From Avengers: Doomsday to The Odyssey: The 10 Most Anticipated Movies of 2026
As October creeps into November, certain things inevitably happen: the clocks go forward, the leaves fall, and the Internet becomes awash with end-of-year lists. The most fun of these, both to read and write, are not the roundups of what we’ve seen but the tantalising idea of what’s ahead: some of which we know a lot about; some of which don’t even have a name yet.
For the following list of 2026 film releases—which I’ve arranged in ascending order of anticipation—I’ve opted to focus on “major” upcoming movies with relatively “set” release dates. This means things that haven’t premiered elsewhere: so, while all sorts of wonderful films from 2025 have yet to find their way to UK screens, and while a whole world of new movies will shortly begin their journeys from places like Sundance and Berlin, for now let’s stick to what we know.
Honorable Mentions
As ever with a list like this, there are just too many to mention, but for now, let’s say you can colour us variously intrigued by any of the following:
- Send Help – a highly-promising-looking desert-island-romp from Sam Raimi, starring Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien.
- 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple – Nia DeCosta’s attempt to both put The Marvels behind her and build on Danny Boyle’s exceptional franchise reboot.
- Wuthering Heights – Emerald Fennel’s rather thirsty-looking update on Emily Brontë’s novel, starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi.
- The Dog Stars – Ridley Scott’s first sci-fi movie in nine years.
- Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die – Gore Verbinski’s first movie in a decade.
- Focker In-Law – Ariana Grande and Skyler Gisondo join the cast for the fourth instalment in the Meet the Parents franchise.
- Toy Story 5 – Woody and the gang apparently face their greatest threat yet: screentime.
- The Mandalorian and Grogu – a feature spin-off of the popular series, still sure to draw a crowd despite a slightly goofy trailer.
- The Hunger Games: Sunshine on the Reaping – Joseph Zada plays a young Haymitch Abernathy among a typically stacked cast.
- Coyote vs. Acme – a James Gunn-written, Who Framed Roger Rabbit-style movie that, tantalisingly, almost didn’t see the light of day.
- Supergirl – a Craig Gillespie-directed, Milly Alcock-starring DCU adventure.
- The Devil Wears Prada 2 – the runway team reunites for fashion world fun and flashes of pathos.
- Scream 7 – in which McKenna Grace looks set to enter Ghostface’s group chat.
- The Bride – yet another Frankenstein movie, this one with Christian Bale and Jessie Buckley—apparently doing their own version of Joker: Folie à Deux.
As ever, we wish them all the best!
8. Spider-Man: Brand New Day & Avengers: Doomsday
Three or four years ago, if you told someone in Hollywood that a new Spider-Man or Avengers movie had a chance of making less than $1 billion at the box office, they’d probably laugh you all the way to LAX. In 2026, after a series of issues we simply don’t have time to go into here, that is very much the place where the MCU finds itself with Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Avengers: Doomsday.
Naturally, next to nothing has been released about either plot. What we do know is that one is the fourth movie in Tom Holland’s reign as the webslinging hero—and while the actor is still beloved, he’s surely on the verge of ageing out of the part and moving on to more mature roles (more on one of them very shortly). The other (which is promising to bring both the original Patrick Stewart-generation X-Men and Robert Downey Jr. back into the fold) feels more like the MCU going back to the drawing board than the culmination of a years-long plan. We shall have to wait and see.
Scheduled release date for Spider-Man: Brand New Day: 31 July, and for Avengers: Doomsday: 18 December 2026
4. Untitled Alejandro G. Iñárritu film
It’s probably no accident that the logline for Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s as-yet-untitled latest movie, which stars Tom Cruise (alongside Jesse Plemons, Sandra Huller, John Goodman and various other beloved actors), sounds a bit like what ChatGPT would come up with if you asked it to write a Tom Cruise movie. This short synopsis reads thus: ‘The most powerful man in the world causes a disaster and embarks on a mission to prove that he is the saviour of humanity.’
Fans of Cruise (especially those who have celebrated his movie-star resurgence in more recent Mission: Impossible movies) have noted this casting with great interest—not since the early ‘00s (think Magnolia and Collateral) has the actor given himself over to a big-name auteur. Might Cruise finally win the Oscar that has eluded him for his entire career? Like anything with Cruise, you wouldn’t bet against him.
Scheduled release date: Expect a Venice premiere before releasing wide on 2 October 2026.
2. Untitled Steven Spielberg Film
The second yet-to-be-titled movie in our list comes courtesy of the great Steven Spielberg, a filmmaker who has been on a low-key roll these last few years. That said, while his last two movies (West Side Story and The Fabelmans) were beloved by fans and critics, neither one made a dent at the box office.
His once world-beating talent for making bank is set to really be put to the test next year with his first sci-fi movie since Ready Player One and arguably his first “Spielbergian” sounding movie (it’s said to be about UFOs) since War of the Worlds. If that’s not enough to whet the appetite, it’s being written by Jurassic Park scribe David Koepp and will feature Emily Blunt, Colman Domingo and Josh O’Connor among the cast. I want to believe.
Scheduled release date: An out-of-competition slot in Cannes could be possible before releasing wide on 12 June 2026.
On to the biggies. This year’s The Naked Gun and Spinal Tap sequels might not have quite lived up to our expectations, but I must say it was a real delight to laugh in a crowded cinema again. Next year, we’ll hopefully get another chance to experience that feeling with Scary Movie 6, the hotly anticipated return of the Wayans brothers’ spoof comedy franchise.
One of the reasons I can’t wait to see it is that the last Scary Movie came out in 2013—in other words, when Jordan Peele was still a sketch comedian (Get Out was released four years later) and A24 was simply the name of a road from Clapham to Worthing. Expect the world of “elevated horror” to be firmly in the crosshairs in Scary Movie 6, in which Anna Faris and Regina Hall (who will possibly be coming in off the back of an Oscar nomination) are set to reprise their iconic roles.
Scheduled release date: 12 June 2026
As someone who watches The Social Network at least twice a year, I have generally regarded any rumours of a sequel with complete disdain. Among its many qualities, one of the best things about David Fincher’s film is that it leaves you wanting more—even in the best-case scenario, would a sequel not extinguish that delightful (and all too rare) feeling?
At the time of writing, I’m quietly confident that it won’t. This is mainly because the movie—which has neither Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, nor David Fincher involved, not to mention the first movie’s iconic Harvard setting and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross score—will look, feel and taste different enough for it not to matter. The Social Reckoning (which is being written and directed by Aaron Sorkin) is said to focus on the 2021 Facebook leak. Jeremy Strong (as Zuckerberg), Jeremy Allen White and Mikey Madison lead an undeniably formidable-looking cast.
Scheduled release date: Expect a premiere in Venice or Toronto before opening on 9 October 2026
If, like me, you feel that the world would be a better place if Hollywood delivered at least one starry heist movie (think Ronin, Inception, Now You See Me) each year, you’ll probably be delighted to hear that one is on the way in 2026—and it doesn’t even have “Ocean’s” in the title.
David Leitch’s How to Rob a Bank—which apparently focuses on a group of bank-robbing influencers—stars Zoë Kravitz, Nicholas Hoult, Pete Davidson, John C. Reilly and Christian Slater. The director, a former stuntman, might have some limitations when it comes to emotional depth and characters, but (as seen in John Wick and Deadpool 2), he certainly knows how to execute a set piece.
Scheduled release date: 7 September 2026
We’ll never know what might have happened had Phil Lord and Chris Miller been allowed to finish what they started with Solo: A Star Wars Story. That unfortunate incident aside, however, and I say with great confidence: These guys do not miss.
If I’m being completely honest, the trailer for their upcoming movie, Project Hail Mary, in which Ryan Gosling plays a scientist who wakes up on a spaceship with amnesia during a potentially world-ending event, was not quite as funny as I’d hoped it would be. But if The Lego Movie, 21 Jump Street and Into the Spider-Verse are anything to go by (not to mention The Martian, the last movie adapted from an Andy Weir novel), we basically have nothing to worry about.
Scheduled release date: 20 March 2026
As someone who recently revisited all six of Paul WS Anderson’s wonderfully singular but largely terrible Resident Evil movies, I can’t say that news of another franchise reboot had filled me with much joy. That is to say, at least not before I heard that Zach Cregger was on board to direct it—and if you were a fan of Cregger’s breakout hit Barbarian or his 2025 smash Weapons, you should probably add this to your most anticipated list, too.
The movie is being co-written by John Wick alum Shay Hatten and is set to star Austin Abrams (who played the drug addict in Weapons) alongside beloved character actors Paul Waller Hauser (The Fantastic Four: First Steps) and Zach Cherry (Severance). There will, presumably, be blood.
Scheduled release date: 18 September 2026
Dune: Part Three has the potential to be the greatest “two for you, one for me” movie of all time. The first two instalments of Denis Villeneuve’s gothic space opera covered the events of Frank Herbert’s first novel—an admittedly dense but ultimately satisfying narrative arc. This third instalment, which will feature Anya Taylor-Joy and Robert Pattinson alongside Timothée Chalamet and the rest of the returning cast, will likely be something else entirely.
Early word suggests that Villeneuve’s script—which takes place 12 years later and draws selectively from the source material (presumably leaving out the bit when Paul turns into a giant worm)—is phenomenal but potentially unfilmable. Sign me up.
Scheduled release date: 18 December 2026, the same as Doomsday. Surely one will have to budge…
How do you top a Best Picture-winning movie about one of the most significant figures of the 20th century that also somehow managed to pull in almost a billion dollars at the worldwide box office?
There is a timeline in which Cristopher Nolan followed up Oppenheimer with something understandably in-betweeny (your Tenets, your Prestiges), but we are not living on that timeline. Instead, Nolan has decided to adapt The Odyssey and is apparently doing so with a reported $250 million war chest and basically every star actor on the planet. The rest of us will be seated.
Scheduled release date: 16 July 2026
