No Matter How Studios
Movie-releaseMovie-release calendars always exist in a state of flux, but that’s become doubly true in our two-years-and-counting pandemic era. No matter how studios try to time their release strategies to avoid COVID-19 surges or take advantage of relaxed restrictions, they don’t seem to come out quite right — and sometimes those mismatches don’t seem to matter, as when Spider-Man: No Way Home became the biggest blockbuster in years just as the Omicron variant was sweeping the U.S. (while virtually every other holiday release underperformed or outright bombed).
But between streamers and the still-surviving theatrical business, there will be plenty of movies to watch in 2022, no matter how they’re released into the world. Here are 50-plus titles with tentative release dates, plus another 20 or so that don’t yet have dates but will likely arrive before this time next year. You’ll notice a lot of the undated titles hail from Netflix; streaming services don’t often call their release date shots as early as those releasing in theaters. But here’s what we do know.
January
SCREAM
In theaters on Jan. 14
No, despite the title, it’s not a remake — just following the new horror titling standard where a direct sequel gets named after the first film. This is Scream 5 all the way, with Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, and David Arquette all returning, nearly a decade after Scream 4, which itself was over a decade after Scream 3. One major change, though: Director Wes Craven has since passed away (Scream 4 was his final film), and the reins have been taken by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, the guys who made the propulsive horror farce Ready or Not. Plot details, as ever, are under wraps (even the trailer doesn’t offer much; it certainly doesn’t hit at the usual meta-movie tone), but if this one doesn’t work out, you can look forward to Scream 6 in 2030.
February
JACKASS FOREVER
In theaters on Feb. 4
Those Jackass boys — so considerate! When fall COVID numbers threatened to make the prospect of luring audiences into theaters and treating them to an evening of raucous and presumably droplet-spreading laughter, Paramount moved Jackass Forever out of 2021 entirely, to what then seemed like safer pastures. Maybe it’s counterintuitive to insist on a theatrical premiere for a fourth installment of a movie series based on a half-hour cable TV show, but the stunts, pranks, and kinship of the Jackass movies really do get that extra bump from the audience experience. Given that, it’s hard not to wonder if the movie will shift again depending on the current COVID wave — or if the trailers appearing before every movie released in the past six months will be enough to make that date stick.
MOONFALL
In theaters on Feb. 4
Rolland Emmerich is back, baby, and Lionsgate’s got him! The master of disaster, director of Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012, among others, seeks to add to his semi-apocalypse canon with Moonfall, in which the moon is knocked out of orbit and sent hurtling toward the total destruction of Earth! Presumably, some heroic astronaut types will head into space and try to stop it. The requisite all-star cast is a bit less starry this time, but at least we get Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson, and Michael Peña. And really, bless Emmerich for making the types of movies that any halfway-decent parodist would cook up for him. And if you just can’t stand waiting for this installment of cheesy sci-fi disaster action, the movie’s first five minutes are online now.
THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD
In theaters on Feb. 4
Depending on how you count it, The Worst Person in the World might technically be a 2021 release; it received an unpublicized one-week awards-qualifying theatrical run, played a bunch of festivals, and will compete as Norway’s entry for the Best International Feature Academy Award. But it won’t actually hit normal release until early 2022, timed to coincide with presumed Oscar attention. Neon, its distributor, is right to be cocky: This is a terrific movie about a woman struggling to find herself through fickle and fated shifts in relationships, careers, and everything else that happens in your twenties and thirties.
DEATH ON THE NILE
In theaters on Feb. 11
The four-and-a-half-year gap between Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express and his second turn as ace detective Hercule Poirot, Death on the Nile, has been so long that plenty of people probably forgot that Murder was a decent-sized hit back in 2017. Since then, Fox has been acquired by Disney, multiple co-stars have been involved with various scandals, and a worldwide pandemic has repeatedly delayed the release of this sequel — to the point where Branagh wrote, directed, and released Belfast, a whole other movie, in the meantime. The newest trailers focus more on Gal Gadot, whose character summons Poirot to a Nile cruise, where he winds up investigating another murder, naturally. The all-star suspects include Annette Bening, Russell Brand, Letitia Wright, Armie Hammer, Sophie Okonedo, and Jennifer Saunders.
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MARRY ME
In theaters and on Peacock on Feb. 11
Jennifer Lopez just can’t quit rom-coms — or trying to merge her singing career with her movie-star work. Here she plays a global superstar whose much-publicized on-stage wedding is abruptly canceled when her partner cheats, leading her to impulsively wed an audience member, played by unassuming single dad Owen Wilson. Director Kat Coiro has experience spoofing the pop music world; she recently directed the pilot for the hilarious Peacock show Girls5Eva.
UNCHARTED
In theaters on Feb. 18
After what seems like decades of stop-start progress, with a long list of stars and directors who were attached to an adaptation of this popular video game series before dropping out, someone actually finished an Uncharted movie. That someone is Zombieland’s Ruben Fleischer, who has Tom Holland as treasure-hunting adventurer Nathan Drake and Mark Wahlberg as his wisecracking partner Sully. This is an origin story for the pair, and, along with Red Notice and The Lost City, seems like part of a larger trend to revive the Indiana Jones-style action-adventure-caper movie.
TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE
On Netflix on Feb. 18
The same-titled sequel horror trend continues apace with the latest Texas Chainsaw, which is (deep breath) either the ninth gruesome misadventure of skin-masked murderer Leatherface, the seventh Leatherface movie minus the two-movie remake series, a direct sequel to the 1974 original, or the third such direct sequel, because even that approach has been done before. It’s unclear from the trailer what this newest installment will bring to the big, gross dinner table, though Eighth Grade star Elsie Fisher signed on for this one. Evil Dead remake director Fede Alvarez is also on board — but only with producer and story credits. He hired up-and-coming filmmaker David Blue Garcia to direct.
THE DEVIL’S LIGHT
In theaters on Feb. 25
Director Daniel Stamm returns to the exorcism world after his found-footage horror movie The Last Exorcism, following a young nun (Jacqueline Byers) who feels it is her destiny to perform exorcisms and is disappointed to learn that only priests are authorized to do so. Her dream takes a frightening turn when she’s given the unexpected opportunity to prove herself. The movie sounds engineered to take advantage of coming nostalgia for late-2000s/early 2010s horror, where it seemed like every other movie was an exorcism variation.
March
THE BATMAN
In theaters March 3
Remember when eight years passed between Batman & Robin and Batman Begins? The days of waiting nearly a decade for a reboot are long gone; Robert Pattinson’s inaugural turn as the Caped Crusader arriving four and a half years after the character’s most recent appearance in Justice League actually marks the longest span of Batman-free cinemas since those post-Clooney days. Though this creepy-looking take on the Bat is already leading to multiple HBO Max spinoffs, it has nothing to do with the current DC multiverse, where Michael Keaton and Ben Affleck’s versions will meet later this year. Instead, director Matt Reeves (who made the two most recent Planet of the Apes pictures) seems to have crafted a creepier and more gnarly version than either the operatic Snyder version or the crime-movie Mann version. The movie looks at least partially inspired by The Long Halloween, and goes all-in on the rogue’s gallery, featuring the Riddler (Paul Dano), the Penguin (Colin Farrell), and Catwoman (Zoe Kravitz), among others.
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