

Brian Truitt
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It's a new year at the cinema, though there are no trips to the "Star Wars" galaxy and no outings for Marvel's Avengers superhero squad. (Well, most of them at least.)

But 2020 isn't too shabby when it comes to big-screen icons, with Daniel Craig returning for one last mission as James Bond in "No Time to Die" (April 10) and a couple of monstrous legends duking it out in "Godzilla vs. Kong" (Nov. 20). Female superheroes will rule the comic-book roost: Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn gets her own girl gang with "Birds of Prey" (Feb. 7), Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman loves the '80s in her new sequel (June 5), and Scarlett Johansson finally stars in her own Black Widow solo movie (May 1), one of two Marvel films this year alongside Angelina Jolie's "Eternals" (Nov. 6). 

2019 in review:The 10 best movies, from 'Avengers: Endgame' to 'Little Women'


This year, though, is about all the A-list returns, from Will Smith and Martin Lawrence's "Bad Boys" pairing to Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves' dude duo "Bill & Ted" to Tom Cruise's legendary "Top Gun" ace

Here are the 12 movies we can't wait to watch in 2020, with exclusive photos and intel: 

Old partners Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence, left) and Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) return for one last assignment in the buddy action comedy "Bad Boys for Life."

1. 'Bad Boys for Life' (Jan. 17)

"It's always a thrill when you get to revisit old friends," says producer Jerry Bruckheimer, and the third "Bad Boys" reteams odd cop couple Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence). Twenty-five years after audiences first met the Miami detectives, Mike wants to stay on the job, his partner Marcus is contemplating retirement, and they go on one last mission to tackle a vengeful villain. Bruckheimer calls them a "timeless" duo: "It's like I rewound the clock. Of course we all age and they've aged, we certainly talk about that in the story. We're not trying to make somebody think these guys are 30 years old again."

Gotham City's baddest guys all want a piece of Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) after her latest Joker breakup in "Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)."

2. 'Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)' (Feb. 7)

Harley Quinn, Robbie's lovably crazy "Suicide Squad" breakout, is the chaotic ringleader of a group of powerful Gotham City women needing to sever problematic ties. In Harley's case, she's just broken up (again) with The Joker. "It's super recent and very raw and she's not dealing with it very well," Robbie says. "As your narrator, she'll tell you that she's doing just fine and absolutely loving the single life. But what you see on screen is it's anything but." Without her ex's protection, "everyone's out to take their pound of flesh" from Harley, says Robbie, who filmed "Birds" and the upcoming "Suicide Squad" sequel last year. "She's a lot of fun, but she can be pretty exhausting."

Metalhead elf Barley Lightfoot (left, voiced by Chris Pratt) tries to conjure his late father as brother Ian (Tom Holland) and mom Laurel (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) look on in Pixar's animated fantasy comedy "Onward."

3. 'Onward' (March 6)

In the Pixar comedy, which imagines fantasy creatures in a modern landscape, Ian (voiced by Tom Holland) is an elf gifted on his 16th birthday with a wizard's staff and a spell to spend a day with the father he never knew. When the magic goes wonky after conjuring Dad's bottom half, Ian and his older metalhead brother Barley (Chris Pratt) have only 24 hours to bring back the rest of him. "Dad's legs are the dangling carrot the whole way," director Dan Scanlon says. "They can communicate a little, but it's only made more sad by the fact that they could have more. It just is this great ticking clock to fix the problem and get as much of the day as they can get with him."

Spenser (Wahlberg, right) and Hawk (Duke) are an unlikely crime-fighting pair in Netflix's "Spenser Confidential."

4. 'Spenser Confidential' (March 6)

Mark Wahlberg brings author Robert B. Parker's old-school detective into 2020 with a Netflix action comedy. Fresh out of prison, Spenser is embroiled in a Boston crime spree and gets a new partner in doling out justice, brash MMA fighter Hawk (Winston Duke). "They are two guys who have absolutely no interest in each other and are forced to basically be roommates," director Peter Berg says. "It's a relationship that starts off with a fair amount of hostility and then turns into something much more emotional." Berg reports that Wahlberg flexes his comedic muscles as much as his biceps: "He gets the (stuffing) beat out of him about every 15 minutes. It's very enjoyable."

Marcus (Noah Jupe, left), Regan (Millicent Simmonds) and Evelyn (Emily Blunt) brave the unknown in the horror sequel "A Quiet Place Part II."

5. 'A Quiet Place Part II' (March 20)

Writer/director John Krasinski's sequel begins where the acclaimed 2018 horror film ended, with the surviving members of a family (Emily Blunt, Noah Jupe and Millicent Simmonds) fighting back against vicious blind creatures that attack anything that makes noise. While the original "Quiet Place" was a metaphor for parenthood, Krasinski says the sequel centers on loss. "The first movie is about the promise you make to your kids that if you stay with me, I'll keep you safe no matter what. The second movie is about the fact that that promise you make as a parent is inevitably going to be broken ... and the kids having to realize how to move forward as fully functioning people and potentially heroes."

James Bond (Daniel Craig) comes out of retirement to save the day and deal with a new villain in "No Time to Die."

6. 'No Time to Die' (April 10)

Craig stars in his fifth and final movie as James Bond, with 007 back in the superspy business after walking away from MI6 at the end of 2015's "Spectre." 

"Bond isn’t programmed for a tranquil life in retirement. The need for action runs deep," director Cary Joji Fukunaga says. Rami Malek brings "depth, intelligence and a spine-shivering stillness" as the newest new Bond villain Safin, and Lashana Lynch is a "young, athletically precise and ambitious" double-0 agent named Nomi. While a rivalry exists between her and Bond, "we see their relationship become closer, and come to understand how new generations respect but also need to outdo their predecessors."

Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson, right) reconnects with her "sister" Yelena (Florence Pugh) in "Black Widow."

7. 'Black Widow' (May 1)

Set after "Captain America: Civil War" (and before "Avengers: Endgame"), the action film finds ex-assassin Natasha Romanoff (Johansson) on the lam, reconnecting with fellow Black Widows (Florence Pugh and Rachel Weisz) and dealing with her checkered past. "Within the Marvel universe, we're always a little bit on the outside of her," director Cate Shortland says. "What I was really passionate about was why don't we make her as human as we can because that's what sets her apart. She is a human being without a specific set of powers. How do we explore her vulnerability (and) her shame? That's what I really wanted: a character that wasn't just a superhero."

"Wonder Woman 1984"

Directed by: Patty Jenkins


8. 'Wonder Woman 1984' (June 5)

The follow-up to 2017's World War I-set "Wonder Woman" visits Diana Prince (Gadot) in the '80s, where she's an undercover superhero keeping an eye on things and watching ancient artifacts in her day job at the Smithsonian. The first film was about the young heroine being introduced to the world, and in "1984," "she knows the world so well, but she doesn't know it as well as she thinks she does. She thinks she's doing the right thing, but what happens in this movie surprises her," director Patty Jenkins says. She wanted a classic Wonder Woman like she saw on the '70s TV show "who's at full strength, yet still is in the middle of her observations about the darkness of mankind."

"Top Gun: Maverick"
Directed by: Joseph Kosinski
Starring: Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly

Those who've been looking forward to Cruise getting back behind the flighter pilot's flight stick for decades get more than a few extra months of anticipation: After being postponed from June 24 to Dec. 23, the sequel has been pushed to July 2, 2021.

9. 'Top Gun: Maverick' (June 26)

Thirty-four years after flying onto the big screen, fighter pilot Pete "Maverick" Mitchell – a role that helped boost Cruise to international superstardom – is back in the cockpit and training a new generation of cocky upstarts. But he hasn't lost any of his anti-authority swagger in a story that balances nostalgia for older audiences and a fresh need for speed for youngsters. "Everybody wants to be a Maverick,"  Bruckheimer says. "Everybody wants to buck the system. Everybody when they get pulled over by a cop wants to tear up the speeding ticket and drive away. Everybody has it in them (but) Maverick is the character that does it. It's wish fulfillment and I love it."

"Ghostbusters: Afterlife"
Directed by: Jason Reitman
Starring: Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, Paul Rudd

A Midwestern family learns their connection to the original Ghostbusters crew and the Ecto-1 rides again. The next film in the franchise moved from a July 10 release to March 5, 2021.

10. 'Ghostbusters: Afterlife' (July 10)

Director Jason Reitman's continuation of his father Ivan's 1980s films centers on a single mom (Carrie Coon) and her kids (Finn Wolfhard and Mckenna Grace) finding out their Ghostbusters connection "at the center of a great mystery that connects back to the original," Jason Reitman says. "As someone who grew up amongst 'Ghostbusters' fans that experienced the original as a child, I always took the 1984 film as a genuine adventure with real stakes." Stars from the first film, including Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd, appear but not their iconic car: The original Ecto-1 remains in storage at the Sony lot to preserve it for film history, so Reitman sourced the exact same 1959 Cadillac model to create the "Afterlife" edition.

The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted most every aspect of American life, including the movie industry. Theaters have closed and production has shut down on nearly every production throughout the world, delaying the release of major films. Here's a list of all the movies postponed by the outbreak, starting with the mind-bending spy thriller "Tenet," originally planned for a July 17 release but now delayed to Sept. 3. 

Directed by Christopher Nolan, "Tenet" stars John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Which other films have been delayed?

11. 'Tenet' (July 17)

For years, Christopher Nolan fans yearned for the filmmaker to do a James Bond movie. Instead they'll get this mysterious spy thriller that, like his twisty heist film "Inception," uses its genre "to give an audience a sort of familiar grounding at the beginning of the tale, but then take them someplace hopefully they haven't been before," says Nolan, who grew up "loving that idea about escapist cinema and a movie that can take you all over the world and follow one particular character through a great adventure." The hero of "Tenet," played by John David Washington, is "a very kinetic" figure "with the ability to draw an audience in (where) you watch the story through their eyes."

Daughters Thea (Samara Weaving, from left) and Billie (Brigette Lundy-Paine) help their dads Ted (Keanu Reeves) and Bill (Alex Winter) write a song to save the universe in "Bill & Ted Face the Music."

12. 'Bill & Ted Face the Music' (Aug. 21)

After an excellent 1989 adventure and a bogus 1991 journey, happy-go-lucky time-traveling dudes Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) are now middle-aged BFFs who need to fulfill their destiny and write a song that will save the universe. Thankfully, when time and space come unglued, help arrives courtesy of their loving teen children, Ted's daughter Billie (Brigitte Lundy-Paine) and Bill's kid Thea (Samara Weaving). "They do everything together, finish each other's sentences," director Dean Parisot says of the girls. "And they're musically brilliant, almost savants when it comes to knowing every single thing about music throughout history. So they're sort of fantastic, crazy geniuses."

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