WELCOME to the Hollywood multiverse – because that’s what the list of top ten blockbusters to see this summer looks like, an ever-increasing series of fictional universes.

This year it’s virtually impossible, though there are a couple of exceptions here, to find a major blockbuster movie that isn’t part of some expanded, or expanding, universe. Whether it’s monsters, superheroes (of the DC or Marvel variety), Transformers, apes, or space adventurers, or sexy lifeguards, it is the franchise that rules – and the expanded universe is where the franchises are going.

Baywatch

May 29

A lot has changed since the heyday of Pammy A in the 1990s when Baywatch was a cult hit ... and one of the main changes is that nowadays skin-baring beach scenes tend to be more about ogling the dudes than the dames. Enter Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson and his rippling muscles, tattoos, and poster taglines like, “The beach just got sexier”. Johnson and Zac Efron are the main stars in what substantially seems to be more a crime caper comedy than extended Baywatch episode. And, of course, the film knows how to play its original source inspiration for laughs. “Everything that you guys are talking about sounds like a really entertaining but far-fetched TV show,” says Zac Efron's character in the film's trailer.

Wonder Woman

June 2

Signs are starting to emerge that, when it comes to critical approval, Wonder Woman could be about to trounce her DC Universe predecessors Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and Suicide Squad. Tweeters who have seen the film are saying it’s good – though, without the lasso of truth, it’s hard to know how honest a review we're getting. One critic has already given the Amazonian princess four out of five stars, saying it’s “dark but funny too”. Gal Gadot, who played Wonder Woman in Batman v Superman, returns to the role as Diana, warrior princess of the Amazons. The film’s director, Patty Jenkins, was also behind the brave and mesmerising film Monster, starring Charlize Theron as the real-life, death row female serial killer, Aileen Wuornos – so don’t expect it to hold its super punches.

The Mummy

June 9

Monsters are back – and not just in the quirky, recently-released Anne Hathaway movie Colossal. Universal's The Mummy is just the first of their planned series of monster universe films. It's partly a reboot of the old Brendan Fraser adventure movies, but also something more. The Hollywood heavy hitters Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe have been brought in to take on a particularly terrifying female Mummy played by Sofia Boutella. Cruise, though 54, is still looking like he’s barely out of his tweens and must have been drinking some ancient Egyptian youth potion. He’s also bounding around doing action stunts so risky it led to one blogger to declare, “The Mummy stunts featurette proves Tom Cruise is batsh** insane!”

Rough Night

June 16

Five best friends from college (played by Scarlett Johansson, Kate McKinnon, Jillian Bell, Ilana Glazer, and Zoë Kravitz) go on a bachelorette/hen weekend in Miami. What could possibly go wrong? The latest in a string of female-led comedies triggered by the runaway success of Bridesmaids in 2011 looks like a riot, but with a dark twist. It’s even kicked off some controversy, with some commentators concerned at the laughs being got from the death of a male stripper.

Transformers: The Last Knight

June 23

Optimus Prime has gone rogue, Mark Wahlberg is back and the Transformers universe, like every other movie universe, is expanding. On one level this latest Transformers is more of the usual — explosions, laughs, groans, camp portentousness – but pumped up further. It promises to be, in other words, just the kind of metallic pantomime we’ve come to expect from director Michael Bay. Rob Bricken, writing for sci-fi website Gizmodo, said that the trailer suggested that the film was set to be “the new Michael Bay-iest thing I have ever seen”, which echoed what he said about the last Transformers film. The trailer, he also observed, “indicated” to him ”that it may be the most insane Transformers movie since Dark Of The Moon”. Back in 2014 Wahlberg predicted Transformers: Age of Extinction would be the biggest hit of the year and it was its highest-grossing movie. Will The Last Knight deliver the same? It’s certainly, with its young audience appeal, in with a strong chance.

Spider-man: Homecoming

July 7

In the form of 20-year-old Tom Holland, finally we get a proper Spidey who looks like the kid he always should have been. The last two Amazing Spider-Man films may have left fans feeling mostly a little tepid, but, given Holland’s performance in Captain America: Civil War, there’s a good feeling about the new spider on the block. Again we’re really looking at a more expanded universe. Spiderman will be joined by other Marvel Comic friends: Robert Downey Jr, who has played Iron Man, Maris Tomei will be Aunt May and Michael Keaton plays the Vulture.

War For the Planet of the Apes

July 14

The eighth film in this critically-acclaimed franchise takes us, violently and bloodily, towards the kind of ape-dominated world Charlton Heston crash-landed on in the 1968 original. “I did not start this war,” declares ape leader Caesar in a recent trailer for the film. “But I will finish it.” Such trailers have delivered hints of what is to come. There’s even been a teaser with a Charlton Heston voiceover, in which he speaks the words of William Faulkner: “I refuse to accept the end of man. I believe he will endure. He will prevail.” But this film belongs to Andy Serkis’s Caesar and Woody Harrelson’s military colonel, a human bent on wiping out the apes. Not much, outside Star Wars beats the Planet Of The Apes franchise for sheer, compelling, and sometimes absurd universe development.

Dunkirk

July 21

They still make them, then, those big historical war movies – or at least Christopher Nolan has made one. Amid the flood of summer monster and superhero movies, Dunkirk, the story of the evacuation of Allied troops from the beaches in 1940, stands out like a sore thumb: serious, ambitious, and, if it’s trailer indicates anything, utterly gripping and moving. It’s all the more remarkable because Nolan, director of blockbusters like the Dark Knight trilogy, Interstellar and Inception, isn’t known for this kind of film. And the names involved say something about the gravity of intent: Tom Hardy, Mark Rylance, Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy. Though there is, for the One Directioners out there, also Harry Styles, in his first screen role – possibly set to bring a whole audience to the cinema who might otherwise have not been drawn to a film about Dunkirk.

Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets

August 4

Luc Besson’s latest film, a kind of Fifth Element remade for the 21st Century, reputedly cost a whopping £160 million to make – and you can see quite a lot of that there on the screen even in the spectacular trailer. Based on Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Meziere’s classic comic book, it stars Dane DeHaan (of A Cure For Wellness) and model Cara Delevingne, and features an appearance by Rihanna, as a shape-shifting entertainer. DeHaan’s Valerian is rocking the Leonardo Dicaprio Romeo look, arriving on the screen dressed in flower-print shirt. The whole thing looks even more gloriously insane than The Fifth Element – yet, perhaps, now is exactly the moment for such a film. As Besson said recently, “The funny thing is 20 years ago I was weird. Some people followed [The Fifth Element] at the time and it was a good success, but not huge. And 20 years later the world got as weird as me so now we match. I think this one will be easier to catch.”

The Dark Tower

August 18

It’s taken a long time to get here – almost a decade in on-off development – but Stephen King’s epic fantasy series is finally about to make it to the screen. Roland Deschain, the 200-year-old “last gunslinger” will be played by Idris Elba and the Man in Black by Matthew McConaughey. But don’t expect a close following of the original series, only something based-on and inspired by it and, if King’s comments are anything to go by, it will keep the classic opening line: “The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed.”

Box Binge

Here's the low-down on the television shows we’ll be overindulging on this summer. The only bad news is that the latest season of The Americans - the brilliant cult sleeper show about a family of KGB agents undercover in suburban Washington - won't be back until early next year.

Twin Peaks season 3

Sky Atlantic, Tonight, May 21

Tonight’s the night. Twin Peaks, the show that addicted and influenced a whole generation, is back – and even in this age of TV deluge its return, nevertheless, manages to feel like an event even before it’s happened. The trailer gives away little but, delivering just snatches of images, it crackles with atmosphere and promise. The cast list – returning originals Kyle MacLachlan, Madchen Amick, Sherilyn Fenn, David Duchovny, as well as newbies Naomi Watts, Monica Belucci, Laura Dern – is enough to drive up peak anticipation. Meanwhile David Lynch, the show’s creator, and one of the greatest directors of our time (Mulholland Drive topped a BBC Culture poll of greatest films of the 21st Century) has said he’s not making any more films: “The things that were doing well at the box office weren’t the things that I would want to do.” So this reboot is the one place to go for a new Lynch fix. Daniel Nevis, chief executive of the cable channel Showtime, has said it is, “a pure heroin version of David Lynch”.

Game of Thrones

July 17, Sky Atlantic.

The penultimate season is almost with us and it’s short, at only seven episodes – which means that already it feels like the countdown for the end has begun. News, however, that spin-offs are planned will be a comfort for Throners. The new series begins with Cersei queen of Westeros, Jon Snow King of the North, and Daenerys, Mother of Dragons and Freer of Slaves, on her throne. New faces we can look forward to are Ed Sheeran in a cameo, apparently planned as a surprise for superfan Maisie Williams (Arya Stark) and Jim Broadbent in a major role which he describes as an “archmaester” and “old professor character”.

Riviera

June 15, Sky Atlantic

Oscar-winning screenwriter Neil Jordan is behind this heady mix of Riviera super-rich luxury and murder mystery – a show that reeks of the kind of heady Mediterranean glamour that the Night Manager delivered. Julia Stiles stars as a newly-wed bride whose billionaire husband is killed when his yacht explodes. Soon, as she tries to work out what happened, she finds that there are dark and seamy secrets. The trailer tells us just what the show is about, rolling out to the Flying Lizard’s hit 'Money (That’s What I Want)' and delivering lines like “There is nothing as rigorous as money.” Maureen Ryan at Variety has described it as “slick” and “satisfying”.

Gypsy

June 30, Netflix

Naomi Watts is the bad therapist, the one you never want to get, in this show that ladles on the sex and intrigue around her character who gets her kicks from getting inappropriately involved with people in her clients’ lives. Sam Taylor-Johnson, the former Turner Prize-nominated artist and director of the first Fifty Shades Of Grey, directs.

Poldark

June, BBC1

The world’s favourite bare-chested scyther returns – though the last series saw Poldark increasingly reveal he’s not quite the admirable hero he once seemed. And among the big questions of the new series is, who’s the daddy? Is Elizabeth’s child actually the son of Ross Poldark?

House of Cards

May 30, Netflix

'We bring the terror' ... The capo di capo tutti of boxsets returns - but how on earth can the fantasy world of an ultra-depraved White House madness live up to what is going on now for real in Trump World? Frank and Claire Underwood are back and they are as kick-ass mean and crazy as ever. She's the quintessential ice maiden and he's a cross between Bill Clinton and American Psycho. "The American people,” Underwood says in the trailer for the fifth season of House Of Cards, “don't know what's best for them.... I do. I know exactly what they need. They’re like little children.” Shivers...