2024: through the crystal ball

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As we start another journey around the Sun, here’s a look at some of the things you can expect to watch, read, and enjoy this year.

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Movies

Brace yourself for a very bold prediction: franchises will rule the cinematic world in 2024. Shocking, we know!

Seriously though, most of the highly anticipated films of the year come from established IPs, as usual.

Superheroes may be losing some of their grip on the box office, but they, nonetheless, remain a prominent presence on the big screen. From Marvel’s roster, Deadpool (portrayed by Ryan Reynolds) is returning for his third venture this July, and he will be joined this time by Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine. As part of Sony's Spider-Man Universe (SSU), Kraven the Hunter is getting his first big screen chapter in August, with Aaron Taylor-Johnson starring in the lead role. Also from the SSU, there’s an untitled Venom sequel set for November. And Dakota Johnson is set to star in the SSU’s Madame Web this February. Will it be bad? Probably. Will we watch it? Probably. Not. Probably not.

Over at DC, Joaquin Phoenix returns as the Joker and is accompanied by Lady Gaga’s Harley Quinn in Folie à Deux (October).

Elsewhere, there are prequels like Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (May), A Quiet Place: Day One (June), and Mufasa: The Lion King (December), while the very long list of sequels slated for 2024 includes (but is not limited to) Dune: Part Two (March), Kung Fu Panda 4 (March), Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (March), Bad Boys 4 (June), Inside Out 2 (June), Despicable Me 4 (July), Beetlejuice 2 (September), Gladiator 2 (November), Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (December), and many, many more.

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Music

Several popular names – including Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa, Shakira, and Coldplay – are expected to release music in 2024, although whether their albums actually arrive this year or not remains uncertain, for the releases still lie in TBD-land.

What we do know for sure – or as sure as we can be, given how artists can tend to shift album release dates – is that the next few months will give us new records by Radiohead-spinoff The Smile, neo-psychedelic rock band MGMT, English rockers The Libertines, Canadian rock band Sum 41, and singer Sheryl Crow.

Rock band Green Day’s Saviors comes out this month. Jennifer Lopez is giving us This Is Me... Now, the sequel to her 2002 album This Is Me... Then, which will be her first studio release in a decade. And the delayed Vultures, Kanye West’s album with Ty Dolla Sign is finally expected to be unveiled this year.

Also, there will probably be another Taylor’s Version of a past Taylor Swift album. And will Rihanna finally release the follow up to 2016’s Anti? Your guess is as good as ours!

Locally, there will be singles aplenty and albums … probably not quite as aplenty? And if the gods of music really decide to smile upon us, there might be another season of Coke Studio. Until then, we’re just going to have to listen to ‘Pasoori’ about 38462517 more times … whether we want to or not!

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Television

Episodic content will continue to flourish in the streaming age, with new and returning series ready to take audiences on all kinds of different adventures.

Mega-series like Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and HBO’s House of the Dragon are expected to return with new seasons this year.

A couple of anthologies are releasing new seasons. These will include HBO’s True Detective: Night Country (starting in January) and FX’s Feud: Capote vs. The Swans (also January).

We also have Agatha: Darkhold Diaries, the Disney+ series that will be part of the MCU’s Phase Five and will continue the story of Kathryn Hahn’s Agatha Harkness as she attempts to regain her powers. And Netflix’s animated Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft will find Hayley Atwell voicing the titular archaeologist as she explores new territory.

Then there’s the Batman-offshoot The Penguin (Max); the sci-fi prequel Dune: Prophecy (Max); the Star Wars series The Acolyte (Disney+); and the animated Marvel show X-Men ’97 (Disney+), among lots and lots of other upcoming televisual content.

On the local front, our dramas will continue revisiting the same old topics, and people will continue to watch them for some reason, giving the industry no incentive to actually make an effort and come up with something creative and inventive, although these dramas will probably have a lot of competition from political content this year, as eyes around the country are likely to be just as glued to news channels in the coming weeks, what with the country’s general elections coming up in February.

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Books

2024 will see the publication of books by some of the world’s most well-known novelists, including John Grisham who is giving us Camino Ghosts (May), the third book in his Camino Island series; and the prolific Stephen King who is publishing a collection of short stories, titled You Like It Darker (May).

Other highly anticipated novels come from authors including Kiley Reid (January), Kristin Hannah (February), Kelly Link (February), Emily Henry (April), Kevin Kwan (April), and the recently discovered posthumous Until August by Gabriel García Márquez (March).

On the non-fiction front, Kathleen Hanna, Cameron Russell, RuPaul, and Ghostface Killah, are among the celebrities set to release memoirs this year. Britney Spears is planning to release a second volume of her bestselling autobiography, last year’s The Woman in Me, in 2024. And controversial writer Salman Rushdie’s memoir, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, will convey his reflections on the experience of surviving the 2022 stabbing that left him with profound injuries.

Meanwhile, actor Robert Downey Jr. has worked with author Thomas Kostigen to help us reduce our environmental impact through the upcoming Cool Food: Erasing Your Carbon Footprint One Bite at a Time (January). Rebecca Boyle is telling us about Earth’s only satellite in Our Moon: How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are (January). Charles Duhigg explores conversation in Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection (February). And Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist Venki Ramakrishnan looks at life and death in Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality (March)

There will be books about love, health, wellness, the world, the multiverse, and everything in between, so no matter where your reading preferences lie, you are sure to find something that interests you and can find a place on your bookshelf this year.

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Sports

The world of sports will deliver the usual annual tournaments and leagues for everything from tennis to football. But the big event this year is, of the course, the Olympics.

Returning to the traditional four-year Olympiad cycle (after the one year delay in the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo due to the COVID-19 pandemic), the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad will be held from 26 July to 11 August, in France, with Paris serving as the main host city. This will be the sixth time the Olympics will be hosted by France (three in summer, three in winter), and marks the centenary of the Paris 1924 Olympics.

Scheduled to feature 32 sports encompassing 329 events, the 2024 Summer Games will see the participation of around 10,500 athletes from 206 National Olympic Committees. Pakistan has Arshad Nadeem vying for a medal in men's javelin throw, and Gulfam Joseph and Ghulam Mustafa Bashir taking part in shooting events.

As for our favourite national waste-of-time pastime, there’s the T20 World Cup that will be held in West Indies and the United States from June to July. And Pakistan also has international tours against Ireland, England, and Bangladesh. So be prepared for a lot of cricket mania to grip the country in 2024. 

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- By S.A.

Us Magazine, The News - 12 January 2024 *