In the movieverse, 2015 has long been proclaimed as the "Biggest Ever Year for Cinema", a factoid that inspired drooling and price-hiking among shareholders for some five years (an aeon in Hollywood time). Some of the proposed big-hitters – notably the Avatar sequel – have moved on into less crowded calendar years. Other eagerly awaited projects – Star Wars Episode VII, the Superman-Batman crossover, James Bond 24 – will feature in the summer and winter schedules.
There will be sequels: Kung Fu Panda 3, Pirates of the Caribbean 5, Independence Day 2, and the final instalment of Hunger Games will all hit cinemas later this year.
Still, film-goers won't have too long to wait for so-called tent-pole releases. This spring, sit tight for Avengers: Age of Ultron (out April 24th). Having wisely noted the main attraction, Disney and Marvel executives have clearly decided to give the people more of what they want: if the Robert Downey Jr-heavy trailer is anything to go by, the same film night easily be called Iron Man 4. Or Iron Man and friends.
The Fast and Furious sequence already boasts a huge following among chrome-lovin' Irish peeps. Expect Fast and Furious 7 (April 15th) - the last film starring the late Paul Walker, who died in car crash in November 2013 - to roar into cinemas with more pep than usual.
There's a lot less technology involved in Aardman Studios' stop-motion animation Shaun the Sheep movie. The loveable woolly hero, a supporting character in Wallace and Gromitt's A Close Shave (1995) became a TV star in his own right as long ago as 2007. He finally leaps into cinemas, in search of his missing farmer, on February 6th.
Beyond the big name franchises, there are less expensive comedy sequels on the way. Kevin James will reprise his much-loved bumbling security guard in Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 (April 17th). Less discerning viewers can savour the omni-ogling men-children of Hot Tub Time Machine 2 (April 10th).
The conventional wisdom that has governed Hollywood since the late 1970s is to aim for men-children. But unexpected and successive triumphs for Frozen, The Hunger Games sequence, Lucy and Maleficent at box-office, has inspired a massive rethink at the studios. Sadly, these discussions have not prevented the filmed adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey (February 14th) from slithering toward a theatre near you. Sam Taylor's version of E L James' blockbuster novel, in which the world's shoddiest journalist meets the world's most boring, middle-class industrialist, stars Northern Irishman Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson, daughter of Melanie Griffith, who featured in the equally dodgy Night Moves (1975) at much the same age.
Readers of this fine organ are more likely to be excited about this season's other big literary adaptation. Suite Française is based on Irène Némirovsky's posthumously published 2004 novel of the same name. Saul Dibb (The Duchess, BBC's The Line of Beauty) directs heavyweight thespians Michelle Williams and Matthias Schoenaerts romance between a French villager and a German soldier during the early yars of the second world war (out March 13th).
If you've ever wondered how the pumpkin carriage in Disney's Cinderella would look like in real life – are you Katie Price, perchance? – then wonder no more. The live action remake of the original animation hits our screens on March 27th. If that news isn't baffling enough, the same project is people by, well, the best people. Kenneth Branagh directs Cate Blanchett (as the wicked stepmother), Helena Bonham-Carter (as the Fairy Godmother), Derek Jacobi (as the King) and Downton Abbey's Lily James (as Cinderella). Seeing that shimmering blue dress on a real life human being is wholly discombobulating. But one can't help but simultaneously think: 'Ooh. Shiny.'
We know what you're thinking. Whither the little guy? Keep an eye out for It Follows (February 27th), the most original American horror film since The Blair Witch Project, but without the wobbly cameras. The film has already swept the festival circuit, taking bows at Cannes, London and Karlovy Vary.
Domhnall Gleeson
is a hotshot coder who meets a stunning female
AI
(Alicia Vikander) in the hotly-tipped, new sci-fi Ex Machina (January 23rd). It’s Vikander’s year: the Swedish actress will also star in the big screen adaptation of
The Man from UNCLE
and prison drama,
Son of a Gun
(out January 30th), opposite Ewan McGregor. Hurry to your local multiplex and you can currently catch her playing
Vera Brittain
in the first World War drama
Testament of Youth.
Tara Brady
