Next year’s summer blockbusters look mighty impressive already!
Summer 2019 is almost over, and Disney have ruled the roost.
Avengers: Endgame, Aladdin, Spider-Man: Far From Home, and Toy Story 4 were all released in the cinematic summer months, they are all Disney movies, and they all made SERIOUS money.
So with the warmer part of the year coming to an end, we’ve decided to look forward to summer 2020 (specifically April to August), to see if we could predict what will be next year’s biggest hitters.
Surprisingly, we’re looking at NO Disney movies in the top three, but sticking to the summer months means we are dropping some HUGE movies over the rest of 2020 – Mulan, A Quiet Place 2, Godzilla V Kong, Venom 2, The Witches, Dune, Cruella, Uncharted, West Side Story – not to mention some big movies that we might not even know about yet.
But without a Star Wars, huge Avengers/Justice League cross-over movie, Fantastic Beasts, or Avatar, it does look like summer 2020 could be won be anyone! Plus it means we get to come back in December and do it again for the whole year! Hooray!
On with our predictions:
#10 – TOP GUN: MAVERICK (June 26)
A full 34 years since the original movie was released, and we’re getting back into the cockpit with Tom as he becomes a trainer for the next generation of fighter pilots. Directed by the guy behind the very underrated Oblivion, and a script from the guy who wrote the last two Mission: Impossible movies, this has the potential to be a massive hit… provided it is actually any good. Although being great didn’t help Edge Of Tomorrow any, so who knows?
Top Gun’s $356 million at the box office back in 1986 works out, thanks to inflation, at around $815 million today. Even a “bomb” like The Mummy still cleared over $400 million. And thanks to that Mission: Impossible bump, which see Tom’s movies making more and more money lately, there is a chance this could make some real bank.
Guestimated Box Office: $600 million
#9 – ARTEMIS FOWL (May 29)
It feels like we’re still waiting on something to fill that Harry Potter void properly, especially since the also-rans like The Maze Runner and Divergent didn’t make the cut. This story of a young (Irish!) criminal mastermind caught up in a world of magic and fairies could very well be just the thing, especially since the books the movie will be based on are so popular.
Directed by Kenneth Branagh, it doesn’t exactly have a big-name cast (Judi Dench and Josh Gad are the two most recognisable people on here), so while we don’t think it will be making Harry Potter, or even Hunger Games money, it’ll still do reasonably well.
Guestimated Box Office: $700 million
Clip via Walt Disney Studios
#8 – TENET (July 17)
As per usual, Christopher Nolan is keeping his cards close to his chest for his new movie, except we do know it is a sci-fi action thriller, an international heist movie, and will star new Batman Robert Pattinson, BlackKklansman star John David Washington, and Widows highlight Elizabeth Debicki.
Oh, and the other thing we know is that no matter what it is, we’ll head out in droves to check it out. Nolan’s last movie, Dunkirk made $525m, but we reckon this will skew closer to Interstellar ($677m) or Inception ($828m) levels.
Guestimated Box Office: $750 million
#7 – JUNGLE CRUISE (July 24)
The Rock and Emily Blunt headline this action comedy based on a ride from a Disney theme park. That is basically the same set-up as Pirates Of The Caribbean (which, to be fair, made a lot of money), but with an even more bankable set of stars.
The first Pirates made $654 million, while two of the sequels made over $1 billion. Jumanji made $962 million, but even that seems like a high bar for The Rock. Although if it is even half-way decent, it could be Disney’s surprise hit (see also: Aladdin – $922 million and counting).
Guestimated Box Office: $800 million
#6 – BLACK WIDOW (May 1 TBC)
There are actually no confirmed MCU movie release dates yet, but there are two currently unconfirmed Marvel movies coming out in 2020, one in May, and another in November, and we’re putting our money on the former being the Black Widow prequel. With a hugely impressive supporting cast – Florence Pugh, Rachel Weisz, David Harbour, Ray Winstone – and the big question of how much more of the Black Widow’s story we’ll actually get to see (both in the past and the future), we reckon interest in this one will be pretty high.
Just how interested is the big question, though. Captain Marvel made $1.15 billion, but we don’t see Natasha getting that high.
Guestimated Box Office: $850 million
#5 – BOND 25 (April 3)
The director of the best season of True Detective, taking on Daniel Craig’s reportedly final outing as Bond. However, the behind-the-scenes messiness has everyone looking at this with one eyebrow up. All of that could be blown away with one well-put-together teaser trailer, but as it stands, we’re still under that veil of secrecy, to the point that we still don’t even know the name of the movie.
Skyfall made $1.1 billion, but unless they manage to get back to that level of “Wow, could Bond win Best Picture?” talk, then we’re guessing it won’t quite reach that level, staying closer to Spectre’s $880 million.
Guestimated Box Office: $900 million
007 star Daniel Craig, director Cary Fukunaga and the #Bond25 crew were out in the sunshine today shooting across a number of London locations, including Whitehall, where Daniel filmed a scene with a classic @astonmartin V8, first seen in a Bond film in THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS. pic.twitter.com/rhs13nNeyW
— James Bond (@007) June 30, 2019
#4 – SOUL (June 19)
Pixar have two movies coming out in 2020, the first being Onward, released in March, and then we have this one, which is described as “A journey from the streets of New York City to the cosmic realms, discovering the answers to life’s most important questions.” It sounds like a spiritual sequel to Inside Out to us, and it comes from the same Oscar-winning director as that movie, so we’re very curious to see how this plays out.
Pixar have been caught up making a lot of sequels lately, but their last original movie, Coco, made $807 million. We can see this one doing better.
Guestimate Box Office: $950 million
#3 – WONDER WOMAN 1984 (June 5)
Between this and Black Widow (and February’s Birds Of Prey), 2020 is clearly the year when female superheroes take over the world. And we’re absolutely fine with that. This sequel-but-also-kind-of-a-prequel brings back all of the major players from the first movie (including, bizarrely, Chris Pine), and adds the magnificently cast Kristen Wiig as the supervillain Cheetah.
The first Wonder Woman made $821 million, and giving it the sequel bump, plus the fact that WB seem to have successfully course-corrected the DC universe, we’ve got high hopes for this.
Guestimated Box Office: $1.1 billion
#2 – FAST & FURIOUS 9 (May 22)
To be honest, how well this does will depend heavily on how well this year’s Hobbs & Shaw does. If The Rock and The Stath’s outing doesn’t go well, it could damage this NINETH-quel’s chances of breaking the billion barrier, but if it is as good or better than what has come before, then it will likely give F&F9 a healthy push higher.
Fast & Furious 7 made $1.5 billion, but it was tied in to the untimely death of Paul Walker. Fast & Furious 8 made $1.3 billion, and we see this one doing more or less the same.
Guestimated Box Office: $1.3 billion
View this post on Instagram
#1 – MINIONS: THE RISE OF GRU (July 10)
Yep, this is our guess for the summer of 2020’s biggest box office hit. Family movies are obviously big business, and while sometimes the sequels don’t hold up (The Secret Life Of Pets 2 has made less than a third of the original so far), but sometimes they build magnificently on the fanbase already there (Finding Dory, Incredibles 2, some of the Ice Age and Madagascar movies). To that end, the Despicable Me and Minions franchise has proven to be INSANELY popular to date, and there is no reason to expect that to be any different going forward.
Both Despicable Me 3 and Minions made over a billion, and we expect that getting them back on screen after a three-year break will only build on that hunger.
Guestimated Box Office: $1.4 billion
Joint #11 – FREE GUY (July 3) / GHOSTBUSTERS 2020 (July 10) / MORBIUS (July 31)
If any of the top ten absolutely bomb, then these are our guesses for what might possibly come next.
Nobody expected much of Pokemon Detective Pikachu this summer, and then it made over $420 million, even without Ryan Reynolds’ handsome face in most of the movie. Free Guy sees him playing a videogame character who becomes aware he is in a Grand Theft Auto-esque video-game, and tries to escape. Channing Tatum, Jodie Comer, and Taika Waititi co-star. It could be genius. Or it could be awful. There will be no in-between on this one.
The son of the guy who directed the original, with the addition of Paul Rudd and Carrie Coon, joining Dan Akyroyd and Sigourney Weaver. The all-female rebootquel didn’t do great, but if the 2020 direct sequel can hit that quirky, adult-comedy vibe of Deadpool, Thor: Ragnarok, or Jumani: Welcome To The Jungle, then it could do quite well.
Morbius is the latest addition to the Spider-Man universe, and considering Venom made $855 million, it would be foolish to think this vampire-horror entry won’t also get attention. Although the Joker-ruining Jared Leto isn’t loved as much as Tom Hardy, so it really could go either way.
Guestimated Box Office: $550 million each
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge
