It’s a new year so it’s time for my annual collection of the coming year’s most anticipated films. Here we go...

1. Star Wars: Rogue One

If The Force Awakens was out a little earlier it definitely would have made my Best of 2015 list. I see no reason why Star Wars: Rogue One won’t be as good. This film is not going to be part of the over arching Star Wars story, rather it takes place before A New Hope and details a band of rebels’ attempts to steal the plans to the Death Star. Director Gareth Edwards says his spin-off will involve “shades of grey” rather than the black and white of Star Wars films past.

2. Captain America: Civil War
Considering its scope and the massive cast of characters, Captain America 3 may as well be The Avengers 3. Using Marvel’s successful Civil War event as a jumping off point, this will tell the story of what happens when the whole superhero community splits into two factions; one that is happy to share their real-life identities with the government, and another that is against it. If you’ve ever wanted to see Iron Man and Captain America in all-out war against each other; this is the film for you.

3. Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them
Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them is the first in a trilogy of Harry Potter spin-off movies. The story was written directly for the screen by JK Rowling and the film is being directed by David Yates, who was at helm of the last four Potter flicks. Eddie Redmayne is playing magizoologist Newt Scamander in this adventure which takes place around 70 years before the Harry Potter stories.

4. Independence Day: Resurgence
Twenty years after the first film, the aliens from Independence Day are back. There’s very little to say about this film other than, no – Will Smith isn’t in it, but yes – it looks awesome.

5. Hail, Caesar!
This Coen brothers’ comedy is set at in Hollywood’s Golden Age and follows a day in the life of studio fixer Edward Mannix (Josh Brolin) on the fictional Capitol Pictures lot and stars George Clooney, Ralph Fiennes, Tilda Swinton and Scarlett Johansson. It looks like the Coens have recaptured the energy of films like O Brother, Where Art Thou?

6. Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice
The last round of Superman and Batman films were enjoyable enough, but none of them set the world alight. Pit them against each other though and things might be different. Batman travels to Metropolis to combat Superman who he sees as a threat to humanity. Like Captain America, if you want to watch Bats and Supes fighting, look no further.

7. Suicide Squad
Suicide Squad stars some of Batman’s most famous adversaries and sees this gang of misfit supervillains thrown together by the US government for a top-secret mission. It stars Will Smith and is being directed by David Ayer which is good if he’s tried to replicate the kind of work he did in Fury and End of Watch.

8. Passengers
Sometimes Hollywood is so transparent. Passengers is being directed by Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game), stars current megastars Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence, is a love story set in space and is due to come out just before Christmas. It’s just all so calculated, isn’t it?
But you know what? I don’t care, because Passengers is probably going to be brilliant.
The film takes place on a spaceship bound for a distant planet. The ship is filled with thousands of passengers who hope to colonize a new world, all of whom are in a decades-long cryogenic sleep. However, when Pratt wakes up early with 60 years to go before they reach their destination, he decides to wake up a female passenger (Lawrence). It sounds like Moon meets Gravity meets Interstellar, and when you throw in a robot voiced by Michael Sheen, you may as well just take my money now.

9. Story of Your Life

Another cool-sounding sci-fi feature is Story of Your Life. Based on an award-winning short story about humanity’s first contact with a superior alien species, it promises to be a challenging, mind-expanding curio. It also stars Amy Adams and she hardly ever appears in anything bad.

10. The BFG
The film I am most excited about overall is The BFG. It’s one of my favourite directors (Steven Spielberg), directing one of my favourite actors (Mark Rylance) in an adaption of a book by one of my favourite authors (Roald Dahl). It feels like a perfect storm of the right director working on the right material. I have very, very (probably unreasonably) high-hopes for The BFG, but when have the movies ever let me down before?

Mike Shaw writes in the KM Group's What's On every week.