre he has become the absolute king of. No surprise, then, that he’s returning to that well for Burning Rainbow Farm, the true story of a marijuana-farming gay couple – to be played by Sebastian Stan and Leo Woodall – who faced down the FBI on their land in a standoff that ended in fire and death back in 2001. Kurzel has truly found his niche by now and no-one does the slow build to ignominious death better than him; I’ll keep watching his lurid tragedies as long as he keeps making them.

6: The Adventures of Cliff Booth (Dir; David Fincher) / The Magician’s Nephew (Dir; Greta Gerwig)

A two-in-one for the two big Netflix heavy-hitters due out next year. First up is David Fincher’s Tarantino-scripted Once Upon A Time In Hollywood sequel that follows Brad Pitt’s Cliff Booth through a Rick Dalton-less (DiCaprio is all but confirmed to *not* return) ’70s Hollywood. It’s a collaboration of titans, though both maybe (somewhat fittingly for the subject matter) past their prime, a pitch that is simultaneously galactically exciting and also just a little bit worrying. Next comes Greta Gerwig’s Narnia reboot, poised to be one of *the* big hitters of next winter’s blockbuster crop. After Barbie, Gerwig basically has the power to write her own cheques in Hollywood – she’s basically single-handedly changing Netflix’s business model here, forcing them to give it a long cinema-exclusive run including IMAX screens – and seeing that brought to bear in a fantasy space should at least provide some of next years best spectacle.

5: Jack of Spades (Dir; Joel Coen)

The second solo effort from Joel Coen (coming on the heels of two utterly dire Ethan solo projects) is still shrouded in mystery but, after The Tragedy of Macbeth, you don’t need to tell me much to have me fully in the tank for this. What we do know: a Gothic Victorian Scotland setting, rumours of a mystery plot, starring Josh O’Connor in a big prosthetic nose. Nothing there sounds anything less than excellent and while I am still eagerly anticipating the brotherly reunion of the Coens, if Jack of Spades is anywhere near as well-acted and visually splendiferous as its Shakespearean predecessor, it will more than tide over the wait.

4: Disclosure Day (Dir; Steven Spielberg)

Spielberg goes back to aliens. What else do you need to hear? The eerie teaser trailer sets up a fantastic atmosphere (aliens hijacking human voices is an instantly potent horror) without giving us too much plot – in fact, the whole thing has been so shrouded in mystery that we only got the film’s title this week, a mere six months before it’s due out. Emily Blunt heads up a cast that includes Josh O’Connor (making a quickfire second appearance on this list), Colin Firth, Colman Domingo, and more in Spielberg’s first proper summer blockbuster in nearly a decade (and the first one to look great in double that time), taking a genre that he defined and defined himself through and imbuing it with a healthy sense of existential dread.

3: Werwulf (Dir; Robert Eggers)

After a vampire in Nosferatu, Robert Eggers takes the next logical horror monster step for his follow-up, Werwulf. Bringing back most of his Nosferatu cast (Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor Johnson, Willem Dafoe, Ralph Ineson) and his Northman co-writer Sjon, Eggers has already promised that this is the darkest thing he’s ever written, which is really, really saying something. With set photos promising mud and blood and ugly misery and a script that is apparently as true to possible to the actual language of the 13th-Century England setting, this should be Eggers unleashed, the success of Nosferatu letting him lean into all his weirdest, most potentially off-putting instincts all with some major money behind him. Out around Christmas, it could well become a new alternative festive favourite if you don’t mind your holidays a bit gore-soaked.

2: Dune Part 3 (Dir; Denis Villeneuve)

Denis Villeneuve closes out his Dune trilogy with his adaptation of the second book, Messiah, which will take Timothee Chalamet’s Paul Atreides all the way through his tragic, genocidal destiny. Shooting on film instead of digital, switching cinematographers from Greig Fraser to Linus Sandgren, and spending far more time away from Arrakis, part 3 promises to be completely tonally and visually distinct from its predecessors, a thrillingly bold way to close out a trilogy that, if it sticks this landing, will be the 2020s’ own Lord of the Rings. Villeneuve has gathered up his absurdly stacked cast for one last ride (including graduating Anya Taylor-Joy from tiny cameo to full-fledged character status) while bringing in the wildly exciting fresh blood of Robert Pattinson as a new villain, the shape-shifting assassin Scytale – expect weird voices and creepiness galore for the Chalamet-Pattinson rematch. Currently due out December 18th but almost certain to move to avoid a clash with Avengers Doomsday, I’d expect this to dominate cinemas in late October/early November.

1: The Odyssey (Dir; Christopher Nolan)

I mean, what else? The king of all blockbusters, handed a blank cheque after conquering the world with Oppenheimer, has been given his biggest budget to date and is spending $250 million on bringing The Odyssey to life, an idea so exciting that the opening weekend IMAX showings sold out a full *year* in advance. I can’t imagine anything else next year matching the scope and sweep of what Nolan’s up to here, everything filmed in IMAX from start to finish, from the Trojan Horse to the stormy seas to the return to Ithaca. With a cast list so long it would require its own entire article and promises of gods and monsters brought to life entirely practically, this would have hit number one even without the special prologue attached to Avatar screenings this past weekend, but that certainly did not hurt. Showing off Odysseus’s cunning horse-based scheme and the sack of Troy, it was one of the most exciting things I saw in a cinema all year and it was just a trailer. Is it July 17th yet?