From Elvis to Charli XCX, Grogu to Supergirl, The Odyssey to Avengers: Doomsday — everything you need to know about the movies you need to see this year
From left: 'The Mandalorian and Grogu,' 'Supergirl,' 'I Love Boosters,' 'The Moment.' Nicola Goode/Lucasfilm; Warner Bros; NEON; A24
As a wise man once said, so this is the new year — which means we’ve got a whole lotta new movies on the horizon. We’ve peered ahead at what’s hitting theaters and streamers over the next 12 months, and picked out 50 titles that are likely to wow us, thrill us, move us, and make a good deal of noise. From a massive Elvis concert doc in IMAX to Charli XCX’s metafictional portrait of a pop star under pressure; a Once Upon a Time in Hollywood sequel to new chapters in the Star Wars, Dune, and Avengers sagas; Christopher Nolan tackling The Odyssey to a brand-new take on Wuthering Heights — here’s everything you need to know about everything you need to see in 2026. (Dates are not only subject to change, but almost guaranteed to do so in more than a few cases.)
We had to kill time for close to 18 years to get a new entry in Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later series — but we only had to wait seven months for a sequel to last year’s 28 Years Later. This latest addition to franchise follows Alfie Williams’ plucky young hero, Spike, as he falls in with known as the Jimmys, a.k.a. the feral gang of track-suited miscreants we met in the closing moments of the previous film. Jack O’Connell plays the head Jimmy; Eleanor the Great‘s Erin Kellyman is his second-in-command; and Rafe Fiennes returns as the former doctor trying to tame an infected “Alpha” superhuman. Nia DaCosta (Hedda) steps in for Boyle as the director.
Remember how Charli XCX and “Brat Summer” dominated 2024? The singer-songwriter is now ready to give you a firsthand look at what it was like to be in the eye of that pop-superstar storm, via a cheeky metafictional comedy! Director, co-writer, and longtime Charli collaborator Aidan Zamiri (he did the videos for “Guess” and “360” — hey, and shot this Rolling Stone cover story of Timothée Chalamet) described this faux-chronicle of the hitmaker on tour as an “alternate history of the Brat era… if she’d made all the wrong choices.” We’re sold. Alexander Skarsgård plays the hottest director in town, who’s been hired to document everything. Rachel Sennott, Kate Berlant, Rosanna Arquette, Jamie Demetriou, and Hailey Gates co-star. We assume this will shock us like a defibrillator.
He (Dylan O’Brien) is the asshole boss to end all asshole bosses, a corporate bro who thinks nothing of humiliating his employees. She (Rachel McAdams) is a frumpy junior V.P. who’s often the target of his mockery. When a plane accident during a business trip strands both of them on a desert island, however, her surprising facility as a survivalist reverses the power dynamic — and essentially turns this Cast Away situation into horror-movie scenario filled with carnage. Bonus: No less than the great Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead, Drag Me to Hell) is orchestrating this revenge thriller.
Colin (Harry Melling) is a shy young man who lives with his parents in the suburbs of Southeast London and is content to pass the time singing with his barbershop quartet. Then he meets Ray (Alexander Skarsgård), a tall, handsome, gay biker into BDSM who decides that Colin would make the perfect submissive. Writer-director Harry Lighton’s feature debut made quite a stir when it premiered at Cannes last spring, and his delightfully subversive rom-com has been leaving scorch marks on the festival circuit all year. Now you’ll get the chance to see what all the buzz is about.
Frankly, we’re surprised that the venerable horror franchise managed to get this seventh entry made at all, given all the “creative retooling,” beaucoup backstage drama, and exits — voluntary or otherwise — of talent. But the series seems to have picked itself up, dusted itself off, and enlisted a host of O.G. Scream folks, including filmmaker Kevin Williamson, Neve Campbell, and Courteney Cox; the movie’s IMDb page also lists David Arquette, Matthew Lilliard, and Scream 3‘s Scott Foley in the cast as well. We’re guessing the plot involves Campbell’s in-house survivor having to deal with Ghostface returning and once again making her life hell. You know the drill.
“Heeeeeeathcliffff, it’s meeeee, Cath-yyyyy, I’ve come home, I’m so cold!!!” Emily Brontë’s novel of love and death on the Yorkshire moors gets yet another adaptation — but this time, Promising Young Woman/Saltburn filmmaker Emerald Fennell is behind the camera, and she’s got two super-hot A-listers playing every bibliophile’s favorite pair of doomed lovers. (No disrespect, Romeo and Juliet!) Jacob Elordi, a.k.a. the star of Euphoria, Frankenstein, and your dreams, should bring the brooding sensuality as Heathcliff, and Margot Robbie, a.k.a. Barbie, Harley Quinn, and three-time Oscar nominee, puts her hand to her dampened-with-lust brow as gothic-lit’s first couple. We’ve heard rumors that whenever you watch the trailer online, any kettle within 100 yards of your laptop will simply start boiling of its own accord.
When Baz Lurhmann was researching his Elvis biopic, he came across reels of unused footage from two concert films from the early 1970s (Elvis: That’s the Way It Is and Elvis on Tour) in an archive in a Kansas salt mine. Some of it was extra performance footage, some of it was candid clips of Presley offstage — and in Lurhmann’s mind, all of it was fodder for a whole other documentary on the King of Rock & Roll. Epic, indeed. The film’s IMAX run (!) begins Feb. 20; it’ll hit general theaters Feb. 27.
When he was but a wee lad, Beckett Redfellow was told by his mother that yes, he was indeed related to the rich and famous Redfellow family — think the Rockefellers meet the Murdochs, only wealthier. But Mom had been disowned by her kin when she became pregnant with him, and that’s why he grew up poor. Nonetheless, the boy would be seventh in line to inherit the family fortune. Fast forward a few decades, and let’s just say the now-adult Beckett (Glen Powell) would like to hurry up the process by any means necessary. “Killing” is in the title for a reason, people. Margaret Qualley, Ed Harris, Topher Grace, Zach Woods, and Bill Camp co-star. John Patton Ford (Emily the Criminal) directs.
So there’s this guy from Liverpool named Paul, see, and he and his mates start a rock band. Long story short, they become kind of a big deal. Everybody loves ’em. Then the quartet call it quits. What’s this talented fella supposed to do now? Morgan Neville’s doc charts Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles career, from his first recordings after the Fab Four break up to his formation of the group Wings. If you’re the sort of Macca fan who heavily stans his solo joint Ram and knows all the words to “Magneto and Titanium Man” by heart, this one’s for you.
Actor turned director Maggie Gyllenhaal (The Lost Daughter) puts her own uniquely twisted spin on The Bride of Frankenstein, with our main man-slash-monster Frankie (Christian Bale) requesting that his maker supply him with a companion. He is then gifted with a bride (Jessie Buckley) who proves to be the perfect partner in crime. Like, literally: Did we mention that the story has been relocated to 1930s Chicago and refashioned as something like an old-timey gangster movie, with the couple going on a Bonnie and Clyde-like spree? Also there are musical numbers? The combination of a truly unleashed Buckley — whose performance in Hamnet remains the most earth-shattering thing we’ve seen in eons — and that exclamation point in the title suggests this one’s gonna be extra bananas.
When we last saw Tommy Shelby, Irish-Romani gangster and top dog of the Birmingham underworld, he’d burned down his house, burned every bridge in his old life, and ridden away into the sunset. Fans hoped they’d at least get a Peaky Blinders feature to definitively wrap things up after creator Steven Knight announced the sixth season of the popular crime show was its last. And, well, sometimes dreams do come true! Cillian Murphy returns as Shelby, ready to settle some scores. A number of series regulars, including Sophie Rundle and Stephen Graham, reprise their roles; franchise newbies Barry Keough, Rebecca Ferguson, and Tim Roth also jump on board.
He’s one of the most successful touring comics right now, selling out arenas across America — it was only a matter of time before Nate Bargatze got a starring role in his own movie comedy. Our man Nate plays an everydude who becomes a stay-at-home dad when his wife (Mandy Moore) starts her own business. He is, shall we say, actively learning on the job. So it’s a contemporary version of Mr. Mom starring the really dry, witty guy with the Southern drawl? OK, we’ll bite. Will Forte, Kumail Nanjiani, Kate Berlant, Colin Jost, and Severance‘s Zach Cherry fill out the supporting roster of funny folks.
A middle-school science teacher (Ryan Gosling) is recruited by a government agent (The Zone of Interest‘s Sandra Huller) to travel millions of light years from Earth. The reason: Our sun is dying, as are a number of other infected “luminous spheroids of plasma held together by self-gravity” (thanks, Wikipedia!). There’s one distant star that’s unaffected by whatever is causing this celestial meltdown, however, and he’s apparently the only person that can save humanity. Also there is an alien who appears to be made of rocks and is called Rocky. The trailer makes it seem like there will be laughter, tears, and a whole lotta Gosling.
That’s right, the 2019 class-conscious horror flick — featuring Samara Weaving fighting her way out of becoming a casualty in the world’s deadliest hide-and-seek game — gets a sequel. Part 2 picks up where the original left off, with Weaving’s “final girl” now having to contend with not just one horrible rich family, but a whole slew of them, all vying to take her down so they can keep their respective ill-gotten fortunes. Bad news for our hero: Her sister is now dragged into this as well. Good news for us: The sibling is played Kathyrn Newton, a strong contender for the greatest scream queen of her generation (see: Freaky, Abigail). Solid supporting cast, too: Sarah Michelle Gellar, David Cronenberg, Elijah Wood, The Faculty‘s Shawn Hatosy, Kevin Durand.
Most engaged couples will tell you that they experience a minor case of the jitters before getting hitched. Charlie (Robert Pattinson) and Emma (Zendaya) are no different — they love each other, but they’re still nervous about the whole til-death-do-us-part thing leading up to their wedding. Then a secret is revealed, and suddenly, these newlyweds are in what appears to be a serious state of crisis. Given what writer-director Kristoffer Borgli put Nicolas Cage through in his previous film Dream Scenario (2023) — not to mention what the Norwegian filmmaker ginned up in the truly gnarly satire Sick of Myself (2022) — we’re more than a little concerned about what’s in store for these kids. Also cordially invited to this A24 production: Alana Haim, Mamoudou Athie, Zoë Winters, and Hailey Gates.
Bob Odenkirk continues his run as your favorite new AARP-aged action hero in this tense thriller about a sheriff settling into his job in a small Minnesota town. After he begins investigating a bank robbery, the lawman stumbles in to the middle of a vast criminal underground — and suddenly, the officer is under siege from a lotta locals who don’t like strangers meddling in their less-than-legal affairs. Not great, Bob. The mighty Ben Wheatley (Kill List, Down Terrace, Free Fire) is calling the shots behind the camera.
The ever-spinning music-biopic wheel has finally landed on Michael Jackson — and yes, director Antoine Fuqua’s look back at the life and times of the King of Pop has had its share of friction, funny you should ask! Casting Jafar Jackson to play his uncle Michael has been one of the few aspects of this project that hasn’t caused controversy, and both the Jackson estate and those with legal agreements regarding what can and can’t be depicted in the film have had their issues. “Complicated” doesn’t begin to describe the feelings around all of this. People will be able to judge for themselves in April. Colman Domingo, Miles Teller, Derek Luke, Nia Long, and Larenz Tate are on board as well.
Once upon a time, a singer (Anne Hathaway) and her go-to dressmaker (Michaela Coel) were inseparable. Then the former leveled up in her career, the two drifted apart, and, well, you know how it goes when it comes to suddenly being the major constellation in the pop-star universe. It’s time for a new world tour, however, and the musical icon wants her old friend to design her wardrobe. Except here’s a lot of bad blood that needs to be dealt with first. And some of that “dealing with it” may include the supernatural. We’d be psyched about whatever filmmaker David Lowery (A Ghost Story, The Green Knight, The Old Man and the Gun) has been up to, but judging from this creepy-ass trailer, his latest looks especially promising — and highly unsettling. Plus it features new music from Charli XCX, FKA Twigs, and Jack Antonoff.
From the Titular-Truth-in-Advertising department: Sofia Coppola makes what A24’s press release calls “an intimate, unconventional portrait” of her good friend Marc Jacobs. It’s the first nonfiction movie from the Lost in Translation filmmaker, and captures 12 weeks in the life of the fashion icon as he designs his spring collection in 2024. Word out of last year’s Venice Film Festival, where this premiered, was promising. And if anyone is going to get the gentleman to drop his guard and open up — as well as craft something more interesting and impressionistic than your standard clips-testimonial-rinse-repeat doc — it’s Ms. Coppola.
OK, so this is exciting: Quentin Tarantino has indeed written a sequel to what’s arguably his best movie (please do not @ me, feel free to have a different opinion and discuss amongst yourselves), Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. It’s allegedly set in the 1970s and centers around Brad Pitt’s stuntman Cliff Booth (!), with His Bradness reprising the role. And while Tarantino isn’t directing the movie — he’s said he wants his last official film to be something original and take place “in uncharted territory” — he did get someone of equal stature to helm it: David Freakin’ Fincher. This may well be the most anticipated of the Most Anticipated Movies of 2026.
First off, it’s nice to know that the Prince of Darkness still has great taste in designers. Second, this sequel to the beloved 2006 rom-com — in which Anne Hathaway dealt with a demanding boss who is definitely not based on anyone in real life, nope, not at all or even a little bit — reunites the Les Mis Oscar-winner with her old co-stars Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, and Stanley “the Tooch” Tucci for more misadventures in the fashion-mag industry. Plus, the original’s director and screenwriter, David Frankel and Aline Brosh McKenna, respectively, are back in the fold as well. Joining the veterans: Lucy Liu, Justin Theroux, Kenneth Branagh, Rachel Bloom, Sydney Sweeney, Lady Gaga, and Donatella Versace. Let’s find out if details of an assistant’s incompetence still don’t interest Miranda Priestly, shall we?
A haunted house movie set in Ireland, starring Severance‘s Adam Scott? You have our attention, Neon. We know the who and where; details are scarce on the what, how, and why of this horror film from writer-director Damian McCarthy (Caveat, Oddity). But the production company that gave us that cryptic, crazy-successful marketing campaign for Longlegs a few years ago is back to its old ballyhoo tricks, and this unnerving trailer does indeed do a good job selling this scary movie while giving away exactly nothing.
The big headturner out of last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, writer-director Curry Barker’s debut feature is a spin on the old when-you-wish-upon-a-monkey’s-paw chestnut: A boy (Michael Johnston) is head over heels for a girl (Inde Navarrette). Worried that he’s stuck in the friend zone, he buys an item at a curio shop that will apparently make his dream of true love come true. It works not wisely but too well. Way, way too well. Barker takes his time with the wind-up, which only makes the eventual shift into high gear that much more of a jolt.
Writer, director, musician, and overall Renaissance man Boots Riley drops his latest satirical smart bomb, in which a group of professional, Oakland-based thieves led by Keke Palmer do battle with a fast-fashion CEO played by Demi Moore. It’s been picked as the opening night selection for SXSW, which bodes well in terms of how it will play with crowds hyped to have fun; if it’s one-third as outrageous as Riley’s 2018 feature debut Sorry to Bother You, we’re in for a wild ride. Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, LaKeith Stanfield, Will Poulter, Eiza González, and Poppy Liu co-star.
The Star Wars movies begat the Star Wars TV series The Mandalorian, in which Pedro Pascal’s masked interstellar gunfighter must protect a young, Yoda-like child with a unique connection to the Force — and now that show gives us the latest big-screen adventure set in that good ol’ galaxy far, far away. Congrats, Grogu, you’ve graduated to in-the-title status! Sigourney Weaver joins the franchise as a former rebel pilot who now leads the starfighter squad known as the Adelphi Rangers; Jeremy Allen White plays Rotta the Hutt, Jabba’s son (!!!); and the series co-creator Dave Filoni will reprise his exquisitely named X-wing flyboy Trapper Wolf as well.
Anyone lucky enough to have caught this indie-horror gem from writer-director Alexander Ullom — about a group of kids who are driving home during their college break and mysteriously find themselves on a literal road to nowhere — on the festival circuit in 2025 can confirm that it’s one of the better genre film debuts in recent years. The fact that it quickly racked up viewers when Letterboxd added the movie to its online Video Store only added to its growing reputation, and now Neon had picked up the film for distribution. Trust us, you’ll wanna check this one out.
If you’ve been listening to the Lonely Island and Seth Meyers podcast, you know former SNL writer and Popstar co-director Jorma Taccone spent a good portion of 2025 filming something in Finland. Now you’ll get a chance to see what he was up to. A remake of the 2021 Norwegian movie The Trip, this dark comedy follows a couple (Jason Segel and Samara Weaving) whose relationship is on the skids. Both of them are respectively planning to murder each other during an upcoming vacation. Then they’re taken hostage by some criminals on the lam from the law, and, well… nothing really messes up your homicide plans like a hostage situation, amirite? Juliette Lewis, Timothy Olyphant, and retired MMA fighter Keith Jardine add to the mayhem as well.
Just because you can make a film franchise out of a line of toys doesn’t mean you should make a movie franchise out of a line of toys — but that hasn’t stopped Mattel from trotting out this I.P. in the hopes of having its own in-house blockbuster series. You’re either very excited that the adventures of He-Man are getting the full summer-movie treatment or you need to see an ophthalmologist due to injuries incurred from too much eye-rolling. Nicholas Galitzine (Red, White and Royal Blue) is the super-jacked prince who moonlights as the savior of the galaxy; Jared Leto plays his nemesis, Skeletor; Alison Brie is the super-villainess Evil-Lyn; Idris Elba is He-Man’s second in command, Man-at-Arms; Morena Baccarin shows up as a sorceress; and Kristen Wiig voices a robot called Roboto.
For months, the new sci-fi movie on Universal’s summer schedule was simply known as the “Untitled Steve Spielberg UFO Movie” — and the thought that the legend behind Close Encounters of the Third Kind and War of the Worlds [Editor’s note: the Tom Cruise one, not the Ice Cube one] was revisiting the watch-the-skies subgenre was enough to get a lot of filmgoers drooling. The film now has a name, albeit one that brings up more questions than answers — what’s being disclosed, exactly? — and a trailer featuring Emily Blunt speaking in tongues that somehow muddies the waters even further. We know Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Colman Domingo, Eve Hewson, and Wyatt Russell all factor into this, as do what appears to be a lot of self-aware animals trying to nudge their human counterparts into some sort of epiphany. But who are we kidding? You had us at “Spielberg UFO Movie.”
After a few hit-and-miss swings at non-sequel material, Pixar goes back to the drawing board — get it? — for a sure thing, i.e. milking their O.G., game-changing animated hit for one more go-round. This time, Woody, Buzz, Jessie, and the rest of the gang must contend with their eight-year-old owner’s newest obsession: a smart tablet. Who thinks there might be some messaging about screen time versus play time, how technology is warping kids’ imaginations, and how not even the latest fancy-pants Silicon Valley gadget can truly replace good old-fashioned playthings? Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, John Ratzenberger, Tony Hale, Melissa Villaseñor, and Blake Clark return to voice their characters from the previous movies; Greta Lee, Conan O’Brien, Anna Faris, and Ghostbusters‘ Ernie Hudson are the new talent jumping into the fray.
Superman viewers probably remember Milly Alcock showing up at the end of James Gunn’s movie as the Man of Steel’s 23-year-old cousin Kara Zor-El, a.k.a. Supergirl — defender of truth, justice, and fighting for her right to party. This cosmic bar-hopper will now anchor the second movie in Gunn’s revamping of the DC Extended Universe, based on Tom King and Bilquis Evely’s comic Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. Enlisted by a teen (Eve Ridley) to help avenge the death of her father, our hero with the red cape and the wicked hangover must confront a host of bad guys and deal with the responsibility that comes with being one of the last Kryptonians alive. Jason Momoa trades in his gills for an interstellar biker get-up and a cigar to play Lobo, the fan-favorite badass mercenary. And yes, Krpyto is around to save the day, super-doggy–style, as well. Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya) directs.
What do you do after you’ve revolutionized the superhero genre, cornered the wonky, psychologically dense puzzle-thriller market, and crafted the ultimate biopic on Shiva, Destroyer of Worlds? If you’re Christopher Nolan, you go back to the source — the original epic-poetic narrative of a hero’s journey. Matt Damon is Odysseus, Greek king of Ithaca who battles all sort of perils (witches, sirens, and cyclops, oh my!) so he may be reunited with his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) after the Trojan War. The actor bench is as deep as you’d expect in a Nolan IMAX extravaganza like this: Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland, Mia Goth, Lupita Nyong’o, Charlize Theron, Elliot Page, Mia Goth, Jon Bernthal, Samantha Morton, Benny Safdie, John Leguizamo… the list goes on. Go big or go Homer, we always say.
Do not ask, “Did we actually need a live-action version of the 2016 Disney animated film about a Polynesian girl who befriends a demigod and must save her island?” — that way, dear reader, lies only madness. Simply acknowledge the fact that Disney made a ridiculous amount of money off its live-action Lilo & Stitch last year, and that the unsolicited transformation of all your animated favorites into so-so redos with real actors has become an inevitability. We look forward to seeing what Catherina Laga’aia does with the title character, and you’ll now be able to watch Dwayne Johnson give the exact same performance as Maui rather than just listen to him do it. Plus, they got Thomas Kail, producer of Hamilton and one of the creators of Fosse/Verdon, to direct.
Your friendly neighborhood arachnid-themed do-gooder is back for yet another adventure involving post-teen angst, great powers equaling great responsibilities, and a whole lotta webslinging. Tom Holland once again dons the mask and Zendaya once again graces the screen as MJ. The plot is being kept under wraps — no surprise there — but we do know that Mark Ruffalo will be on hand as the Hulk, Jon Bernthal’s Punisher is slated to show up, and Better Call Saul‘s Michael Mando will introduce the legendary Spidey villain Scorpion into the MCU. Stranger Things‘ Sadie Sink and Severance‘s Tramell Tillman have also been cast in yet-to-be-revealed roles.
When does Steven Soderbergh find time to sleep? (Perhaps a better question is: Does Steven Soderbergh sleep at all?) After last year’s stellar ghost story (Presence) and the best spy-vs.-spy thriller in ages (Black Bag), the prolific filmmaker now gifts us with art heist film — or maybe it’s a heist art film? — involving a legendary painter (Ian McKellen) and his new assistant (Michaela Coel). The young woman has actually been hired by the artist’s heirs to steal a number of his unfinished works, complete them after he dies, and split the profits. Our guess? It gets complicated.
The concept is simple: You’re walking down a corridor in a Tokyo subway underground. You notice everything around you, from advertisement posters to a passing fellow commuter. After turning a corner or two, you find yourself in the same hallway — but if you notice any “anomalies,” such a different billboard or an extra door, turn back. If everything is the exact same way it was the first time, proceed. Do this successfully eight times, and you can exit the building. The 2023 Japanese cult game doesn’t exactly scream “movie adaptation” when you play it. But director Genki Kawamura not only captures the feeling of existential panic and the flexing of deductive muscles the game generates; he also constructs a parable about parental anxiety and the peril of making bad choices — in and outside of this strange prison — as he puts his hero, the “Lost Man” (Kazunari Ninomiya), through his paces. The film was a highlight of last year’s festival circuit, and we’re glad Neon is giving it a proper release.
We’ve been waiting to see what David Robert Mitchell — the writer-director behind cult hits It Follows (2014) and Under the Silver Lake (2018) — would do next, and the answer is apparently a cryptic sci-fi movie. The logline is simply: “A family in the 1980s starts to notice bizarre happenings in their neighborhood.” Yes, it’s a fairly generic premise that could virtually go anywhere. But given how Mitchell managed to mine gold out of equally stock ideas like “curse is passed from one person to next” and “man stumbles across vast, hidden conspiracy,” our curiosity is piqued about this one. Nice, eclectic group of actors he’s corralled, too: Ewan McGregor, Anne Hathaway, My Old Ass breakout Maisy Stella, Sweet Tooth‘s Christian Convery, The Boys’ P.J. Byrne, The Deuce‘s Chris Coy.
New Ridley Scott joint incoming! The latest from Sir Ridley concerns a pilot (Jacob Elordi) who survives a deadly global pandemic and is left to navigate the postapocalypse with his faithful pooch and a crusty old marine (Josh Brolin) on an airbase. When one of his searches for supplies ends in disaster, he ends up befriending a rancher (Guy Pearce) and his daughter, a doctor (Margaret Qualley). Readers of Peter Heller’s 2012 novel know what’s in store for our hero. The rest of us will have to head to a theater to find out.
If someone forced us to pick a legacy Batman villain that would be ripe for getting his or her own solo flick, Clayface would probably have been the second-to-last name we’d have chosen. (The last pick is naturally Hugo Strange and we will not be taking questions at this time.) But Mike Flanagan, the writer-director of Doctor Sleep, Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House adaptation, and numerous other spooky endeavors, pitched DC Studios heads James Gunn and Peter Safran a horror-centric tale involving an actor who can turn his body into shape-shifting clay, and look who’s now fronting the DCEU’s big fall movie! Because of scheduling conflicts, however, James Watkins (Speak No Evil) will be calling the shots on a script partially credited to Flanagan. Welsh actor Tom Rhys Harries (above) will play the title character; Naomi Ackie is the scientist who helps transform him; Max Minghella and Eddie Marsan show up to lend support.
Has it really been over 30 years since Emma Thompson and Ang Lee gave us that near-perfect screen adaptation of Jane Austen’s debut novel? How time flies when you’re left swooning over Hugh Grant’s dashing Edward Farrars. We were certainly overdue for a new version, and given the deft touch that Georgia Oakley displayed in her 2022 anti-bigotry drama Blue Jean, we have high hopes take on this literary warhorse. Daisy Edgar-Jones is Elinor Dashwood, the lovelorn young woman pining for Farrars, now played by George McKay (1917, The Beast). Fiona Shaw, Outlander‘s Catríona Balfe, and Frank Dillane round things out. Expect a display of some serious Austen powers here.
Fresh off the success of Weapons, director (and dedicated gamer) Zach Cregger jumps into the Resident Evil franchise, with what sounds less like a reboot and more like a cinematic expansion pack. According to the director, his movie is set in the same universe as the popular PlayStation zombie-killing title, and will stick to the same rules as those RPGs and first-person shooters. But it will follow a new character — played by Cregger’s longtime actor-in-residence Austin Abrams — as he navigates his way through a signature landscape of mutants, creepazoids, and other “bio-organic weapons.” The filmmaker calls it a “love letter” to the games. OK!
Alejandro González Iñárritu truly loves immersive, intense moviemaking — if you’ve seen Birdman and The Revenant, you know what we mean — so the thought of him collaborating on the movie with the totally chill Tom Cruise (joke alert!) was always going to get tongues wagging. Until recently, their mystery project was simply known as the “Iñárritu/Cruise” film; we now know it’s a dark comedy that takes its title from Cruise’s name Digger Rockwell, “the most powerful man in the world.” And the logline is essentially that Rockwell causes some sort of catastrophe, and has to try to make things right again before something akin to Armageddon occurs. Dropping by for the end of the world as well: Jesse Plemons, Sandra Huller, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Emma D’Arcy, and Michael Stuhlbarg.
The cinéma du Colleen Hoover continues, with the novelist’s 2018 psychological thriller getting the A-list treatment. A young woman (Dakota Johnson) is hired to finish the bestselling series of a popular author (Anne Hathaway) after the latter is waylaid by an accident. The more this ghostwriter dives into her employer’s history, however, the more it seems like her condition was not due to an “accident.” Let’s hope this one doesn’t end in lawsuits.
Don’t call it a sequel — Aaron Sorkin’s revisit to the world of Facebook corporate shenanigans is being listed as a “companion piece” to his Oscar-winning film The Social Network, not a Part II. This time, Sorkin is doing double duty as writer and director, and he’s training his focus on Frances Haugen, the product manager turned whistleblower who passed along internal documents detailing all types of dodgy decisions at Zuckerberg Inc. involving misinformation peddling, election misinformation, and worse. Mikey Madison plays Haugen; Jeremy Strong brings his characteristic Method madness to Mark Zuckerberg; Jeremy Allen White is Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz.
M. Night Shyamalan teams up with bestselling author Nicolas Sparks — a series of words we never, ever thought we’d be writing — for this potboiler about an architect (Jake Gyllenhaal) mourning the death of a family member. He decides to take his mind off things by designing a house in Cape Cod for his closest friend; while there, he meets a young woman (Fair Play‘s Phoebe Dynevor) who throws a monkey wrench into his attempts at mental and emotional stability. Expect a last-minute twist.
Ah yes, another Hunger Games prequel! This was takes place roughly a quarter of a century before the original movie, with a handsome young Haymitch Abernathy (played by handsome young Australian actor Joseph Zada) competing in the games — but there’s a catch. Because of some obscure rule or another, this particular competition requires not one but two tributes from each district. This means Haymitch has to go toe to toe with one of his neighbors as well as his fellow citizens, in the form of District 12 resident Maysilee Donner (McKenna Grace). The franchise’s resident auteur Francis Lawrence directs.
Greta Gerwig is using her post-Barbie clout to reimagine the through-the-wardrobe-and-back-again world of C.S. Lewis’ fantasy novels — and if there has to be yet another stab at bringing Narnia to the screen, we thank Azlan that it’s Gerwig who’s in charge of it. She’s tackling the sixth book in the series, a prequel which involves magic rings, pools which double as portals to other universes, regal witches (naturally), and two English kids who get into a number of sticky, otherworldly situations. The cast includes Carey Mulligan, Daniel Craig, Emma Mackey, and Andor‘s Denise Gough. Thankfully, Netflix is giving this holiday release an IMAX theatrical run at the end of November, before dropping the film on its service on Christmas Day.
Marvel Studios has already started dropping teasers for its next big all-star superhero epic, which promises to not only bring back a lot of favorites — Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers, Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, Robert Downey Jr. except now he’s Doctor Doom — but also to finally, fully integrate a lot of former I.P. properties (the X-Men, the Fantastic Four) into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Even the ridiculously long reveal of the cast list was treated like a major event. Details are scarce regarding the plot, but we know this will help kick the next “phase” of the MCU into full gear. If we had to hazard a guess, it will likely involve Doom fucking some shit up big-time, and every living, dead, formerly dead, and alt-timeline superhero trying to stop him, lest the universe be in fatal peril, etc. Let’s see how close our predictions are come next December.
And we’re back! Denis Villeneuve will finish what he started back in 2021 with this final chapter of his sci-fi epic, which will follow Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) as he gets a little spice-drunk with power, what with him being the new emperor and all. This chapter draws heavily from Frank Herbert’s second book in the series, Dune Messiah, which revolves around a religious jihad that helps Paul maintain his reign yet spirals out of his control — so brace yourself for both a lot of spectacle and even more reel-to-real commentary about the world outside the theater. Zendaya, Josh Brolin, Rebecca Ferguson, Florence Pugh, Jason Momoa, and Anya Taylor-Joy reprise their roles from the earlier films; Robert Pattinson joins the cast as a yet-unnamed character.
He’s taken on witches and vampires — now Robert Eggers digs into the mythology around lycanthropes. The writer-director hasn’t said much about the specifics of his tale regarding a werewolf terrorizing a medieval town, but he has confessed that this is the “darkest thing I’ve ever written by far,” which… yikes. Card-carrying members of Eggers repertory company Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Lily-Rose Depp, Willem Dafoe, and Ralph Ineson will help our man carry out his vision of sheer, blood-curdling terror. The fact that it’s coming out on Christmas Day may seem counterintuitive, but remember that Eggers released Nosferatu on that holiday as well, and look how well that turned out.
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