<div>Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
Could The Final Reckoning be the final Mission: Impossible film? The action-espionage series began back in 1996, and its star, Tom Cruise, is now 62, so it might be time for him to stop running through cities and hanging onto the side of planes in mid-air. On the other hand, maybe that subtitle is just a snappier alternative to its wordy working title, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two. The previous film in the series, Dead Reckoning Part One, was a box-office disappointment in 2023, so Cruise and his writer-director, Christopher McQuarrie, may prefer audiences to think of this one as a stand-alone blockbuster rather than the second half of an ongoing story. Either way, Ethan Hunt and his gang (played by Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg and Hayley Atwell) will be racing around the world, dodging explosions and assassins, in their attempt to foil a dastardly AI known as the Entity. (NB)
Releases May 2025
Wicked: For Good
Wicked has made over half-a-billion dollars at the box office, so there’s no doubt about the ready audience for this film. Formerly known as Wicked Part 2, its new title is taken from a duet sung by Elphaba and Glinda in the musical’s second half, which follows a time jump between the two parts. Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba is now firmly the Wicked Witch of the West and Ariana Grande’s Galinda now Glinda the Good Witch. The other familiar characters return, including Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero, the centre of a love triangle with Glinda and Elphaba, Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible, Marissa Bode as Nessarose, now Governor of Munchkinland, and Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard. Stephen Schwartz, who composed the Broadway show, has added new songs for part two, which will also include the origin stories of the Tin Man, Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion. But a gazillion impatient fans probably knew that already. For Good arrives a year after part one, and as Bowen Yang, who plays Glinda’s friend Pfanee, has said, “Everyone’s like, ‘This is the longest intermission ever.'” (CJ)
Releases 21 November 2025 in the US and UK
The Ballad of a Small Player
After Conclave, one of the best of 2024, and the Oscar-winning All Quiet on the Western Front (2022), Edward Berger has become a director whose films leap onto any list of the year’s most promising. He has put together another terrific cast for this drama, starring Colin Farrell and Tilda Swinton. Farrell plays a high-rolling gambler with debts who flees and hides out in Macau. He is also a con man, who pretends to be an aristocrat called Lord Doyle. The story, based on a 2014 novel by Lawrence Osborne, takes place in the glitzy fake opulence of Macau’s casinos, where Doyle meets a woman who might help save him. Berger told Deadline, “If Conclave is a really well-constructed chess game, very architectural, this embraces chaos and opera.” He was curious, he said, about “the external pomp and circumstances of Colin Farrell in Macau, China, thrown into the last days of capitalism, in a way”. Adding authenticity, the film was shot in Macau and Hong Kong. (CJ)
Releases in 2025
