Our final installment in our series of science fiction, fantasy & horror movies we will get to see in 2013 . . .

(Read part 1 and part 2 of this article.)

R.I.P.D.

PLOT: Action comedy in which a recently slain cop joins a team of undead police officers working for the Rest in Peace Department and tries to find the man who murdered him.

Director: Robert Schwentke
Stars: Ryan Reynolds, Jeff Bridges, Mary-Louise Parker, Kevin Bacon

WE SAY:  Zombie cops? It sounds more like a TV pilot than an actual movie and the fact that the screenwriters worked on Aeon Flux and the Clash of the Titans remake doesn’t help either.

The Wolverine

PLOT: Wolverine travels to Japan to train with a samurai warrior.

Director: James Mangold
Stars: Hugh Jackman, Will Yun Lee, Hiroyuki Sanada

Release date: 26 July 2013

WE SAY: Second movie featuring the X-Men character played by Hugh Jackman.

RoboCop

PLOT: In a crime-ridden city, a fatally wounded cop returns to the force as a powerful cyborg with submerged memories haunting him.

Director: José Padilha
Stars: Gary Oldman, Joel Kinnaman, Samuel L. Jackson

Release date: 9 August

WE SAY:  Remake of the 1987 Paul Verhoeven classic by the Brazilian director of the Elite Squad movies.

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters

PLOT: The son of Poseidon and his friends head into the Sea of Monsters to find the mythical Golden Fleece.

Director: Thor Freudenthal
Stars: Logan Lerman, Alexandra Daddario, Brandon T. Jackson

Release date: 16 August

WE SAY: Adaptation of second book in Rick Riordan’s series of books.

The Seventh Son

PLOT: An 18th century adventure story centered on young Thomas, who is apprenticed to the local Spook to learn to fight evil spirits. His first great challenge comes when the powerful Mother Malkin escapes her confinement while the Spook is away.

Director: Sergey Bodrov
Stars: Ben Barnes, Julianne Moore, Jeff Bridges, Alicia Vikander

Release date: 18 October

WE SAY: Warner is looking for the next Harry Potter movie franchise, but they can’t have too much faith in this series’ established readership seeing as they have changed its title.

This movie is based on the first book in the so-called Wardstone Chronicles series of fantasy novels by Joseph Delaney (10 books have been published thus far). Confusingly the books were published as The Last Apprentice in the U.S. however and the first book is known as The Spook’s Apprentice.

Incidentally, a search for “Wardstone Chronicles” on Amazon.com will also bring up a series of unrelated fantasy books by M.R. Mathias called the Wardstone Trilogy. Sigh.

The studio was probably hoping not to confuse audiences with The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, the 2010 Disney flop starring Nicolas Cage.

Ender’s Game

PLOT: 70 years after a horrific alien war, an unusually gifted child is sent to an advanced military school in space to prepare for a future invasion.

Director: Gavin Hood
Stars: Harrison Ford, Abigail Breslin, Ben Kingsley

Release date: 1 November

WE SAY: After a gazillion years in development hell Orson Scott Card’s science fiction classic 1985 is finally being made into a movie by South African Gavin Hood of Tsotsi and Wolverine fame.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

PLOT: The continuing adventures of Katniss Everdeen, which take place in a futuristic dystopian world, as she prepares for the Quarter Quell.

Director: Francis Lawrence
Stars: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Jena Malone, Liam Hemsworth,  Elizabeth Banks, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Woody Harrelson, Stanley Tucci

Release date: 22 November

WE SAY: The second novel in Suzanne Collins’ popular Young Adult series. Trying to milk it for all its worth, Hollywood is going to adapt the last novel in the series (Mockingjay) as two movies in the same way that they did with Twilight and Hobbit.

The Hobbit: There and Back Again

PLOT: Thorin and Company have reached Lake-town and it is time for the hobbit Bilbo Baggins to fulfill his contract with the dwarves . . .

Director: Peter Jackson
Stars: Benedict Cumberbatch, Elijah Wood, Luke Evans

Release date: 13 December

WE SAY:  Second part of the Lord of the Rings “prequel.”

Riddick

PLOT: Betrayed by his own kind and left for dead on a desolate planet, Riddick fights for survival against alien predators and becomes more powerful and dangerous than ever before.

Director: David Twohy
Stars: Karl Urban, Vin Diesel, Katee Sackhoff

Release date: TBA 2013

WE SAY: Third movie to feature Vin Diesel as Riddick following Pitch Black (2000) and The Chronicles of Riddick (2004).

Gravity

PLOT: Astronauts attempt to return to earth after debris crashes into their space shuttle, leaving them drifting alone in space.

Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Stars: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, Basher Savage

Release date: TBA 2013

WE SAY: New movie by the acclaimed director of Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban and Children of Men.

 

Movies that (probably) won’t make it in time for 2013: Steven Spielberg’s Robopocalypse (moved to 2014); We Mortals Are (aka All You Need is Kill, starring Tom Cruise); Neuromancer (William Gibson adap); Snow Crash; Stephen King’s The Stand (to be directed by Ben Affleck); Darkchylde (based on the Dark Horse comic, to be directed by John Carpenter).

 

(Read part 1 and part 2 of this article.)