Most Exciting 2018 Films That Aren't Remakes, Reboots Or Sequels

Nowadays, it seems like everything is a prequel to the sequel of a reboot of a franchise, with mixed results. While the Marvel and Harry Potter powerhouses continue to vacuum up all of the money, many would-be franchise starters fail to launch (or crash and burn), while others fail to live up to their blockbuster potential. (Hi there, DC Extended Universe.)

It's enough to make every single film analyst on the internet write thinkpieces moaning about Hollywood's lack of original ideas, but that's horse puckey. In 2018 alone, there's a veritable truckload of original properties headed to screens that you, personally, should be excited about. If you've got prequel-sequel-reboot-franchise burnout or if you (for some reason) need proof that not everybody online knows what they're talking about, you can look forward to these flicks.

London Has Fallen director Babak Najafi directs veteran actress Taraji P. Henson in Proud Mary, a film which has nothing to do with Creedence Clearwater Revival but still looks really cool. Henson portrays a mob hitwoman with roughly a thousand guns who is forced to deal with a surly kid whom she accidentally orphans (hey, it happens to the best of us). The trailer, which cannot resist using a slow, soulful cover of the Creedence tune, promises a blaxploitation-flavored actioner along the lines of Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown, the last mainstream action film anyone can remember to feature a black woman in the lead role. 

Henson looks incredibly badass in the trailer, and the supporting cast features The Walking Dead's Xander Berkeley and the one and only Danny Glover, who is definitely not too old for this stuff. The film is also getting a January 12, 2018, release through Sony's Screen Gems division, and Sony Pictures — which needs literally every last dollar it can get — has to be hoping for a huge sleeper hit. But hey, even if Proud Mary made $6 billion, it'd probably still be another couple decades before we got another black female action hero.

It's a basic fact of life that Jason Bateman is funny as all get-out, and the long-gestating comedy thriller Game Night sounds like the perfect vehicle for his deadpan brand of humor. It's been in development since 2013, when the script by Mark Perez (the brilliant mind behind The Country Bears and Herbie: Fully Loaded) got some attention at Warner Brothers. It's about a group of friends who regularly get together for ... well, take a wild guess. They find themselves in the middle of a murder mystery, with Rachel McAdams and Manchester By the Sea's Kyle Chandler helping Bateman puzzle things out.

The writing/directing duo of John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein will direct their second feature, the first being the 2015 remake of Vacation, which — to put it politely — was not terribly well-received. But they also wrote Spider-Man: Homecoming, so they obviously have a comic touch, and it's hard to go wrong with Bateman's hilarious face onscreen. Game Night is out February 23, 2018.

In an eight-year span, Allen and Albert Hughes — the directing duo credited as the Hughes Brothers — dropped three straight classics in Menace II Society, Dead Presidents, and From Hell. Then, they disappeared for nine years before returning with the middling Denzel Washington vehicle The Book of Eli in 2010. Little has been heard from them since, but older brother Albert (by nine minutes; they're fraternal twins) is back with Alpha, an action-packed thriller set some 20,000 years ago during an ice age.

Kodi Smit-McPhee, who has been holding down the role of Nightcrawler for the last couple X-Men films, will star as a young primitive man out on his first major hunt who is separated from the rest of his tribe. Apparently the first ancestor of every living dog lover, he trains and domesticates a wolf which has been abandoned by its pack to help him get home before winter can freeze him to death. First-time screenwriter Dan Wiedenhaupt takes a crack at Hughes' original story, with Sony Pictures also promising a March 2, 2018, release in 3-D IMAX, which will be an awesome way to see this movie, judging by the trailer above. It looks totally bonkers, and — especially if you're a dog person — absurdly heartwarming.

Very few Hollywood features have ever been based on entire theme parks. Individual attractions like the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, sure, but not entire parks. Fortunately, the wonderful folks at Dickhouse Productions (the illustrious company behind Jackass and its related properties) have found the perfect candidate for adaptation: Action Park, the notoriously dangerous water park that managed to operate for nearly 20 consecutive years while killing and maiming so many people. Way more deaths and mutilations than should ever happen at a water park.

Cleverly titled Action Point, the flick will star venerated thespians Johnny Knoxville and Chris Pontius as daredevils who build their own (stupefyingly irresponsible) amusement park. Let the hilarity ensue. It's being described as a "narrative movie with stunts" along the lines of Bad Grandpa, which of course the world would be infinitely poorer without. Little else is known about the film, but if the idea of those two guys and their friends staggering around an amusement park that's designed to hurt people doesn't get your butt in the seat, there's no additional information that will. Action Point is set for release on May 11, 2018. 

Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines series of novels is pretty freaking nuts, and it's been begging for a film adaptation since the first book's 2001 publication, which is actually when the film rights were first optioned. Up to the plate steps Peter Jackson, who co-wrote the script for the forthcoming film with frequent collaborators Fran Walsh (his wife) and Philippa Boyens. This trio also worked on all of the Lord of the Rings films, and those turned out pretty good, so it's OK to be optimistic. 

Speaking of Middle-earth, Hugo Weaving has joined the cast, and visual effects artist Christian Rivers — who also worked on the original trilogy — will take the helm in his directorial debut. The film takes place in a post-apocalyptic society decimated by the "Sixty Minute War," in which entire cities on wheels roam the landscape in search of resources. Judging by the visual pedigree of the filmmakers involved and the awesome concept art posted to Jackson's Twitter, it safe to say that audiences will leave Mortal Engines with eyes the size of dinner plates — or, if seen in IMAX, serving trays. You've been warned. It opens in wide release December 14, 2018.