The most anticipated movies of 2023

There are some BIG movies on the horizon this year – some we know the characters like old friends while others will introduce new heroes and villains (I really don’t know what to make of the new horror Winnie the Pooh movie).

To get you excited about this year’s blockbusters, I’ve taken a specific look at sequels, whether in the hotly anticipated or the why-are-they-still-going (Scream 6!?) class.

As always, there is data analysis and visualisation to help sharpen our view, and I’ll discuss the methodology at the end of the article.

So, let’s get started with four contenders for a data-driven movie of the year!

Dune: Part 2

Denis Villeneuve’s second instalment of the 1984 classic from Frank Herbert. The first movie collected a whopping score of 8.0 and Villeneuve’s (director) last 5 movies average out at 7.7, which includes Blade Runner 2049, Arrival and Sicario.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

My favourite of the Marvel universe and strong prequel ratings (8.0 and 7.6 respectively), so this third instalment has a lot to live up to. There was some controversy with director James Gun being let go after Vol 2, but he was reinstated after much protest (character Drax said he would walk from the films if James wasn’t brought back!).

Gun’s other recent films aren’t as impressive from a ratings perspective (7.2 for the Suicide Squad, 6.1 for Brightburn and 6.1 for The Belko Experiment) but he does seem to have a knack with the Guardians, so let’s keep our fingers crossed.

John Wick: Chapter 4

All three previous movies scored exactly the same (7.4) and that’s about all Chad Stahelski is known for directorially, so likelihood is, Chapter 4 will also score 7.4!

This movie does star Donnie Yen, who I love watching (Ip Man and Rogue One), so perhaps this will edge the rating up a notch…

Indiana Jones and the dial of destiny

What can we say about Dr Jones? Three absolute classics and then Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which I haven’t re-watched since it came out in 2008. There’s been a lot of talk about the de-aging of Harrison Ford but who knows how this movie will play out.

Director James Manigold has some impressive past movies (8.1 for both Ford Vs Ferrari and Logan), so let’s hope he can bring the old Indy magic back!

If you’re a movie buff then you might ask why some of the Marvel movies (The Marvels, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Blue Beetle) aren’t in this line up?

Well, they’ve been let down by the latest releases and the director. Although Black Panther (7.2) and Spider-Man (8.2) were Marvellous, Doctor Strange (6.9), Eternals (6.3) and Thor (6.3) were relatively weak.

This movie will never self-destruct

One series that’s trending the right way - Mission Impossible (Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning - Part One), so keep an eye out for Tom Cruise in 2023.

Let the games end

One series that might have to be put down – The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes), so perhaps wait for the TV release.

Analysis details

Data source:

The IMDB database

Tech stack:

Google BigQuery, Tableau and Excel.

Analysis methodology

This type of analysis will always look simple but beneath the final story is thought, planning, coding, data analysis and visualisation experimentation.
The IMDB data is clean and a relational structure but does take some working with to get used to.
The first step was to sketch out the plan for the analysis by thinking about what makes a great movie and what data is available?
- How did the last 5 prequel movies turn out?
- Who is the director and what were their last 5 movies like?
- Who are the main stars for the movies and how did their last 5 movies go?
By combining different datasets and using Tableau, I was able to assess the different ratings by each movie.
Data cleansing (in the coding phase) was key to align prequels to the movies.
The actors’ previous movie ratings proved too diverse, so were excluded from the final analysis (see image below).
I landed on using the prequel and director ratings to gauge the 2023 release, which resulted in the scatter chart seen at the start of the page.

Diversity of movie star ratings

I looked into the previous movie ratings for the actors/actresses but these proved too diverse, so were excluded from the final analysis.

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