20 movies to look out for in 2026, from The Odyssey to Devil Wears Prada 2

We must savour these moments. When we don’t know for certain how unhinged Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” will be, or if the talking-sheep-solve-Hugh-Jackman’s-murder movie (released 8 May!) is a once-in-a-generation classic or an absolute dumpster fire. That’s the joy of looking over a calendar of new films at this time of year – it’s all so mysterious, so exciting, so encouraging of absolutely wild declarations. Remember this time last year when I predicted Keanu Reeves would win an Oscar for a movie that still hasn’t actually come out? Hilarious!

What we do know for certain is that 2026 looks pretty great, with a slate full of provocative dramas, ambitious blockbusters, intriguing comedies and an inexplicable amount of Anne Hathaway. Seriously, she’s in four of the movies we’ve selected below, plus an elaborate pop-star psychodrama with Michaela Coel and potentially a Ron Howard film if it gets completed in time. One way to prove that we’re collectively better than we used to be? Letting her get through the year without a backlash a la the period around 2012 or 2013 when we all for some reason decided she was annoying.

Anyway, here are the 20 films we’re most excited for in 2026 – with apologies to Greta Gerwig’s Narnia movie, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s intriguing-looking take on The Bride of Frankenstein, Jesse Eisenberg’s film about Julianne Moore joining a local theatre production, and new movies by Gregg Araki, Joel Coen, Nicolas Winding Refn and Pedro Almodóvar, all of which just missed the cut here.

Rachel McAdams leaves her house maybe once every two years, so Send Help is cause for celebration. Sam Raimi’s latest thriller seems like a juicy star vehicle for the Mean Girls actor, who plays a put-upon secretary to an abusive tech CEO (Dylan O’Brien). The pair are stranded on a desert island following a plane crash, with McAdams’s character seemingly taking advantage of the flip in power. “I’m the captain now,” is more or less the gist here. We are seated. (6 February)

open image in gallery

It felt as if everyone had an opinion about this even before we saw its first trailer, such is the power of the Saltburn filmmaker and master discourse-spinner Emerald Fennell. Margot Robbie is Catherine. Jacob Elordi is Heathcliff. Charli xcx is doing the soundtrack. You can practically hear the outrage already. But what’s with those mysterious quote marks around the title? Could it be that Fennell has taken quite extreme liberties with her adaptation of Emily Brontë’s sumptuous novel? And that we shouldn’t get too angry about a movie that, according to an early test screening report, features… um… “stylised depravity” and “clinical masturbation”? This will inevitably break our collective brains this Valentine’s Day, but hopefully in a good way. (13 February)

There’s a new Gore Verbinski film coming out in 2026, and you should be more excited about that than you probably are. The filmmaker has nimbly dabbled in various genres over the last 30 years – horror (The Ring), adventure (Pirates of the Caribbean), animation (Rango) – and is returning in 2026 with his first film since the admirable if overcooked A Cure for Wellness 10 years ago. He’s adding gonzo time-loop sci-fi to his repertoire with Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, which follows a man from the future (Sam Rockwell) who travels back in time to recruit an army to prevent the development of a rogue AI. (20 February)

open image in gallery

From the moment an elaborate set of speakers is shown being set up in the Moroccan desert, ahead of an illegal rave attracting hundreds of euphoria-hunting revellers, you’ll be hooked on the tone of Sirāt – one of perceived safety that can be superseded by horror at the flick of an amp switch. The story follows Luis (Sergi López), who goes deeper into the desert while searching for his daughter, last seen at one of these raves. As the search intensifies, so too does the terrain around him, resulting in a slow-burn descent into hell that caused some of the biggest gasps at 2025’s Cannes Film Festival. Oliver Laxe’s Sirat is a visual manifestation of dread. (27 February)

It’s still a little unclear how A24 will promote their black comedy The Drama, which revolves around Robert Pattinson discovering a maddeningly TMI secret about his new bride Zendaya on the eve of their wedding. If the rumours swirling around online are to be believed, said secret is legitimately very, very dark and very, very funny – so it’d make sense for them to keep it under lock and key until the last minute. (3 April)

Anne Hathaway klaxon! The Devil Wears Prada 2 is a terrifying prospect, frankly, with the original film a bona fide modern classic that’s never quite fallen out of memory despite being released 20 years ago. So the stakes are incredibly high for the sequel, which sees Meryl Streep once again strap on her ice-white swoop of a wig to boss people about and tell them they look like crap. Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci are all back, too, along with newcomers including Lucy Liu and Kenneth Branagh. We are excited. Tentatively. (1 May)

Steven Spielberg is directing aliens again! Disclosure Day feels like the filmmaker’s most conventionally Spielbergian blockbuster in maybe 20 years, its first trailer grand in scale and filled with striking images of end-of-the-world dread. We still know little about the plot, but it seems to be an ensemble piece about an alien invasion, with Emily Blunt playing a TV reporter and man of the moment Josh O’Connor playing a conspiracy-brained UFO hunter. (12 June)

You’re reading that correctly; there’s another Toy Story film arriving next year, and this one will see Woody, Buzz and co fall from favour with new owner Bonnie thanks to the presence of her new favourite plaything – a frog-like tablet named Lilypad. The thought of another sequel might make your eyes roll, but this particular plot – the extinction of physical toys in favour of digital distraction – sounds like a bold new creative direction for the franchise. And if anyone can mine that for existential laughs, it’s Pixar. (19 June)

Anne Hathaway klaxon! You’d think that Christopher Nolan might have wanted a rest after finally winning an Oscar on the heels of making absolute bangers for more than two decades. Instead, he only went bigger. Nolan’s Oppenheimer follow-up is his take on Homer’s Greek epic, and is led by Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson and a plethora of other stars – all of whom were clearly champing at the bit to work with the maestro. Intrigued to see how Nolan – a fan of practical effects over CGI – pulls off his version of a Trojan horse and the one-eyed Cyclops? We are too. (17 July)

Anne Hathaway klaxon! We’re gonna call it now: Flowervale Street will be a disaster or a future cult classic. The evidence suggests the latter. First up, the plot is tantalisingly mysterious – strange events pit a suburban couple (Hathaway and Ewan McGregor) on a perilous journey that potentially involves dinosaurs – and secondly, it’s directed by David Robert Mitchell, whose last offering, Under the Silver Lake (2018), was a down-the-rabbit-hole masterclass that didn’t get enough love. This cryptic new one sounds like more of the same – and it also lists JJ Abrams as producer, which means you’re either striking this one from your memory or scribbling down the release date in permanent marker. (14 August)

One of the great pleasures of 2025 was the decidedly not-appalling Superman, which had pop and fizz and colour in all the right places. So hopes are high for the rest of the DC stable with James Gunn now in charge of it all. There’s Supergirl on 26 June, of course, but we’re a little more hyped by Clayface a few months later. The Batman villain – a struggling actor able to transform his appearance at will – has never been depicted in live action before, while director James Watkins (of Eden Lake and Speak No Evil fame) has form with gnarly horror-thrillers. Throw in the left-of-centre casting of Tom Rhys Harries in the lead role and the presence of Naomi Ackie, coming off a sensational year via Sorry, Baby and Mickey 17, and this seems genuinely very intriguing. (11 September)

What’s a cinema year without mindless action? Next year’s schedule is bursting with it – look out for a reboot of Sylvester Stallone’s Cliffhanger (1993) and a sequel to Gerard Butler’s actually pretty great apocalyptic thriller Greenland. The one we’re most excited for, though, is Whalefall, and you will be too after reading the plot: a scuba diver searching for the remains of his father gets swallowed alive by a whale and attempts to escape. Need we say more? (16 October)

Like that long-lost cousin you forgot about, the Focker family is back. The franchise was rightly put to bed after the dreadful Little Fockers in 2010, but this new Meet the Parents sequel could well restore some of the original’s magic. All the cast are back, including Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller. Ariana Grande, fresh from her escapades in Wicked, is on hand to lure in a younger generation. Colour us cautiously optimistic that the film will be more “fock yes” than “fock off”. (25 November)

Next Christmas, another blockbuster sequel beginning with “Av” will be released, and it looks like it’ll be the most crowded film in history. Not only are the typical Avengers characters back (Captain America, Thor), but so too are the new ones (the Fantastic Four) and the X-Men stars of old (Ian McKellen, James Marsden, et al). At the centre of it all is Robert Downey Jr, who won’t be playing the heroic Iron Man but the film’s primary antagonist, Doctor Doom, in a casting stunt that’ll either excite or make you groan. (18 December)

Sandworming its way into cinemas on the same day as the above is Denis Villeneuve’s third Dune film. It’ll be a cinematic face-off to rival the 2019 clash of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and *checks notes* Cats. This new film will close out the trilogy with a gloomy chapter set years after Dune: Part Two. If you want to find out what happens in the film, you can do so by reading Frank Herbert’s Dune: Messiah – but for everyone else, all you need to know is that Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atreides will be back, his flowing locks won’t, and Robert Pattinson has joined the cast as a shapeshifting villain with the catchy moniker Face Dancer Scytale. (18 December)

Does the world need a new film centred on Brad Pitt’s character from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood? Absolutely not. Will we be waiting with bated breath to watch it? We certainly will. Heightening excitement levels for the Netflix release is the small detail that Quentin Tarantino, who’s written the prequel, has handed the project off to none other than David Fincher. The film is expected to show the stuntman’s time in a POW camp during the Second World War, and if it all sounds like a pulpy quick hit, it’s anything but: The Adventures of Cliff Booth will be the most expensive film of either Tarantino or Fincher’s vast catalogues, with a budget of $200m. (TBC)

We’ve been due a Rooney Mara comeback for a few years now, and we may get it with this presumably-gonna-be-retitled movie from Werner Herzog, in which she plays opposite her sister Kate, of House of Cards fame. The film is reportedly loosely inspired by real-life twin sisters Freda and Greta Chaplin, who became tabloid catnip in the Eighties when a man they were both romantically involved with took out a restraining order against them. Juicy, right? (TBC)

Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You was one of 2018’s strongest films – a bold, off-kilter sci-fi story that marked the arrival of a real visionary. So there’s a lot riding on I Love Boosters, Riley’s star-studded follow-up, which revolves around a ragtag team of shoplifters who assemble to rob a fashion designer. Demi Moore is the designer, while Naomi Ackie, Keke Palmer and Zola’s Taylour Paige are among the shoplifters. The first stills released from the film tease bold colours and outrageous costumes, though we shouldn’t have expected anything less. (TBC)

open image in gallery

This will inevitably hit the festival circuit in 2026 and may not arrive in British cinemas until 2027, but we’d be insane not to mention it all the same: Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is director Jane Schoenbrun’s follow-up to their sensational 2024 mystery I Saw the TV Glow, and revolves around the psychosexual mania that occurs when a young filmmaker recruits an actor to reprise her star-making “final girl” role in a reboot of her celebrated slasher franchise. That the women are played by Hacks breakout Hannah Einbinder and none other than Gillian Anderson is just the icing on the cake. (TBC)

Anne Hathaway klaxon! OK, a question: does this Colleen Hoover adaptation sound like bonkers fun or just very bad? In it, Dakota Johnson plays a struggling novelist recruited to ghost-write the latest book by a literary titan played by Hathaway, who’s been confined to a wheelchair following a “mysterious accident”. Her husband, snaking around their property with squinty, handsome eyes, is played by Josh Hartnett. This trio will inevitably become embroiled in some sort of sexy but strictly PG, slightly Christian-tinged power struggle, as is the Colleen Hoover way. (TBC)