2011 is shaping up to be a pretty great year as far as pop culture goes — in fact, it’s so overstuffed with potentially terrific content that we thought we’d cull down the things we’re most anticipating to a mere 100. It’s a lineup so strong, we didn’t even need to include returning TV shows (though don’t get us wrong, we’re still psyched for Breaking Bad and Eastbound & Down) or the next batch of viral cat videos, but whether you agree with our rankings or not, at least there’s plenty to salivate over. (And no, we’re not going to make you click 100 times. You’ve got a busy 2011 ahead of you, and we respect that!)
1. Tree of Life Terrence Malick’s long-anticipated fantasy-drama, which follows Sean Penn from happy childhood into miserable adulthood. It took a lifetime to make, too.
2. The Book of Mormon South Park: The Musical was, hands-down, one of the funniest musicals ever composed. Now Trey Parker and Matt Stone are teaming up with Avenue Q’s Robert Lopez and Jason Moore to bring their blasphemy to the stage.
3. Watch the Throne Kanye West and Jay-Z’s long-rumored collaboration will be out soon. West has said that “Monster,” off My Beautiful Dark Fantasy, was originally intended for this collab, so who knows what will be on there.
4. Mildred Pierce Since Far From Heaven in 2002, Todd Haynes has only completed one film: I’m Not There. Now he’s teaming up with HBO and leading ladies Kate Winslet and Evan Rachel Wood for a five-hour mini-series based on the James M. Cain classic.
5. Born This Way Can Lady Gaga possibly top the meat dress, the record-breaking YouTube–view counts, or her own album-sales records?
6. Super 8 Potent geek bait: J.J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg unite for a sci-fi flick about something that breaks loose when a train crashes on the way to Area 51. Elle Fanning stars.
7. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Having nailed one controversial hacker in The Social Network, David Fincher turns his attention to Lisbeth Sander, who will be played by Rooney Mara. How will she compare to Noomi Rapace (pictured)?
8. Untitled Beyoncé Album Now that Beyoncé has said that Sasha Fierce is dead and murdered, what will her new stage persona be like? And could Beyoncé possibly tour with Gaga?
9. The Beaver Before Mel Gibson’s racist-antisemitic-batshit breakdown, this film, directed by Jodie Foster, was one of the hottest scripts in Hollywood and a rumored Oscar contender. Now we just can’t wait to see what Gibson does next.
10. Untitled Strokes Album The Strokes spent six months recording the new album, threw out their entire original set of songs, and started from scratch in Albert Hammond Jr.’s house. But when will we get to hear it?
11. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 Finally, the Potter franchise comes to a close, with David Yates directing the grand finale. Just as interesting as the film itself will be the moves Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, and Daniel Radcliffe make this year to position themselves for life after Harry.
12. Untitled Fiona Apple Album Fiona Apple hasn’t released an album since 2005’s Extraordinary Machine (though she did pop up on Margaret Cho’s comedy album last year). Billboard reports that she’ll return this spring. We can only dream.
13. Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark The box-office receipts and hospital bills are already stacking up for Julie Taymor’s goliath gamble. Bono’s even decided to come see the thing. And eventually, some day, probably, maybe, it will actually open. That is, barring some unexpected Doc Ock attack.
14. Luck David Milch struck out last time with John From Cincinatti, but now the NYPD Blue and Deadwood creator is coming back with a terrific premise for his HBO series: Dustin Hoffman, Dennis Farina, Nick Nolte, John Ortiz, Richard Kind, and others all play guys hanging around a horse-racing track.
15. The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism & Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures In March, Tony Kushner’s long-anticipated drama will begin performances at the Public Theater, where its success will inevitably be compared — one way or another — to that of Angels in America.
16. Bossypants Most celebrity memoirs are dull, ghost-written, predictable things by people who are already overexposed. But one written by the press-shy, hilarious Tina Fey? We’re in.
17. The Muppets The Avengers aren’t the only old franchise getting rebooted this year. Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller wrote the Muppets reboot — and have reportedly gathered an insane number of Hollywood friends to join them, from Chris Cooper and Ricky Gervais to Zach Galifianakis and Dave Grohl (who will reportedly take over the drums once Animal gets sent off to anger-management therapy).
18. L.A. Noire The Rockstar Games crew explored L.A. in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, but now they’re going old school with a throwback crime game — with gorgeous, cinematic graphics — that takes place in the heyday of L.A.’s worst behavior.
19. The Pale King David Foster Wallace never finished his novel about IRS agents toiling in Midwestern cubicles, but it will be published anyway. His editor Michael Pietch cut the text down from about 1,000 pages to 400 and has said it “takes agonizing daily events like standing in lines, traffic jams, and horrific bus rides — things we all hate — and turns them into moments of laughter and understanding.”
20. Tha Carter IV While in prison, Lil Wayne supposedly focused on little but getting his career back on track. It is, without a doubt, one of the most anticipated post-prison albums ever. But can he steal the thunder back from Kanye and pals?
21. The Motherf**ker With the Hat Chris Rock makes his &%$#ing Broadway debut as an A.A. counselor to Bobby Cannavale’s recovering alcoholic (Annabella Sciorra plays Cannavale’s still-on-the-sauce lady). Should help wash the taste of Grown Ups out of your mouth.
22. Untitled Radiohead Album Thom Yorke is done mucking about with Flea, so Radiohead’s ready to put Coldplay back in their place. Unanswered question No. 1: Will the new album come with a new distribution gimmick?
23. Cave of Forgotten Dreams Werner Herzog made a cave-painting documentary, and he made it in 3-D. Did we stutter?!
24. Sweet Bird Nicole Kidman and James Franco should have a vamp-off playing a drunk movie star and her gigolo in this restaging of the Tennessee Williams play.
25. George Condo
Kanye’s favorite artist — he did all of the My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy covers, including that one where ‘Ye’s boning a phoenix or whatever — takes over the New Museum.
26. Hell on Wheels AMC’s latest crack at TV’s upper echelon features a confederate soldier out for vengeance. No zombies, but blood!
27. Swamplandia Four years after the publication of her acclaimed short story collection St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, and months after landing on The New Yorker’s “20 under 40,” Karen Russell’s first novel arrives. It’s guaranteed to be the best book about a family of alligator wrestlers this, or any, year.
28. Kid Icarus: Uprising The first game to buy for your new Nintendo 3DS will challenge you to defeat Medusa. Pro tip: avoid eye contact.
29. A Dangerous Method David Cronenberg reunites with Viggo Mortensen for the first time since Eastern Promises. Are more naked knife fights on the horizon?
30. Blue Nights Joan Didion’s memoir on aging is her first new book since The Year of Magical Thinking. You can probably start crying now.
31. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Pt.1 The penultimate installment in the franchise promises the usual mass hysteria and boffo box-office numbers. One other thing it promises: a vampire baby breaking its mother’s ribs while in the womb.
32. The Chicago Code A new Fox cop show created by The Shield’s Shawn Ryan and starring Jennifer Beals. Fun fact for your TV-viewing party: It used to be called Ride-Along, but Ryan changed it partially because “adding ‘Chicago’ to anything is always a good idea.”
33. Detox The eternally delayed Dr. Dre record is supposedly dropping this year. And before you begin throwing things at your computer screen: Officially released singles and music videos suggest that this is the closest we’ve ever come to that actually being true.
34. Death of a Salesman Philip Seymour Hoffman as Willy Loman? Perfect next-generation casting.
35. Untitled R. Kelly Memoir Finally all his secrets will be revealed! We’re most looking forward to finding out what “Bump N’ Grind” is about.
36. The Big Roar With their debut album, Welsh rockers the Joy Formidable make their debut here, loudly. Bonus: They can immediately become the one thing you know about Wales.
37. Game of Thrones HBO’s adaptation of the cult medieval fantasy series features the acting talent of Peter Dinklage, the writing talent of David Benioff (The 25th Hour), and, one could safely assume, whole truckloads of unwashed extras.
38. Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception In a plot partially inspired by T.E. Lawrence, hero Nathan Drake searches for lost city Iram of the Pillars. Prepare to call in sick.
39. Arthur Russell Brand, in the part he was born to reboot. Helen Mirren takes on the butler role which won the hilariously dry John Gielgud a Best Supporting Actor Oscar; Greta Gerwig gets Liza Minnelli’s old part, the shoplifting love interest.
40. Bridesmaids Kristen Wiig takes a shot at Ferrell-esque post-SNL stardom with a comedy she stars in and co-wrote (Paul Feig is directing; Judd Apatow is producing). Your first, and perhaps only, chance to see Wiig, Maya Rudolph, and Rose Byrne in matching dresses.
41. Cory Arcangel The 32-year-old Brooklyn-based multimedia artist best known for remixing the Mario Brothers gets a solo show at the Whitney in May.
42. Crazy, Stupid Love In this comedy from the directors of I Love You Phillip Morris, Ryan Gosling teaches newly single dad Steve Carell how to pick up chicks, a part for which Gosling did zero research.
43: Tomboy Indie-rock heartthrob and Animal Collective co-front man Panda Bear returns. That dude you know that has an MP3 blog is so psyched.
44. On the Road Walter Salles directs the first movie adaptation of Kerouac’s beat classic, with Sam Riley as Sal, Garrett Hedlund as Dean, and Kristen Stewart, Kirsten Dunst, Amy Adams, Viggo Mortensen, bennies, ludes, and alcohol rounding out the cast.
45. Melancholia See if Kirsten Dunst makes it to the end of Lars Von Trier’s latest, a “psychological disaster movie,” with her clitoris intact!
46. Real Steel Hugh Jackman. Boxing robots. What else do you need to know?
47. Untitled Santigold Album
Santi White returns with her “I” dotted, hopefully ready to catchily eviscerate Brooklyn with as much ease as she laid waste to the L.E.S. on 2008’s Santogold.
48. Glenn Ligon The artist who incorporates the work of writers such as James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, and Zora Neale Hurston into his text-based paintings gets a solo show at the Whitney, “Glenn Ligon: America.”
49. Portal 2 The sequel to the mindbending, popular Portal gives players a chance to blow holes (ahem, portals) in all new objects, in all new ways.
50. Unititled Battles Album
Since their last album, 2007’s breathtakingly intricate Mirrored, Battles lost interestingly coiffed core member Tyondai Braxton. But, hey — finally, new Battles!
51. The Onion News Network The uncontested masters of the fake-news business finally get the cable news show they deserve, on IFC.
52. The Skin That I Inhabit Pedro Almodóvar does a solid for Antonio Banderas’s rep, reuniting with the actor the first time since 1989, in a film about a plastic surgeon out for revenge.
53. Wounded Rhymes Swedish indie darling Lykke Li follows up 2008’s Youth Novels with a record she insists will be a little bit darker and more aggressive.
54. The Free World David Bezmozgis, the Canadian author of the short story collection Natasha, publishes his first novel, about a Russian Jewish family’s six months living in 1978 Rome.
55. Drive Carey Mulligan and Ryan Gosling co-star in this film by Nicolas Winding Refn (Bronson, Valhalla Rising) about a stunt man with a bounty on his head, in what is poised to be the most existential, grizzly action movie of the year.
56. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol Tom Cruise sets out to prove ridiculous sequel names will not keep him from box-office glory with the fourth Mission Impossible, co-starring Jeremy Renner and Josh Holloway, and, most tantalizing of all, directed by The Incredibles’s Brad Bird.
57. You Think That’s Bad The fourth collection of short stories from the master of the form, Jim Shepard.
58. Hugo Cabret Martin Scorsese adapts a children’s book about a mystery-solving orphan living in a train station in thirties Paris. With Jude Law, Chloe Moretz, Sacha Baron Cohen, and far fewer fuggedaboutits than usual.
59. X-Men: First Class The X-Men franchise goes back to its origins courtesy of director Matthew Vaughn, with James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender facing off as young Xavier and Magneto.
60. Iron and Wine’s Kiss Each Other Clean Bearded, sensitive Sam Beam goes electric.
61. Dye It Blonde The Smith Westerns are barely legal, but it’d be criminal to pass on their sophomore album.
62. Your Highness Another James Franco comedy, but this one co-stars Natalie Portman, Danny McBride, and Zooey Deschanel. Set in the Middle Ages, it can boast swords, sorcery, and sodomy.
63. How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying Daniel Radcliffe retakes Broadway, but this time with songs. And clothes!
64. Hedwig and the Angry Inch Finally, John Cameron Mitchell’s musical hits Broadway (and with little chance of injured stuntmen in the process).
65. The Uncoupling Inspired by Lysistrata, Meg Wolitzer’s new novel is about a small New Jersey town whose women go on a sex strike.
66. Three Sisters Indie power-couple Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard take on Chekhov. Be on the lookout for newly single Jake in the audience.
67. Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome The spinoff Caprica may be down for the count, but Syfy’s willing to go back to the frakkin’ well one more time.
68. Moneyball Brad Pitt plays Billy Beane in Bennett Miller’s first film since Capote. We would have loved to see the Steven Soderbergh version, but this should do nicely.
69. The Cut The new George Pelecanos crime novel follows an Iraq War veteran who becomes a pro at stealing back stolen goods, but bad guys don’t take kindly to losing their things.
70. The X Factor Simon Cowell lives to insult raw, hungry talent again, but this time with a bigger cut of the profits. Will it damage his former Idol stomping grounds?
71. Contagion Of the two Steven Soderbergh films this year, this is the one where an all-star cast (Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Marion Cotillard) is killed off one by one thanks to a global super-virus.
72. Otherwise Known As the Human Condition Do you love Geoff Dyer? Here’s 25 years of his material, including nonfiction essays and reviews.
73. Untitled Fleet Foxes Album There’s no release date or title yet, but we’re willing to wait if it means more pretty, pretty harmonies.
74. Jane Eyre White-hot Mia Wasikowska and red-hot Michael Fassbender together in a Gothic romance? Yes, please.
75. Shame And speaking of Mr. Fassbender, he plays a sex addict in Steve McQueen’s follow-up to Hunger. Not that you needed more, but Carey Mulligan’s in it too.
76. See a Little Light Husker Du’s Bob Mould tells all in this memoir, including his struggles with addiction and his homosexuality.
77. Arcadia In 1995, Billy Crudup stormed Broadway in this Tom Stoppard play, and Raul Esparza joins him for the revival.
78. Wilfred Elijah Wood puts those big doll eyes to good use as the off-kilter hero of this new FX series, where his best buddy is a dog whom he envisions as a man in a dog suit.
79. Dream House If you’re not intrigued enough by this thriller starring Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz, and Naomi Watts, there’s the Us Weekly angle: Weisz and Craig hooked up here after she split with Darren Aronofsky.
80. Simpsons Comics Meltdown Best. Comics. Ever? Matt Groening takes his long-running cartoon to the page.
81. Terra Nova (Fox) Steven Spielberg’s Land of the Lost–style sci-fi drama about a family who flees an apocalyptic 2149 to live in prehistoric times. Dinosaurs!
82. A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas More straight-edged tomfoolery from your favorite clean-living cutups.
83. Nicholson Baker’s House of Holes: A Book of Raunch The New Yorker’s senior video-game critic works blue with a filthy sex novel.
84. The Ides of March George Clooney directs Ryan Gosling (he’s busy this year!) in an adaptation of Broadway’s Farragut North, loosely based on Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign.
85. PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake Harvey’s eighth solo studio album, and first since 2007’s White Chalk. We’ve missed her.
86. Diary of a Madman Who wouldn’t want to see Geoffrey Rush leap around the BAM stage in pajamas like a stark-raving lunatic?
87. What’s Your Number Underrated screwball specialist Anna Faris steps into the Matthew McConaughey part in this romantic comedy about a woman reevaluating her last twenty boyfriends, including Faris’s real-life husband Chris Pratt.
88. Gruff Rhys’s Hotel Shampoo The Super Furry Animals singer serves up his third solo album of oddball psychedelia.
89. Demetri Martin’s This Is a Book The comedian’s first collection of short stories, essays, charts, graphs, and doodlings.
90. The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn Spielberg and Peter Jackson team for a 3-D, motion-capture adaptation of the popular-ish Belgian comic.
91. Gears of War 3 Disembowel more terrifying lizard-type things in this highly anticipated apocalyptic video-game sequel.
92. Beginners Ewan McGregor stars as a guy distracted from his new relationship with Melanie Laurent by memories of his dead parents in Mike Mills’s (Thumbsucker) latest.
93. Beastie Boys’ Hot Sauce Committee Vol. 2 The group’s first rap collection since 2004’s To the 5 Boroughs. We’ve got our fingers crossed.
94. Chester Brown’s Paying for It The graphic novelist graphically, novelistically details his experience as a customer of prostitutes.
95. Beauty Regina Spektor teams with lyricist Michael Korie (Grey Gardens) and director Tina Landau (Superior Donuts) to revamp the Sleeping Beauty story for Broadway.
96. The Borgias (Showtime) A papal Sopranos starring Jeremy Irons as the corrupt Pope Alexander VI.
97. Sarah Vowell’s Unfamiliar Fishes In her latest book, Vowell follows the exciting events leading to America’s annexation of Hawaii in 1898.
98. The Future Miranda July’s first film since 2005’s Me and You and Everyone We Know stars July and Hamish Linklater as an unhappy couple who adopt a talking cat (don’t ask us).
99. Camelot (Starz) Joseph Fiennes and Jamie Campbell Bower star in this new version of the King Arthur story. Fantasy smackdown with HBO!
100. Paul Simon Pegg and Nick Frost road-trip to Area 51 and befriend an alien (a motion-captured Seth Rogen). Superbad’s Greg Mottola directs, so expect wonderful things.
