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While 2025 might be a new year, it will have plenty of familiar names. Reboots and remakes will fill the screen, with filmmakers taking a different look at properties and stories told before.That might sound dire. But before you start complaining about Hollywoods lack of ideas, just take a look at this list. Sure, there are a few obvious plays for IP dollars, but for the most part, the 2025 reboot and remake slate is full of exciting updates to Superman and the Fantastic Four, as well as compelling updates to classic Universal monsters.The names might be familiar, but for a lot of these movies, the ideas are all new.Wolf Man (Jan 17)At its heart, the werewolf myth is about the beast lurking within an otherwise civilized person. The externals might change from 1941 to now, but the concept still has weight. Thats especially true when its Aussie Leigh Whannell exploring the idea, as he does with Wolf Man.A true modern horror master, who co-created the Saw and Insidious series with James Wan and directed the excellent update The Invisible Man, Whannell strips the story down to its essentials. Wolf Man stars Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner as a parents of a young girl (Matilda Firth), who get trapped in a rustic farm house, just in time for the father to undergo a lycanthropic transformation. You can read our review of the film here.Disneys Snow White (March 21)Rachel Zegler is one of our most exciting young talents, an endlessly charismatic performer and wonderful singer. But, man, does she star in some stinkers. For every West Side Story and The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songs and Snakes, theres Shazam! Fury of the Gods or Y2K.At first glance, Disneys Snow White seems to be one of the latter, in no small part due to the nightmare inducing CG Seven Dwarves. That said, the screenplay is co-written by Greta Gerwig and director Marc Webb gave us superhero movies most exciting romantic couple in The Amazing Spider-Man, so maybe theres hope yet. Even if it fails, at least we know Zegler will be charming as ever.The Wedding Banquet (April 18)Unlike most of the entries on this list, The Wedding Banquet remake comes less from a desire to cash in on name recognition and more of a desire to retell a moving story. Although director Ang Lee would go on to make hits such as The Life of Pi and Brokeback Mountain, his 1993 sophomore feature gets far less attention.Driveways and Fire Night director Andrew Ahn hopes to correct that with his update of The Wedding Banquet, co-written by Lees frequent collaborator James Schamus. Bowen Yang stars as a gay man who makes a deal with his lesbian friends (Kelly Marie Tran and Lily Gladstone) to help him masquerade as straight for the sake of his family. Hopefully, Ahn can retain some of the gentleness in Lees original, while finding its own unique voice.Lilo & Stitch (May 23)Between the two Disney remakes of established properties, Lilo & Stitch offers viewers the most hope. First of all, the original movies creative force Chris Sanders returns to voice Stitch, so at least his voice is involved in the process. Second, its directed by Dean Fleischer Camp, who made the excellent Marcel the Shell With Shoes On films.That said, Lilo & Stitch is still a big budget Disney remake, which means that it covers the exact same ground as the original film. An escaped alien lands on Hawaii, where he befriends young Lilo (Maia Kealoha) and her older sister Nani (Sydney Agudong), while avoiding mad scientist Dr. Jumba Jookiba (Zach Galifianakis) and Agent Pleakley (Billy Magnussen), as well as social worker Cobra Bubbles (Courtney B. Vance). Will Sanders and Camp find enough new approaches to justify the new Lilo & Stitch? Well find out this May.Join our mailing listGet the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox!How to Train Your Dragon (June 13)Why should Disney have all the fun? Thats what Dreamworks was thinking when they watched millions of dollars pour into the House of Mouse for updates of Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast. And so, Mason Thames of The Black Phone becomes the new Hiccup, appearing alongside a more realistically rendered Toothless in the live action How to Train Your Dragon.Some positive points lurk around the production of How to Train Your Dragon. Its directed by Dean DeBlois, who made the original Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon with the aforementioned Chris Sanders. Furthermore, it has a fun cast, with Nick Frost and Peter Serafinowicz joining the cast and Gerard Butler reprising his role as Stoick the Vast. Superman (July 11)The new DCU by James Gunn and Peter Safran carries over some elements of the previous shared universe, but theyll make a notable change when it comes to the first superhero. Superman presents a bold new look on the Man of Steel, by which we mean a more traditional, optimistic, and hopeful look at a character who was a glowering grump under previous management.Written and directed by Gunn, Superman stars David Corenswet as the Man of Tomorrow, who we meet in a world already filled with superheroes and already known to Lois Lane (Rachel Brohansan) and Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult). Its not clear how Gunn will make Supes standout in this stuffed story, but hes never let us down before and, if the triumphant trailer is any indication, hes not about to let us down now.Animal Farm (July 11)All Animal Farm adaptations are created equal, but some are more equal than others. The latest animated version of George Orwells famous anti-Stalinist allegory comes from Andy Serkis, the reliable stop-motion performer and sometime director. Serkis came up with a story treatment with Rupert Wyatt, director of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which led to a screenplay by journeyman comedy filmmaker Nicholas Stoller.Thats an odd bunch for a story about the animal overthrow of a farm turning into a dictatorship. Theres no word yet on the castwill Serkis be performing all of the animals?but the July 11th release date is still in place. Thats not a lot of time if Serkis wants to improve upon the 1954 and 1999 adaptations of the novella, neither of which impressed audiences.The Smurfs Movie (July 18)Do kids today even care about the Smurfs? Heck, do most parents even care about the Smurfs? Created by Belgian cartoonist Peyo, the little blue forest dwellers were regulars on the screen in the 1980s, but outside of some crass star-studded movies in the 2000s, the Smurfs havent been important parts of pop culture.Still, Nickelodeon hopes that the concept has enough inherent charm to draw eyes on their new version in The Smurfs Movie. And if that fails, theyve got big famous names to lend their voices, including Rihanna as Smurfette alongside Nick Offerman, Natasha Lyonne, Dan Levy, and more. No word yet on who is playing who, but were guessing Offerman is Papa Smurf, Levy is Vanity Smurf, and Lyonne is, uh, Raspy Smurf? Be honest, you dont know if there really is a Raspy Smurf, and neither does anyone else.The Fantastic Four: First Steps (July 25)Not content to let DC have all the fun, Marvel will be matching Superman with their own course-correcting revival of seminal and oft-misunderstood heroes. The Fantastic Four: First Steps brings Marvels first family to the big screen, hoping to shake-off not just the bitter taste left behind by the bland mid-2000s movies and the misguided 2015 film, but also the general disinterest in superhero movies.First Steps takes a bold approach, set in an alternate 1960s where the FF are science stars as much as they are superheroes. When the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) announces the coming of Galactus (Ralph Ineson), the Fantastic FourPedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, and Ebon Moss-Bachrachtry to save their world and their family. The film has six credited screenwriters, never a good thing, but director Matt Shakman proved his chops with WandaVision, still the best Marvel TV series.The Naked Gun (August 1)A reboot of The Naked Gun has been in development for decades, and often looked like a lost project, which may have been a good thing. Its hard to imagine anyone other than Leslie Nielsen playing clueless cop Frank Drebin and anyone other than prime Jim Abrahams and the Zucker brothers producing. The impeccable deadpan of the original films, and the six-episode series Police Squad! that inspired it, have rarely been seen elsewhere.That said, the projects settled on a pretty solid team, with none other than Liam Neeson in the role of Frank Drebin and Paul Walter Hauser as Captain Ed Hocken. Some reports have listed Neesons character as Frank Drebin Jr. (full body condoms are only 87% effective) and the full title as The Naked Gun 4 1/4: Law of Toughness, which would make this less a reboot and more a legacy sequel. But a full on reboot means we can forget about the transphobic stuff from the third film and, you know, OJ Simpson, so maybe thats better anyway. As long as we get Rex Harrison as Abraham Lincoln, well be just fine.The Bride! (September 26)Perhaps the boldest entry on this list comes from Maggie Gyllenhaal and her Bride of Frankenstein riff The Bride!. Gyllenhaal resets the 1935 film about Dr. Frankenstein creating a mate for his monster in 1930s Chicago, with Jessie Buckley as a murdered woman who becomes the Bride and Christian Bale as the Monster.Gyllenhaal has described her movie as a musical inspired in part by Bonnie and Clyde, and has hinted at some social relevance. Thats a lot to put on a monster movie, and The Bride! is just Gyllenhaals second film behind the camera. But she has a strong cast to help her out, including Penlope Cruz, Peter Sarsgaard, and Annette Bening.The Running Man (November 7)The best remakes are those that improve upon bad films with good ideas or stray closer to the source material in an adaptation. We might get both with Edgar Wrights take on The Running Man, a novel that Stephen King published under the pen name Richard Bachman. The Running Man spawned a delightful Arnold Schwarzenegger movie about contestants in a glossy futuristic game show, which served as (very light) satire about the TV industry.Wright has a chance to hew closer to Kings original idea, an exploration about public participation in totalitarian regimes. Hes off to the right start by casting the much less muscled Glen Powell in the lead, along with Katy OBrien as a fellow contestant, who tries to survive the game for a cash prize. Throw in Josh Brolin as the evil producer and Colman Domingo as the shows host, and Wright has all the right ingredients for a compelling update that stands on its own.Anaconda (TBA)1997s Anaconda remains a favorite of the so bad its good crowd, who celebrate the creature feature for its cheesy plot, its clunky CG, and an unhinged performance by Jon Voight. So its not much of a surprise that the reboot The Anaconda would approach the material with tongue firmly in cheek.Anaconda stars Jack Black and Paul Rudd as members of a circus troupe who get lost in the rainforest, where theyre bedeviled by a giant snake. Tom Gormican, who blessed the world with fantastic Nicolas Cage and Pedro Pascal memes with The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, directs this remake, which means Anaconda may not descend into self-satisfied snark.Bugonia (TBA)If the name Bugonia doesnt ring any bells, thats because the story its retelling was originally called Save the Green Planet!. And if that doesnt ring any bells, its because Korean cinema wasnt quite as big in the West back in 2003, when Save the Green Planet! was released.Regardless, Bugonia is Y0rgos Lanthimoss take on the material, which means one thing. Well, it means a couple things, as hell be once again pairing with Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons, the former of which plays a powerful CEO kidnapped by the latter and his brother. But it also means that Bugonia will be very, very weird, perhaps even outdoing the Korean original.Frankenstein (TBA)2025s third update of a classic monster comes from the maestro himself, Guillermo del Toro, who finally gets to finish his long-in-production take on Frankenstein. Unlike Wolf Man or The Bride!, it seems like del Toros Frankensteins will play the story more or less straight, perhaps staying even more faithful to the Mary Shelley novel than the Universal film.Del Toro has cast Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein, Jacob Elordi as the Monster, and Christoph Waltz as Dr. Pretorious, Victors mentor who drives him to complete his experiments in overcoming death. Familiar as that may sound, del Toros sure to infuse the story with some of his bizarre romance, resulting in something special.
