This year in cinema

Get ready for a year of daring filmmaking, epic adventures and unforgettable performances, from Boots Riley's surreal satire to Nolan and Villeneuve's epic visions

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Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi in Wuthering Heights.

(Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures)

Once described as the blockbuster auteur for his ability to craft artistically challenging films that also work as crowd-pleasing popcorn movies, Christopher Nolan may have reached the peak of his career with Oppenheimer (2023).

Nolan's historical examination of the father of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, grossed close to a billion dollars worldwide and won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director.

But the director who's tackled everything from Gotham's caped crusader to a heist film inside a subconscious dreamscape, might just be poised to outdo himself. The Odyssey is Nolan's upcoming adaptation of Homer's ancient Greek epic in which King Odysseus navigates the long and perilous journey home after the Trojan war.

And he's assembled a cast featuring some of the most recognisable names and faces in Hollywood including Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong'o and Charlize Theron. With the film having reportedly been shot in a diverse range of locations including Morocco, Greece, Italy, Iceland and Scotland, The Odyssey seems destined to be the epic fantasy event of the year.

Alejandro G. Iñárritu is no stranger to ambition, audacity, or spectacle, but Digger marks a sharp, unexpected turn: the director's first English-language film since The Revenant is a "comedy of catastrophic proportions," starring Tom Cruise as a man who wields a shovel. That's the premise, at least, though with Iñárritu at the helm, the chaos is guaranteed to be as artful as it is absurd.