The most anticipated TV series and films of 2023

It has been talked about for years - Martin Scorsese’s western film will bring together the two actors he has worked with the most, Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio. After making The Irishmen for Netflix, this film is largely financed by AppleTV+, and, like its predecessor, will have a huge theatrical release, as the director is accustomed to request. The story is that of an investigation into the death of some Native Americans in 1920s America when the epic Old West period had already come to an end and someone had found oil on tribal land.

On the other hand, David Fincher has no interest in theatrical releases and being subject to the law of the box office. He has been working for platforms since he has had the opportunity to do so, in particular Netflix, for which he has developed both TV shows and films and now The Killer, starring Michael Fassbender and Tilda Swinton. The story is based on the French graphic novel series of the same name by Alexis Nolent and follows a killer going through a crisis as he begins to develop a conscience.

After La La Land, Damien Chazelle returns to Los Angeles, the land of show business, with a period film that, right from the title, winks at Hollywood Babylon - that early period in Hollywood history when all kinds of excessive behaviour happily mixed with the most extreme depravation. The plot is quite classic, starring Margot Robbie as an actress who arrives in the big city hoping to make it big, only to find herself caught up in abuse, drugs, scandals and vices of all kinds. She is joined by Brad Pitt, Olivia Wilde and Tobey Maguire.

Cate Blanchett’s participation at the Venice Film Festival and her Best Actress award put a serious dent in her Oscar nomination this February and possibly in her victory. The film is one of the most exciting investigations of the relationship between artist and ethics, sexual exploitation and the separation of the private from the professional. At the centre is a female orchestra conductor in a world of architecture that tells everything about her and also about the people she surrounds herself with and the life she chooses to lead. A visually exceptional film.

Ever since the surprise appearance of the sign announcing the end of the first part at the end of Dune, we have been eagerly waiting for the second chapter of Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novels. The first film was a veritable delirium of design, photography and rational rigour applied to a story of extrasensory perceptions, colonialism of the future (reminiscent of that of the present) and predestination. The second part will focus on the rebels, with Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya.

If, besides Quentin Tarantino, there is one director today whose name justifies buying a ticket regardless of the film, it is Christopher Nolan. His feature films are synonymous with complicated, intricate and spectacular feats. He has made one of the most scientifically accurate science fiction films (Interstellar), one of the best dreamlike delusions (Inception) and one of the most successful films in which one understands little or nothing (Tenet). Now, with the biography of the man who created the atomic bomb, he tackles something he had never thought of, at least until now: telling the story of a single man and not that of an intricate web of events.

Italian director Luca Guadagnino, who works in English, shoots abroad and makes a cinema that is stateless by nature, after bringing into movie theatres Bones and All, the film starring Timothée Chalamet (whom he made famous with Call Me By Your Name), has now made one with Zendaya, and it’s the story of three tennis players who meet on the court and while competing in a tournament bring out old grudges. A sports film is what one might least expect from him, but after horror and melodrama, it is clear that he can cope well and, again, overturn everyone’s expectations.

Now 85 years old, Ridley Scott has no intention of diminishing the grandeur of his cinematic endeavours. Now, he is attempting to focus on Napoleon, a titanic figure as well as an obsession of cinema since the silent era that has always resulted in great films. With Joaquin Phoenix as the protagonist and Vanessa Kirby beside him, it is immediately clear that we are dealing with one of the great historical reconstructions that have in many cases made Scott’s fortune and to which he periodically returns, to tell human history through touches of transcendence, predestination and a powerful relationship with fate.

After almost thirty years of being asked to do it, being tempted to do it but in the end always refusing to do it, Pedro Almodovar has finally made an American film, produced in America, shot in English with American stars - namely Cate Blanchett. The subject matter is his own, an adaptation of the book The Woman Who Wrote Short Stories by Lucia Berlin, a collection of short stories about cleaning ladies, receptionists, office workers, all struggling with divorce-related problems.

Yorgos Lanthimos couldn’t shoot something ordinary, even though he has for years been embarking on a long, slow process of normalisation. Starting with films shot in Greece, radical and authorial like Dogtooth and Alps, he smoothed out his asperities to increase budgets and meet stars, until peaking with The Favourite - Oscar -winning, American, fully mainstream cinema. Having conquered this field, he is now, again with Emma Stone, contemplating the adaptation of a story of fiction and ambiguity reminiscent of Frankenstein: the story of a woman whose brain has been replaced with that of her unborn child.

Roman Polanski produced by Italians. The most cancelled director still working (even more than Woody Allen) does not want to stop yet. Luca Barbareschi and Rai Cinema are providing most of the budget for the Polish director’s new film set in a hotel on New Year’s Eve 1999. Cinema behind closed doors, the kind in which Polanski excels, bent on black comedy thanks to the screenplay collaboration of Jerzy Skolimowski and the acting of the great John Cleese of Monty Python, alongside Mickey Rourke and Fanny Ardant. The quintessential forbidden film of 2023.

After Tear Along the Dotted Line, Zerocalcare continued working with Movimenti Production and Netflix on a second TV show written, created and voiced by him. It will not be a sequel to the first, but just like his graphic novels it will be another story in the same narrative world, with the same tones and the same characters (the Armadillo is still voiced by Valerio Mastandrea). Certainly, the (international) success of Tear Along the Dotted Line has made it possible to make this series with more money, more people at work and more ambition (and also a longer duration).

It was the most eagerly awaited tv series, and the first images have only confirmed that it is a highly ambitious project. It takes its cue from the video game of the same name, but rather than the usual video game adaptation, we can expect a more complex outcome, not only because of the production level but also because The Last of Us was a game that changed the way video games are considered on a narrative level, going further than what mainstream films dare to do. Now, the TV series that we’ll see on Sky is long enough to explore the story in a comparable manner, and thus also has the duty to live up to the expectations.

The French Netflix series has been a niche success, as well as one of the most recommended series by word of mouth. The idea is that the protagonists are talent agents of an agency representing stars of show business. They have their own problems and plots, but each episode features as guest star one of the clients played by a real celebrity playing themselves (or rather, a parody of themselves). For the first Italian season, guest stars include Stefano Accorsi, Paolo Sorrentino, Matilda De Angelis, Pierfrancesco Favino, Paola Cortellesi and Corrado Guzzanti.

When everyone was convinced that Disney would fail to recapture the spirit of Star Wars and the break with the fans was irreconcilable, The Mandalorian decided to “keep the church in the village”. The first and second seasons reconnected with the western genre and with an attitude and ethos strongly linked to the saga. Now comes the third season, when it seems that the plot has nothing more to say and the references to the canon have become heavier than usual. But it’s still The Mandalorian...

Inspired by the great Antwerp diamond heist (the most sensational ever in Europe), this Italian series filmed in Europe and starring Kim Rossi Stuart, Anna Foglietta and Gianmarco Tognazzi tries to do the same job that The Bad Guy, also on Prime Video, has just done: to create a humorous story without parodying its genre but rather respecting it. Everybody Loves Diamonds (written by Stefano Bises, who can boast Gomorra, The Young Pope and Speravo de morì prima on his CV) is a heist series and promises to be very serious about all heist-related issues.

Netflix’s most-watched series of all time, a lifestyle phenomenon and part of that bridge between South Korea and the rest of the Western world created with Parasite, just had to have a second season. It will be very difficult to recreate that phenomenon, that surprise and above all that mechanism capable of getting the viewers so hooked on the struggle for survival of a group of people. Now, we already know everything, we know how the mechanism works, and the second season will have to both change and confirm everything. It’s going to be very difficult. It will certainly be one of the most important productions ever to come out of South Korea.

It was only a matter of time before someone made a series about the life of Rocco Siffredi, the most famous Italian actor in the world. The Apartment and Groenlandia, two Italian production companies that are both part of larger international companies, have thought of that. We will see it on Netflix, it will tell the story of Siffredi’s life from when he was a boy to his rise in the porn industry, and the lead role will be played by Alessandro Borghi together with, among others, Jasmine Trinca and Adriano Giannini.

Yet another adaptation from a video game - this time less sensational and narratively strong than the first. However, Fallout is a tv show that has found its own way of reimagining the design of the post-apocalyptic, and specifically post-nuclear future, fusing a 1960s aesthetic with the usual desert despair to create a kind of post-nuclear retro atmosphere. Most importantly, this Prime Video production is produced by Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan, the couple behind Westworld.

The title says it all about the subject, but the most interesting thing about this series about the rise of Max Pezzali and Mauro Repetto’s pop group, 883, is the creative team. Leading this series for Sky is in fact Sydney Sibilia, director of I Can Quit Whenever I Want and Rose Island. It will be a dramedy, i.e. a fusion of comedy and drama, and will tell the story of how two marginal and unlucky teenagers changed everything in Italian music in the 1990s gaining a totally unexpected success.

This time, the detective is Jodie Foster, 31 years after The Silence of the Lambs. True Detective is one of the best series ever, although each season has its own personality and does not always match everyone’s taste. Each time it has original twists, great performances and a captivating way of dealing with the detective story genre. What we know about this fourth season that will be on Sky is that it is set in Alaska during the long, dark winter and involves the disappearance of six men.