10 Things to keep an eye out for in 2025
By Brian Bowe
If you read the film industry broadsheets in the last year, you would’ve no doubt come across the term “survive till ‘25.” It was a phrase that the film/TV sector adopted to reassure nervy investors and industry heads that the New Year would bring with it a more stable market landscape. It’s understandable, of course, considering that in 2024 production companies and cinemas were still visibly reeling from market pressures: the lasting effect of the pandemic, and the Hollywood actors and writers strike which was only resolved back in November of 2023.
So here we are! We’ve arrived at the promised land that is 2025. And with January gone and one foot firmly planted in the New Year, now seems like a good time to take a temperature check of what we can expect on our screens in the coming months. It’s a packed slate when compared to last year’s output, that’s for sure. We have exciting new voices entering the fray, and returning champs ready to hit it out of the park once more.
To make things a little different, I’ve split this list up into two halves: Irish interest and more general/mainstream-leaning entertainment.
The Brutalist
Brady Corbet’s third directorial feature is a near four-hour, heady, complicated and confounding epic about art and artists. It’s also, you may be surprised to learn, one of the favourites going into the Oscars. The awards season thus far has been hard to predict — who would’ve thought The Substance and Anora would be even in the conversation — but I think this film’s best chance of picking up anything rests with its star, Adrien Brody, who, as is his wont, goes all in! January 24th
The Bride
2025 is ALIVE!! with not just one Frankenstein movie, but two! Like Guillermo del Toro, whose Franksentein has yet to be given a release date, Maggie Gyllenhaal has been rummaging around the classic Universal Monster archives looking for ideas. Her take, The Bride, reimagines The Bride of Frankenstein in 1930s Chicago with none other than Kerry’s Jessie Buckley in the leading role. September 26th
The Bride, Ireland’s Jessie Buckley
Eddington
Modern horror auteur Ari Aster teams back up with Joaquin Phoenix, this time bringing Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone and Austin Butler along for the ride in a pandemic-set New Mexico western. Aster’s last film, Beau is Afraid, was a major creative swing which partially landed (its opening 30 mins is maybe the most I’ve laughed in the cinema in the last ten years), but it will be very interesting to see if he pulls any punches this time around. TBA
Bugonia
More Emma Stone can be found in Irish production company Element Pictures and Yorgos Lanthimos’ newest collaboration: an English-language remake of the 2003 South Korean cult horror-comedy Save the Green Planet! Also starring Jesse Plemons and Alicia Silverstone, the film follows two conspiracy-obsessed young men who kidnap the high-powered CEO of a major company, convinced that she is an alien intent on destroying planet Earth. November 7th
The Battle of Baktan Cross
The jury is still out as to whether Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest may or may not be an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland; but, hey, it’s a new PTA film, that will do us fine and dandy. Plus, its Leonardo Dicaprio-led cast — comprising Benicio del Toro, Sean Penn, Regina Hall and Alana Haim — is nothing to sniff at. August 8th
(Credit Belfast Telegraph)
Fréwaka
Irish Writer-director Aislinn Clarke’s follow-up to The Devil’s Doorway (2018) premiered at BFI London Film Festival in October. It follows Shoo, a caregiver who bonds with an agoraphobic woman haunted by Na Sídhe — spooky sprites who she believes abducted her decades before. Fréwaka is perhaps most notable for being the first feature-length Irish-language horror. Ar fheabhas! March 28th
Bring Them Down.
This new Irish thriller starring Barry Keoghan and Christopher Abbott promises to be a tense nail-biter. It’s the debut feature of writer-director Christopher Andrews, the story of two feuding families in rural Ireland. Starring alongside our leads are Colm Meaney, Nora-Jane Noone (Wildfire), and Paul Ready (Motherland). February 7th
Blue Road – The Edna O’Brien Story
Irish documentarian Sinéad O’Shea returns after the success of her 2022 film, Pray for Our Sinners, with a portrait of one of the world’s greatest and most charismatic writers, Irish author Edna O’Brien. The documentary reconstructs the late author’s life and writings from letters, diaries and novels read by actress, and star of the upcoming The Bride, Jessie Buckley. January 31st
of The Surfer, which got a
standing ovation at its preiership
at Cannes (Credit: Irish
Independent)
The Surfer
Lorcan Finnegan’s Nicholas Cage-starring film earned a standing ovation when it premiered at Cannes in May. The psychological thriller follows a man who returns to his beachside hometown in Australia, before, according to the logline, “he is humiliated by a group of powerful locals and drawn into a conflict that rises with the punishing heat of the summer and pushes him right to his breaking point.” Finnegan, a Dubliner, has proven himself to be a strong director when it comes to palpable unease, having previously made Without Name and Vivarium, and The Surfer looks to be no different. Count us in! TBA
Saipan
Surely one of the most-anticipated (for footie fans, at least) Irish films this year is Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn’s Saipan, an account of the infamous 2002 World Cup feud between Ireland’s football captain Roy Keane and manager Mick McCarthy. English funnyman Steve Coogan (who is currently starring in stage production of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove at the Bord Gáis Theatre) will play McCarthy, and Éanna Hardwicke, among the nation’s most-promising up-and-coming actors, will play the Cork man. It’s hard to tell what tone Saipan will lean towards. It’s certainly ripe material for a comic take. TBA
