Annette

(3 September)

In a nutshell
Bonkers arthouse director Leos Carax (Holy Motors) collaborates with bonkers art-pop band Spfarks to create a thoroughly deranged rock opera in which Adam Driver’s volatile comedian and Marion Cotillard’s ethereal opera diva give birth to an angelic marionette daughter. Things get stranger still from there.

Who’s it for?
This is essential viewing for the respective ardent congregations of Carax and Sparks – the latter of whom have recently won new converts via Edgar Wright’s fortuitously timed documentary The Sparks Brothers. Beyond those fandoms, anyone with a taste for the avant garde should give it a whirl.

Standout song
Often repetitive and anti-melodic, the tunes aren’t obvious toe-tappers. But the opening number, So May We Start – in which the director, band and cast join together as a roaring, aggressive, agenda-setting chorus – is a stormer.

They say
“Annette is a cinematic opera; as wildly ambitious, funny, poignant, tragic and formally bonkers as you would hope the union of Carax and Sparks would be.” (Edgar Wright)

Hit or miss
Hit. An immediately polarising, love-or-hate proposition at Cannes – where it opened the festival and won best director for Carax – Annette will enrage as many viewers as it enthrals. But it does feel like a genuine cult item in the making, with a following that will outlast many of its more approachable musical rivals.

Respect

(10 September)

In a nutshell
Three years after Aretha Franklin’s death, the uncontested Queen of Soul gets the inevitable Hollywood biopic treatment. South African theatre director Liesl Tommy is at the helm, while Franklin’s own first choice of star – American Idol reject turned Oscar- and Grammy-winner Jennifer Hudson – takes the lead.

Who’s it for?
The same 60s soul nostalgists who flocked to Hudson’s film debut in Dreamgirls will turn up for the film’s many, meticulously restaged performance numbers. A substantial play for the faith-based audience – the film goes heavy on Franklin’s relationship to God and the church – is less expected.

Standout song
Most of Franklin’s signature hits get a rousing spotlight, but a studio scene detailing her dramatic rearrangement of her breakthrough song, I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You), is easily the film’s high point, with Hudson nailing the gutsy vocal.

They say
“It isn’t nearly as compelling a movie as Franklin was a singer, but while the film never fully captures her brilliance, it does at least effectively allude to it.” (Entertainment Weekly)

Hit or miss?
A minor hit. Reviews from the US have been tepid, calling out the film’s adherence to biopic formula and scuppering its Oscar hopes – but if you’re simply after a great singer giving her all to the Franklin catalogue, you won’t be disappointed.

Everybody’s Talking About Jamie

(17 September)

In a nutshell
In a West End musical landscape dominated – before Covid, at least – by jukebox shows and film-to-stage adaptations, Tom MacRae and Dan Gillespie Sells’s feelgood show about a secondary-school drag queen was a rare original British hit, pulling in audiences with perky tunes and inspirational messaging. This long-in-the-works film aims to repeat the trick.

Who’s it for?
Anyone who had their hearts warmed by the show, a demographic that runs the gamut from open-minded teens to their mums to their LGBTQ elders. Just as RuPaul’s Drag Race expanded the once-niche audience for drag, so Everybody’s Talking About Jamie has followed.

Standout song
Frankie Goes to Hollywood singer Holly Johnson has recorded a new song for the film’s soundtrack, though it’s unlikely to outpace any of the show’s original earworms, of which the sassy look-at-me anthem And You Don’t Even Know It is the most insistent.

They say
“It’s about unconditional love and we know our global audiences will fall in love with Jamie as he overcomes adversity to truly find his authentic self.” (Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke)

Hit or miss
A miss, we fear. Hopes were once high for a homegrown smash, but after it was booted from its 2020 release date and sold off by Disney to Amazon – which will skip cinemas to premiere it globally on Prime – the buzz has gone quiet. What’s a crowdpleaser without crowds?

Dear Evan Hansen

(22 October)

In a nutshell
The stage show, about a troubled high-schooler enmeshed in a classmate’s tragedy, stormed the Olivier and Tony awards. The film is directed by Steven Chbosky, who previously navigated sensitive adolescent territory with The Perks of Being a Wallflower; the show’s lead, Ben Platt, returns, with Julianne Moore and Amy Adams upping the star power.

Who’s it for?
A more serious affair than recent school musicals such as Everybody’s Talking About Jamie or The Prom, Dear Evan Hansen perhaps won’t court quite as wide an audience: there’s less of a hook here for people unfamiliar with the show.

Standout song
It does boast the songwriting super-duo of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the guys who kept the songbooks of La La Land and The Greatest Showman on a loop in our heads. The propulsive lump-in-throat ballad Waving Through a Window exemplifies their fusion of pop smarts and Broadway grandeur.

They say
“This film is ultimately about healing, forgiveness, and reaffirms how connected and essential we all are to one another. We couldn’t think of a more important idea to celebrate this year.” (Toronto film festival artistic director, Cameron Bailey)

Hit or miss
The first trailer, released in May, was a big old miss, roundly ridiculed online for its sentimental excesses and the somewhat, er, mature appearance of the 27-year-old Platt as a teenager. It’s opening the Toronto film festival next month, and the burden of proof is on.

Tick, Tick… Boom!

(12 November)

In a nutshell
Before his death in 1996, Rent composer Jonathan Larson workshopped an autobiographical musical about a theatre composer facing his demons; it was posthumously assembled into an off-Broadway and West End show. Now it comes to the screen, with Andrew Garfield as Larson and Lin-Manuel Miranda making his film-directing debut.

Who’s it for?
The global cult of “Rentheads” – obsessive fans of Larson’s defining, La Bohème-inspired work – is large, and 20 years after Tick, Tick… Boom!’s stage premiere, they’ll be itching to see a film of their idol’s less-popular passion project. The rest of us might need more persuading.

Standout song
Louder Than Words is the kind of booming, heart-on-sleeve ballad (“If we don’t wake up and shake up the nation, we’ll eat the dust of the world”) that could have come from Rent; the film’s trailer teases a lusty rendition.

They say
“[Lin Manuel Miranda] is like a crazy mixture of the most precocious eight-year-old that won’t stop talking and has a reference to everything, while simultaneously being one of the creative geniuses of our time. I love him – to get to work with him was a privilege.” (Andrew Garfield)

Hit or miss
A niche hit: the trailer seemed to satisfy the fans, and Garfield certainly looks as if he’s going for it. But does Larson’s story have crossover appeal?

Encanto

(26 November)

In a nutshell
Disney animation kept the old-fashioned big-screen musical afloat even in the genre’s leaner days, and their latest looks to be in the classic tradition. This fantasy of a young Colombian girl on a quest to protect her family’s magical powers boasts a song score by Lin-Manuel Miranda – who, between this, Tick, Tick…Boom!, In the Heights and Netflix’s Vivo, doesn’t appear to have slept for years.

Who’s it for?
The same ever-renewing family audience that laps up every other colourfully animated Disney adventure – they know on which side their bread is buttered.

Standout song
We have yet to hear the whole song score, but a trailer released last month unveiled one bustlingly upbeat Latin number – Colombia, Mi Encanto, sung by Colombian veteran Carlos Vives – which bodes well for the rest of the film’s apparently bilingual soundtrack.

They say
“We have fallen in love with the people and culture and the crossroads of musical styles that exist in the region,” said Miranda at the Disney presentation where the film was announced – well, he would, wouldn’t he?

Hit or miss
An almost surefire hit. The last time Miranda scored a musical for Disney, the result was Moana – any lingering cultural backlash against the Hamilton creator, after the colourism controversy over this summer’s In the Heights, is unlikely to get in the way here.

West Side Story

(10 December)

In a nutshell
Sixty years after its first, Oscar-guzzling screen adaptation, the beloved, Romeo and Juliet-inspired Broadway perennial gets a remake, with Steven Spielberg himself directing, Pulitzer winner Tony Kushner (Angels in America) updating the screenplay, and a more representatively diverse cast than the original.

Who’s it for?
Absolutely everyone, Disney is hoping: Spielberg’s film was supposed to be last year’s big Christmastime attraction and awards season hopeful, before being delayed a year by the pandemic. The film’s teen romance will target generation Z, but also parents and grandparents raised on the original.

Standout song
Pick your favourite, really. But if Spielberg’s new Tony and Maria – Ansel Elgort and YouTuber turned actor Rachel Zegler – don’t absolutely soar on their rendition of Somewhere, people won’t be pleased.

They say
Nobody’s seen it yet, but Rita Moreno – who won an Oscar for the original and plays another role here – has endorsed Spielberg’s approach: “I had things to tell him about the other production and about Latinos. He really went to such lengths to make sure he got that right.”

Hit or miss?
Too early to say. But even with its pedigree, the new West Side Story will have to overcome scepticism from many people who believe the 1961 classic is unimprovable, and from another contingent who had hoped that it wouldn’t fall to two older white men to update this story.