Top 10 Times Movies Predicted Future Events

“A Trip to the Moon” (1902)
Loosely based on works by Jules Verne, this early silent film from French director Georges Méliès features a group of men who take a ride in a bullet-shaped capsule fired out of a giant cannon. Although humans have imagined traveling to the moon for hundreds of years, this is the first film to depict such a journey – and it was made nearly seventy years before the real event. At the time, space travel of any kind was still decades in the future. Although we now know that there are no giant fungi or hostile inhabitants living beneath the lunar surface, we can thank visionaries like Verne and Méliès for helping inspire humanity to reach for the stars.

“The Man” (1972)
You might think that the election of an African American to the highest office in the United States was inevitable, but plenty of people didn’t feel that way in the 1970s. Remember, this movie was only a few years removed from the Civil Rights movement. Written by Rod Serling - yes, that Rod Serling - “The Man” revolves around president pro tempore Douglass Dilman, played by James Earl Jones. He’s sworn into office after the previous president and Speaker of the House are killed in an accident and the elderly vice president refuses the job. Although movies and shows with a Black president are common on our screens today, “The Man” was the first feature-length film to include one.

“Demolition Man” (1993)
The California of this movie is quite different from the one we know. By 2032, everything fun has been banned. But their reality does have one thing in common with ours: someone named Scott Peterson is in prison. In real life, just before Christmas in 2002, Modesto resident Laci Peterson disappeared, and her husband Scott soon fell under suspicion. Eventually he was arrested, and after a highly-publicized trial, he was convicted of the murder of Laci and their unborn son. Peterson was initially given a death sentence, but that was eventually overturned and he was instead sentenced to life in prison. That means that he’ll almost certainly still be locked up in California in 2032.

“The Tunnel” (1935)
It seems like major human achievements always take a bit longer than idealistic artists think they will. “The Tunnel” revolves around the ambitious goal to build an Atlantic tunnel from England to the U.S. In the film’s universe, the Channel Tunnel between England and France already exists. In fact, one character implies that it was built in a single year. In reality, although engineers had proposed building the Chunnel since at least the early 1800s, construction didn’t even begin until 1988. The Chunnel finally opened for use in 1994, but we have to admire the optimism of these mid-1930s filmmakers.

“I Am Legend” (2007)
We really hope that this prediction is the only one in this movie that comes true. After a genetically manipulated virus wipes out nearly every human on Earth starting in 2009, major cities like New York are left almost completely abandoned. Scientist Robert Neville remains behind in Manhattan, surviving and trying to cure the infected humans left alive, who have basically turned into vampires. During one scene in Times Square, we see a clear shot of a movie advertisement featuring the Bat symbol overlaid with Superman’s “S”. The image actually bears an uncanny resemblance to real promo posters for 2016’s “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice”. That production detail is pretty prescient considering the DCEU wasn’t a thing when this movie came out.

“Americathon” (1979)
It’s a little spooky how many things this critically panned comedy got right. Set in 1998, the U.S. has completely run out of gas, and people wear tracksuits all the time because they have to jog and bike everywhere. The country is in tremendous debt, while China has pivoted from communism to capitalism and become one of the most powerful nations in the world. Any of these things sound familiar? Although America has never actually run out of oil, production did drop steadily from the mid-80s to the late 2000s, and the national debt has been spiking since about 1982. And of course, tracksuits were all the rage around that time, partly thanks to the influence of hip hop music videos.

“Back to the Future Part II” (1989)
The filmmakers almost nailed this one! The Cubbies had a really good chance at the World Series in 2015. They made it to the National League Championship Series, where they lost four games to nothing to the Mets. Just one year later, of course, they took home the pennant, and went on to beat Cleveland for the national title in a seven-game shootout. The win ended a historic dry spell, as Chicago hadn’t won a World Series since 1908, and didn’t even make the playoffs from 1945 to 1984. You might have noticed that Marty is even more surprised that they were playing against Miami. That’s because Miami didn’t have a major league team until 1993.

“Akira” (1988)
This beloved anime classic takes place in a dystopian future 2019. After the destruction of Tokyo in 1988, Neo-Tokyo is preparing to host the 2020 Olympics. In a shot seen early in the film, a sign displays a countdown to the start of the games, and beneath it, someone has graffitied the words, “Just cancel it.” In real life, Tokyo was chosen to host the 2020 Summer Olympics, and because of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people – including plenty of people in Japan – argued that it should be canceled. Instead, the Tokyo Organizing Committee decided to postpone the event for one year, and the competitions eventually took place in 2021 with no spectators in the stands.

“Contagion” (2011)
As soon as COVID-19 began to spread around the globe, people were drawing comparisons between our real-life pandemic and this film. The virus in “Contagion” started in China, was initially carried by a bat, and is transmitted mainly through respiratory droplets. But the similarities don’t end there. The human behavior that accompanies the illness is also eerily prescient. People head to the grocery store to stock up on essentials. A fraudster peddles a fake treatment that doesn’t actually work. And some express skepticism of the CDC. Ultimately, the fast-tracked development of a vaccine enables people to return to some semblance of a normal life.

“Game of Death” (1978)
The coincidences here are almost too many to count. Bruce Lee plays Billy, an actor and the target of an organized crime syndicate. On Billy’s movie set, an assassin posing as a stuntman swaps a blank round in his prop gun for a real bullet and shoots Billy but doesn’t actually kill him. Instead, Billy fakes his death and returns to get revenge on the gang. In a tragic twist of fate, Lee’s son Brandon Lee was accidentally killed while filming “The Crow” when a prop assistant loaded a gun with blanks, not knowing there was a real bullet lodged in the barrel. “The Crow” also revolves around Brandon Lee’s character returning from the dead and seeking revenge on the members of a crime syndicate.