It is from Neil Gaiman’s comic book series of the same name and, most importantly, is scripted by Gaiman himself. The Sandman was a milestone in the development of what regular comic book series can talk about, the depths they can draw on and the heights they can reach through them. It was a way of introducing something very high into a very industrial form of production. Now the TV series will be part of the world of superhero comic book series, but being edited by Gaiman (who as executive producer has shown the same ability to conjure and structure stories at different levels of depth) it is to be expected to have a lot to say.

In the 1990s, Mike Myers burst onto the screen first with Wayne’s World and then with Austin Powers, taking absurd comedy to an exceptional level of rhythm, inventiveness and ability to find new staging tricks to work on the cleverest humour, the one that subverts every situation, overturns expectations and tells of a world in which all normality is destroyed by the power of idiocy. In the 2000s, he lost his way several times and since 2008 he has not played in a film, at most he does dubbing work. The TV series which he returns to the screen with will be perfectly in line with contemporary times. It is the story of a journalist who investigates a secret society that influences the fate of the world. However, he does it in a positive way and not for his own interests as the most widespread conspiracy theories do. 

For the past two decades, those who wanted to meet an audience by making original films without necessarily having to make superhero films, remakes, sequels or scripted blockbusters have turned to horror. The cinema of fear seemed to be an undertow where those with ideas, any ideas, and the ability to create something catchy, could cash in. And so, some of the best minds in cinema and TV series sought success there. Mike Flanagan did, whose The Haunting of Hill House was a masterpiece of editing, human stories and crossovers. In 2022 he will be back and he will do it again with a story of crossover narratives, set in a hospice whose residents make a pact, to return after death.

In order to narrate Tim Burton’s problems, idiosyncrasies, failures and insecurities after he became Tim Burton, that is, after the great success of the 1990s, a book would not be enough. He has been chasing projects that look like him for decades instead of turning more interesting material into something that looks like him. Nevertheless, he remains one of the filmmakers of our time with the clearest vision, and the fact that he (once again) goes so close to his own stereotype by making a TV series on Wednesday of the Addams Family inevitably arouses curiosity. Problematic, different and monstrous teenagers in a world that demands cleanliness, order and conformity is his field of play, and few can claim to be as skilled at portraying these feelings as he is.

This is the name of the anthology TV series sponsored by Guillermo Del Toro. An old-fashioned project made up of separate episodes, unconnected except for the fact that they deal with particular, paradoxical stories that mix different genres. Each story is directed and written by the most interesting young names in the genre that Guillermo Del Toro has gathered under his great shadow. They include Ana Lily Amirpour, Jennifer Kent (Babadook), Catherine Hardwick (Twilight), Panos Cosmatos (Mandy) and Vincenzo Natali (Cube), among others.

It is the most impressive project of the year, costing unprecedented amounts of money for a TV series and it is set, as is easy to understand, in J.R.R. Tolkien’s world. However, it will not tell the well-known story of Frodo and the Ring, but will be set thousands of years earlier, in the second age of Middle-earth. What is known for the moment is that the characters involved will be both known and new and that it will stage the beginning of the return of evil to Middle-earth.

The videogame which the TV series takes its cue from was a very important school case of the ‘10s, one of the strongest topics to affirm that videogames can develop narrative potentialities not different from films and that they can do it in their own way, using their own mechanisms. The fact that it is going to be reduced to a TV series makes one think, and above all it will be interesting to see whether or not everything that struck us about the videogame and made its narrative unique will be repeated.

When will we tire of the way Disney mercilessly exploits Star Wars-related intellectual properties? At some point it will happen, but it is not here yet. The Mandalorian has tightened the ranks and shown that it is still possible to explore, invent, create and arouse with that world and spirit. The TV series dedicated to Obi-Wan Kenobi will have to do even more, will have to show that it is possible to work on the most iconic characters without feeling as a victim of fandom, but again by leading instead of chasing.

For Game of Thrones’ orphans there will be the story of the Targaryens, the family whose past deeds are evoked during George Martin’s stories, that of Khaleesi and the dragons. If there is any hope of seeing on the screen the exceptional writing that animated the first four seasons of Game of Thrones, it is here.

This is the most promising Italian TV series of 2022. It crosses one of the strongest trends of Italian seriality (the crime story) with one of the strongest trends of generalist seriality (the story of the Catholic roots of our society, of saints and priests). Christian is a small-time criminal who does the dirty work for the bosses and who one day gets the stigmata. The contrast between illusion, appearance or perhaps the promise of sanctity and a very tribal, violent and populous world like that of crime is a great idea and Edoardo Pesce (Dogman) is in the lead role.

Paul Thomas Anderson returning to the place and stories that made him Paul Thomas Anderson, California’s San Fernando Valley. Licorice Pizza is the little pop cultural product of 2022, a modestly budgeted but highly anticipated film from the most beloved of US niche talents that have emerged in the last 20 years. In its own way, it is a means for a producer to do what the big blockbuster remakes or sequels do: to go back to something the audience knows and recognises to draw them in and maybe (instead) tell them something new.

There is little need to be picky, each new big James Cameron’s film redefines what we think cinema can do. It has been 12 years since he has been out of cinema and now he is back with a sequel to the film that moved the representation of the fake on screen one step further. It is not clear what this sequel will be and what vision of cinema will express. It is certainly something worth paying a ticket for and understanding what Cameron has been hatching for 12 years.

Martin Scorsese’s peregrination across platforms continues. After The Irishman on Netflix now a western film for Apple TV+. As usual, there will be a large theatrical window, but once again, only thanks to the money of a platform, Scorsese is directing a big and ambitious film with great actors (Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro). Moreover, it will be in a genre he has never explored before, one that is not exactly doing well in cinemas these years. An impossible project that only becomes possible because of Apple TV+. 

Paolo Virzì reunites the team that wrote Like Crazy with him to try something different. He is one of the greatest contemporary figures of the traditional Italian cinema and Siccità goes in a completely different direction. It is a fantastic story of what happens in Rome after three years of total drought. Basically, a post-apocalyptic made with the head of the best Italian cinema and, you can bet, with the goals of the best Italian cinema.

Matteo Garrone’s Pinocchio was recently released and Disney’s new one will be released this year. However, Guillermo Del Toro’s version seems to be the most appealing one, by retelling the story of Pinocchio in full Guillermo Del Toro’s style with the aim of mixing the fictional and the real. The idea of this stop-motion animation film is in fact to set it during Fascist Italy. The same idea was behind The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth, set during the Spanish Civil War. Mixing great stories and fantastic scenarios to create a new and different sense.

It only makes sense to wait for an Elvis biopic if Baz Luhrmann is making it. An incredible visual talent that has been lost in recent years, Luhrmann seeks to return to the legitimacy he had with Moulin Rouge and his Romeo + Juliet. The excessive world of colours, lights, neon and fame that Elvis was involved in during the latter part of his career seems to have come out of the director’s imagination itself, that is to say, it seems to match his visual style. Made to be directed by him.

Robert Eggers is another filmmaker who emerged thanks to horror (The Witch) because that was the genre in which he could be noticed. Then he made a psychological film (The Lighthouse), and now again a dirty and nasty genre film with Ana Taylor Joy, a story of Vikings and revenge. No one among the newest filmmakers can turn low matter into high matter with his apparent ease.

Again, horror and a very sharp author, Jordan Peele, who with Get Out and Us has staged what is undoubtedly the most interesting and multifaceted page of reflection on racism in the USA today. Peele was the first to chronicle the changing perception of the black body and the first to serve up that idea (that black people are desirable today and that this is another practice of domination) to everyone. Nope is his new film and is a must see.

While the world misses the good old days of traditional cinema releases, fights for the survival of cinemas and tries as hard as it can to work to see its films on the big screen, David Fincher does not care about all that. He was the first to leave the big screen and started working on TV series and films for platforms. And so, he wants to continue in this direction for The Killer, his new film, about a killer who begins to develop a conscience and therefore has serious psychological problems.

Luca Guadagnino, with an Italian production, tells the USA once again after the TV series We Are Who We Are. In Bones and All, he collaborates again with Timothée Chalamet in a story of nomadism and wide-open spaces. It seems that everything that constitutes a Luca Guadagnino’s film is not there, it seems that he has given up the power of his environments and plots. It seems.