Queer Movies We’re Excited to Watch this year

This year is going to be a tough one for moviegoers. Analysts are expecting box office revenue to drop, with some weekends not even receiving new releases. Why? As I pointed out last year amid the historic Hollywood labor strikes, viewers were always going to feel their effects in a delayed fashion: Last year, the studios had enough content on the schedule to maintain the illusion of business as usual while they dragged their feet on making a fair deal with writers and actors. But you can’t put the industry on pause for half a year with no consequences — and the average consumer is finally going to notice. A lot of productions have been postponed, release dates have been moved, and as a result, 2024 is looking a tad anemic right now.

Still, there are several prominent LGBTQ+ releases on our radar. Writer-comedian Julio Torres is making his directorial debut with Problemista, a surreal comedy originally slated for release in 2023. Also receiving a delayed premiere is Ethan Coen’s lesbian crime caper Drive-Away Dolls. And Challengers, which I affectionately think of as “the Zendaya tennis threesome movie,” will hit theaters this April.

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Much like 2023, the theme of 2024 is bold, cross-genre fare with a strong voice. From musicals to dramas to horror films, there’s something queer for everyone who’s watching the calendar closely enough. So even though this year is going to be bumpy and a little uneven, let’s get out to theaters and show some support for queer cinema.

Below are LGBTQ+ movies that are on our radar.

Good Grief

You could film Dan Levy watching paint dry while wearing a sweater and I’d probably watch for two hours, which only makes Good Grief an even more automatic watch. This Netflix romantic dramedy marks the feature-length directorial debut for the beloved Schitt’s Creek star. Telling the story of a man mourning his husband while on a trip to Paris with his best friends (Ruth Negga and Himesh Patel), the film promises to be a tear-jerker with beautiful scenery, which is honestly an ideal wintertime vibe.

Mean Girls

For some reason, marketing teams aren’t selling musicals as musicals anymore. I suspect it’s because there’s a kind of person (i.e. straight people) who are allergic to a little song and dance in their movies, which is why queer audiences need to keep the faith. So remember: Mean Girls is a musical. They can cut as many trailers for the Broadway adaptation as they want without showing anyone actually singing, but that won’t change what we’re going to see in theaters in a couple of weeks.

While it’s hard to imagine this topping the 2004 comedy classic, I’m still expecting the new Mean Girls to be a blast. Reneé Rapp has the “rizz,” as Gen Z puts it, to be Regina George. Jaquel Spivey (A Strange Loop) and Auli‘i Cravalho (Crush) are getting the chance to shine in big-screen roles, and casting Busy Philipps as the “cool mom” is a frankly inspired choice. They’re all going to sing, and there’s nothing musical-phobes can do to stop them.

Ponyboi

Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival later this month, the Esteban Arango-directed film Ponyboi will also be available to stream online January 25. Written by and starring River Gallo, who recently appeared in the documentary Every Body, Ponyboi follows an intersex worker on the run from the mob, and I’m sold on that premise alone. Adding Murray Bartlett to the cast only sweetens the deal. When I interviewed Gallo last year, they described the film as a “mafia Euphoria fever dream.” Put it on the poster, I’m there.

Drive-Away Dolls

This is my most anticipated movie of the year — and fortunately, I won’t have to wait very long to see it. A lesbian road trip crime caper from Ethan Cohen, the legendary co-director of Fargo? Say no more, I’m already sold. That’s not to mention the absolutely stacked cast, which includes Pedro Pascal, Colman Domingo, Beanie Feldstein, Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan, and more. I grew up on Coen Brothers crime comedies like Raising Arizona and O Brother, Where Art Thou? so I’m delighted to see that niche finally get the queer twist it deserves.

Love Lies Bleeding

There are elevator pitches and then there’s “put Kristen Stewart in a lesbian bodybuilding thriller.” We’ve been watching this project closely for years, ever since Stewart was first tapped to star, and it’s finally coming to theaters this spring thanks to A24. The new trailer is short on plot details and heavy on menacing shots of a criminal underworld, but honestly all we need to know is that Stewart plays a gym manager who falls for Katy O’Brian’s bodybuilder character, and that the two women somehow get wrapped up in some shady dealings involving a dead body. Director Rose Glass is responsible for Saint Maud, one of the most undersung horror movies of the 2010s, so it’s exciting to see her get to direct my favorite living ghost hunter.

Femme

Making its second consecutive appearance on a Them list of anticipated movies, American audiences will finally get to see Femme this year. A queer thriller set in London’s drag scene, Femme stars Nathan Stewart-Jarrett as Jules, a queen who seeks revenge on the man who attacked him years ago after running into him at a gay sauna. The film has received excellent reviews in the U.K., with The Guardian calling it an “outstandingly tense psychodrama” and Empire calling it “pulse-pounding.” Watch out for this one; I’m expecting it to be the sleeper LGBTQ+ hit of the spring.

Challengers

As far as I’m concerned, bisexuality, tennis, and love triangles go together like bread, jam, and butter. Directed by Luca Guadagnino of Call Me by Your Name fame, and starring Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, and Mike Faist, Challengers tells the story of a tennis coach and the former star player overseeing her husband’s career. Based on the steamy trailer, this one appears to be continuing in the Saltburn theme of people being mean and menacingly sexual with each other as a cipher for more complicated rivalries, and that’s a formula for good reason: It’s fun to watch hot people do bad things to each other. Come for Zendaya, stay for the ball puns we’ll all make afterward.

Problemista

Julio Torres and Tilda Swinton are a match made in weirdo heaven. Problemista was originally supposed to come out last summer but it was delayed due to the strikes. This comedy tells the tale of an El Salvodorean toy designer (Torres) who works for an eccentric art-world figure (Swinton) to remain in the United States on a work visa. Written, directed, and co-produced by Torres, this is a movie perfect for die-hard “Wells for Boys” stans and for fans of surreal A24 movies more generally. There’s no official release date for Problemista yet, but we’ll update this post when it has one.

MaXXXine

A 2022 film highlight for me was Mia Goth’s eight minute-long Pearl monologue. A 2023 highlight was watching Mia Goth shouting “MEMBERS OF THE BUS!” in Infinity Pool. Basically, at this point, I think we can expect Mia Goth to absolutely delight us on an annual basis going forward. MaXXXine, the third film in Ti West’s X slasher trilogy, takes place after the first movie, following survivor Maxine (Goth) as she moves to Los Angeles to become an actress. After Goth played dual roles in X, and then played a younger version of the geriatric queer killer in Pearl, this film promises to be another showcase for an actress who’s quickly becoming the most interesting screen presence of the decade. Give us more Goth. Give us more Goth now.

Joker 2: Folie À Deux

Casting Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn in the Joker sequel feels like a decision made to drive me, personally, to my absolute limit. The last time the actress and pop icon did a press cycle for a major film role, she shared that she studied cats and did animalistic hotel room exercises to more fully embody Patrizia Gucci’s feline essence. What sorts of headlines will emerge from her role in the musical Batman-universe film?

Will she share that she became a bisexual psychiatrist in real life to prepare for the part? Will she have undergone extensive cartwheel training? I’ve officially been dreading this for over a year now, but in truth, I know I won’t be able to take my eyes off Gaga when I inevitably see this film in October. Here’s hoping we get another delightfully deranged take on the beloved comic book villainess.

Wicked

Don’t even try defying your urge to see this one. The Broadway adaptation was almost done filming when the SAG-AFTRA strike began last year, but it appears it’s been able to hold its release date despite the production delay. Starring out queer actress Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, Ariana Grande as Glinda, and Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero, Wicked is almost certainly going to escape the ‘“musical marketed as not-a-musical” trap.

We all know this one has songs in it! There’s no hiding it! Apart from that certainty, we don’t know a lot about the film yet apart from a couple of first-look images shared by director Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians), but the cast alone is enough for me.

The original article can be found on THEM.