Anticipating movies these days is a fool’s errand. Unless it’s guaranteed to be hitting a streaming platform, the release date of any film should have an asterisk appended to it. That’s not cynical, but the nature of covering this industry amidst the pandemic.
So, you could imagine how fun this list was to put together. (Spoiler: It wasn’t.) Dragging over last year’s offerings to this one seems like an easy task, but the shift opens the door for so many questions, all of which boil down to: “What are the odds?”
For many features — you know, like Ghostbusters: Afterlife, or No Time to Die, or Halloween Kills, or any film without a streaming opt-in — the release date is as certain as we are about anything right now in life. “We’ll see” is the name of the game.
Having said that, a few studios and streaming giants are hip to the ages. Case in point: Three weeks into the new year and we already have assurances by HBO Max, Netflix, and Shudder that new movies are on the way to your living rooms.
Editors’ Picks
Those offerings certainly lend some much-needed gravitas to this list, which is why we’ve split this feature into two parts. The first half sports the more reliable fare as we’ve already outlined, while the latter lists films that depend more on theatrical distribution.
Read ahead and be sure to bookmark as the year evolves. We’ll keep tabs as the dates shift, the schedules flex, and the times — to crib from Bobby D — keep a-changin’. Here’s hoping with a vaccine, we’ll all be back laughing together. Eating popcorn.
Living.
–Michael Roffman
Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief