2025 was a surprisingly mixed year for movies.
While the box office increased slightly from 2024’s total, several high-profile movies, like Marvel’s Thunderbolts and Paramount’s The Running Man, underperformed. There’s a reason for that — they weren’t as good as many people, including myself, expected them to be.
2026 promises to be different.
Project Hail Mary, Michael, The Devil Wears Prada 2, Obsession and Backrooms have brought audiences back to the multiplex — and most of these films are actually good.
With new films from directors like Christopher Nolan and Steven Spielberg and some fan-favorite sequels like Dune: Part Three in the pipeline, 2026 has plenty of movies I’m looking forward to watching in a crowded theater.
‘Disclosure Day’ (June 12)
Watch the Skies was the original title of Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi masterpiece, 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and it’s a perfect title for the director’s upcoming extraterrestrial movie, Disclosure Day. Little is known about the movie except what the teaser trailer, well, teases — humanity’s first contact with an unknown alien species, and the questions that are inevitably asked when such an event happens. Are they friend or foe? And what exactly do they want?
Starring Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor and Colman Domingo, Disclosure Day feels like a summer blockbuster from years past. In this case, that’s a good thing, with a masterful director behind the camera, a sure-to-be thought-provoking script by Jurassic Park’s David Koepp and a majestic score by frequent Spielberg collaborator John Williams. After watching the trailer, I felt the same chills I had when I first watched Spielberg’s modern sci-fi classic, Minority Report. If Disclosure Day is half as good as that Tom Cruise banger, we’re in for a treat.
‘Supergirl’ (June 26)
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s … an alien teenager with a drinking problem? Just one year after James Gunn‘s successful Superman reboot with David Corenswet, the DCEU goes back to Krypton for its second feature, Supergirl. Loosely based on Tom King and Bilquis Elvey’s acclaimed DC comic book series Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, Supergirl follows Kal-El’s cousin, Kara Zor-El (Milly Alcock), as she stumbles around the galaxy with her loyal dog, Krypto. Along the way, she’s recruited by a young girl, Ruthye Marye Knoll (Eve Ridley), to avenge her father’s murder by the villain Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts).
Can Supergirl match Superman’s box office success? Probably not, but the spinoff looks to be a wilder and more fun take on the superhero genre. As she showed in House of the Dragon season 1, Alcock is at home playing complicated female characters who pack a mean punch, and the addition of Jason Momoa as the violent antihero Lobo makes Supergirl the comic book movie to look forward to in the summer.
‘The Odyssey’ (July 17)
Never bet against Christopher Nolan. The Inception and Dunkirk director has long defied convention and expectations in his impressive career, with his last movie making almost a billion dollars worldwide even though it was a nearly three-hour biopic about the father of the atomic bomb. Oppenheimer ended up winning seven Oscars in 2023, and Nolan’s latest movie, a big-budget adaptation of the Greek tale The Odyssey, promises to win some awards of its own, in addition to probably becoming one of 2026’s biggest blockbusters.
The $250 million epic chronicles the long, strange journey of Odysseus (Matt Damon) as he makes his way from after barely surviving the Trojan War. Determined to reunite with his wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway), Odysseus must battle a dangerous cyclops, deceptively alluring sea sirens and the witch Circe (Charlize Theron) to find his way home.
The Odyssey has been told countless times before, but never on this scale. With a cast that also includes Tom Holland, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, John Leguizamo and Mia Goth, the movie has almost as many stars as the night sky Odysseus travels under. The just-released teaser trailer promises epic action set pieces and a moving love story. If Oppenheimer can pack them into the multiplexes, surely The Odyssey can, too.
‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ (July 31)
When we last saw Tom Holland’s lovable wall-crawler, he was still recovering from Aunt May’s (Marisa Tomei) death and adjusting to a new life where no one, not even girlfriend MJ (Zendaya), knows he exists thanks to a convenient mind-wipe from Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch).
The little we know about Spider-Man: Brand New Day is this: Spidey is still slinging solo until some event triggers a team-up of sorts with Jon Bernthal’s Punisher and Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk. MJ and Jacob Batalon’s Ned return in some capacity, and Sadie Sink joins the cast as a yet-to-be-revealed character. (Some say she’s playing a new version of the X-Men’s Jean Grey, while others insist she’s playing Rachel Summers, Jean’s adult daughter from a future timeline.) In addition, Spidey will battle new-to-the-MCU villain Tombstone (Marvin Jones III) as well as the Scorpion (Michael Mando), who appeared briefly in 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming.
That’s all that’s currently known about the top-secret project as of press time. As the MCU movie before Avengers: Doomsday, it’s reasonable to expect it will set up that film in some capacity. Even if it doesn’t, who cares? Holland’s always killed it as Spidey, and this fourth film in Sony’s reboot series sounds like a blast.
‘The Social Reckoning’ (October 9)
When it was released in 2010, writer Aaron Sorkin and director David Fincher’s The Social Network was a critical and commercial hit. A pseudo-biography about Mark Zuckerberg and the origins of Facebook, it captured a key moment in time when social media was just starting to take over everyone’s lives.
A lot’s changed since then, enough for Sorkin, sans Fincher, to return to write and direct a follow-up, The Social Reckoning. Based in part on the real-life 2021 Facebook whistleblower leaks, the movie promises to show the damaging effects of Facebook on society, specifically how misinformation led to events such as the January 6 Capitol riots. With a cast that includes recent Oscar winner Mikey Madison, The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White and Jeremy Strong, The Social Reckoning promises to be the most talked-about movie of the year and a surefire contender at the 2027 Academy Awards.
‘Avengers: Doomsday’ (December 18)
Is there any magic left in the Marvel machine? That’s the big question Avengers: Doomsday hopes to answer with a resounding and definitive “Yes!” Marvel’s throwing everything at this latest Avengers sequel, the first since the massively successful Avengers: Endgame in 2019, by bringing back its OG star, Robert Downey Jr. But instead of playing Iron Man, he’s playing another character this time – the evil Doctor Doom, who wants to conquer, well, everything.
It will take more than one team of Avengers to stop him, which is why heroes from various timelines and dimensions, from the X-Men’s Prof. X (Patrick Stewart), Magneto (Ian McKellan) and Cyclops (James Marsden) to the recently introduced Fantastic Four, are banding together to counter Doom’s threat. Also appearing are Avengers founding members Captain America (Chris Evans) and Thor (Chris Hemsworth), the new Black Panther (Letitia Wright), the Thunderbolts and many, many more.
After recent Marvel movies like Captain America: Brave New World and shows like She-Hulk: Attorney at Law failed to light the world on fire, a lot is riding on Doomsday to breathe new life into the tiring superhero genre. Even if the story falls short, it’ll be fun to see the X-Men fight side-by-side with the Avengers for the first time.
‘Dune: Part Three’ (December 18)
It’s safe to say that 2021’s Dune and 2024’s Dune: Part Two are two of the best modern sci-fi movies ever made. The critically acclaimed adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic science fiction novel won a bunch of Oscars and a legion of fans, so it’s only natural that another movie would be made to cash in on the success of the previous two.
Based on Herbert’s divisive novel Dune: Messiah, Dune: Part Three takes place years after the last chapter ended. Paul (Timothée Chalamet) is now the Padishah Emperor and father to two children. The long-dead Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa) is somehow alive again, and Paul’s young sister, Alia (Anya Taylor-Joy), last seen as a sentient embryo in Part Two, is now fully grown. Zendaya and Rebecca Ferguson return, as well as director Denis Villeneuve, who has promised this is the last Dune sequel he’ll be involved in. I can’t wait to see what he has in store for his farewell to a far-out universe filled with massive sandworms, albino gladiators and, of course, spice.
‘Werwulf’ (December 25)
On Christmas 2024, director Robert Eggers delivered a most unusual gift to moviegoers – the vampire horror movie, Nosferatu. An unexpected hit, Nosferatu exploited an untapped market for dimly-lit period movies depicting all sorts of dangerous creatures lurking in the night. This Christmas, Eggers promises more of the same with his new film, Werwulf, which swaps out vampires for, you guessed it, werewolves.
Not much is known about the plot except that it takes place in 13th-century England and focuses on a small village being terrorized by a murderous lycanthrope. Most of the cast of Nosferatu, including Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Lily-Rose Depp and Willem Dafoe, return for Werwulf, as well as longtime Eggers’ collaborators, cinematographer Jarin Blaschke and writer Sjon. I’m hoping Werwulf can conjure the same magic that Nosferatu cast on me and millions of other moviegoers and give all of us some relief from those endless repeats of Home Alone during the holidays.
Read the full article here
