Mad Max with shared permaculture vegetable gardens? A space for living together in non-violent communication for zombies and living people The Walking Dead ? Renewable energies and sobriety have enabled global harmony in fallout ?
We feel that it makes you dream… Apocalypse scenarios and extremely dark uchronies have, for a long time, been the spice of film, series and video game productions, sometimes to the point of becoming a pop culture cliché. As a new year begins, let’s see what the future (on screens) has in store for us in terms of apocalypse…
Alien in the cinema, Alien in series… Aliens everywhere
A dirty creature, stupid soldiers, greedy politicians, industrial groups who lead all these little people by the end of their noses… And an almost invisible humanity, in a cold and silent universe. Yum yum the future of the Alien saga. And in 2024 (or 2025, we have to see), there are not one but two projects around the franchise.
First the movie Alien: Romulus. We don’t know much about the story but Fede Alvarez will direct, a specialist in horror films. Not enough to imagine a revolution in the dark and terrifying message that the saga carries.
As for the series, the plot will take place on Earth, several decades before the events of the first film. Interesting… Especially since it’s the screenwriter Noah Hawley, creator of Fargo, who will be in charge. But there is no point in getting carried away too quickly, without revealing the precise scenario, Noah Hawley has already clarified that the big question of Aliens will remain the same: “Does humanity deserve to survive”.
The alphabet of despair from A to Z (ombies)
After a year marked by the great success of the series adaptation of the video game masterpiece, The Last of Us2024 should still deliver its share of futuristic stories featuring zombies.
Besides the new iteration of The Walking Dead, The Ones Who Live will see the return of Rick and Michonne. With his title to Friends, will the series be lighter? There is little chance, even if the two characters will discover a world where the war between humans and zombies will give rise to a new order. According to the plot, their love could be the key…
In the absence of hope, we should find humor in Marvel Zombies, animated series adaptation of the comics, rather hilarious. But for an informed public. Not everyone laughs at the idea of seeing superheroes transformed into zombies.
Post-apo everywhere, hope nowhere
The big big theme of the year 2024 could be post-apocalypse. Especially because the most anticipated series is falloutadaptation (again) of a cult video game (again). fallout is a very ambitious Prime Video series. After The Rings of Power, the platform is expected around the corner. Will it tell of a joyful future for humanity? We’ll let you be the judge: 200 years after a total atomic war, humanity lives in a world of irradiated ruins and a chaos where the strange and the absurd reign… The inhabitants of bunkers who spent 200 years underground discover this universe at the same time as us.
In the same vein, but with monkeys, the saga The Planet of the Apes returns with a new series of films. The first part The New Kingdom is planned this year.
We also expect a lot of Furiosaprequel to the reboot (are you following?) of Mad Max, George Miller version. Still no hope, but a damn good film in perspective…
Franchises forever
You will have noticed, none of the major futuristic projects of 2024 offers an original universe. Among the many franchises which will see new episodes in 2024, we can add Dune (with the continuation of Denis Villeneuve’s trilogy, but also a series on HBO Max…), Terminator (with an animated series on Netflix) or Blade Runner (again with a Prime Video series). Dangers of AI, threats of environmental apocalypse, ruin of humanity through technological “progress”… The future will have a taste of déjà vu.
To find a little novelty and optimism, we may have to wait for films about which we know less. Megalopolis, by Francis Ford Coppola, will depict a New York in full reconstruction after a cataclysm. The hero is a utopian architect…
Otherwise, Bruno Dumont promised, with The Empirea space opera with its own sauce… Bertrand Bonello will talk about the future of AI and humanity with The beast. Finally, Chinese filmmaker Bì Gàn intrigues with his film Resurrection. In the future, a young woman in a coma seeks to survive thanks to androids to whom she tells stories. Dreams or nightmares? The future will tell.