Hitting the screens in 2014

Over the past couple of years, cinema has closed ranks. The internet has wreaked havoc on big budget Hollywood productions. With less people actually bothering to go to the cinema - opting to either watch films at home via legal or not-so-legal means - big studios have had to scramble for ways to get us back into the multiplexes and ensure their pockets remain lined.

Apart from being forced to sit through films in 3D, this means adaptations of comics and bestselling novels. And sequels and remakes of said adaptations of bestselling novels and comics. In fact, stats point to Iron Man 3 and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug as being two of the most lucrative films of 2013.

Which makes for a sad media landscape - it's no wonder most people are resorting to television for their fix of quality fiction.

But there we are. And the crop of 'highly anticipated' films for the coming year only confirms that not much will change.

And here, in completely random order, are some of them.

Noah

Director Darren Aronofsky (Requirem for a Dream, Black Swan) is at his best when he goes big (see: The Fountain) and how much bigger than the story of Noah and the flood can you get? With an all-star cast headed by Russell Crowe - and flanked by Jennifer Connolly and Emma Watson (Hermoine herself) - this is set to be an attention-grabber for sure.

Interstellar

Another director who doesn't shy away from a challenge is Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight trilogy, Inception) and this thriller about a group of space explorers will take viewers across the furthest reaches of space and time (via a wormhole). Featuring an ensemble not to be sniffed at - Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain and Casey Affleck - Interstellar looks to be a dead-serious take on a genre usually reserved for cheap thrills. Which would be business as usual for Nolan. Let's just hope it's as technically dazzling as his previous output too.

Guardians of the Galaxy

On the other end of the space opera spectrum, we have the latest Marvel Comics property to break onto the silver screen: in which a jet pilot finds himself stranded on a distant extreme of our galaxy and is charged with gathering a rag-tag team of aliens to protect our slice of space from imminent danger. It certainly won't be Marvel's only foray into cinemas this year, but it'll be the only one that isn't a sequel. However, the post-credits sequence of this year's Thor: The Dark World, alludes directly to a plot point hat can only come to fruition in Guardians of the Galaxy... which also, incidentally, features Malta's own Marama Corlett among its cast.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

It looks like things will take a darker turn for Marvel's patriotic paladin with this sequel. Following on from 2012's Avengers Assemble, Steve Rogers/Captain America - having only recently been revived from a cryogenic sleep - struggles to fall in line with the morally compromised modern times. But the past comes back to haunt him in another form: the formidable Soviet threat calling itself The Winter Soldier.

X-Men: Days of Future Past

Though of course culled from the Marvel Comics stable, the film rights for X-Men characters don't belong to Marvel STUDIOS (same applies for Spider-Man). Which means that, for better or worse, they won't be joining the crossover-orgy of the Avengers-affiliated films. But this time-hopping tale - an adaptation of one of the most beloved story arcs in the history of X-Men comics - is a follow-up of both X-Men: First Class (2011) as well as last year's The Wolverine, creating an intricate little mini-universe of its own. But more to the point: our mutants will be toggling back and forth in time to prevent a mutant genocide, and will be going head-to-head with Bolivar Trask and his giant robots (or 'sentinels'). More importantly still: Trask will be played by Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones's Tyrion Lannister).

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Just in case you don't get your fill of superheroes next year, Andrew Garfield will be back to doing just whatever a spider can in this sequel-of-a-revamp. Following a successful update of the Spider-Man story back in 2011, director Marc Webb (!) of 500 Days of Summer will be helming a sequel which, judging by trailers, will be chock-a-block with villains... and Jamie Foxx's Electro looks to be a particularly memorable one.

22 Jump Street

Last year's remake of 21 Jump Street was a surprise comedy hit. Ostensibly an updated film version of the 1980s sitcom of the same name which starred a young Johnny Depp - who makes a memorably grotesque cameo - the film exploited Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum's comedy chops to full effect. Whether or not the upcoming sequel - in which our protagonists 'graduate' to college - will live up to the original remains to be seen, but there's no doubting a demand for it.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part I

Oh, Hunger Games. You've stolen everyone's heart and now you're fluttering away, like the titular bird of the final instalment in the teenagers-forced-into-gladiatorial-combat trilogy, adapted from Suzanne Collins's bestselling young adult novels. But you won't be going away anytime soon after all. Like Twilight and Harry Potter, the final chapter of the novel will be split into two separate films: ensuring that studios milk the franchise bone try.

The Hobbit: There and Back Again

But no franchise will be as thoroughly milked as The Hobbit. Reeling on the success of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which charmed audiences worldwide back in the early noughties, director Peter Jackson decided to expand JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit - originally a slim children's book that only tangentially serves as a prequel to the chunky LOTR saga - into three films, with mixed results. The just-released second instalment was definitely a more action packed and satisfying improvement on its clumsy original though, so here's hoping that the climax will deliver the goods. All of them.