What Movies We're Looking Forward to This Year

Studios lean harder into genre fare than ever, but there are many creative swings to keep an eye out for.

With theaters still recovering from the pandemic, many theater owners are looking forward to a more robust 2025-2026 season, which is looking closer to peak 2017-2019 slates than we’ve seen in a long time. Some long-delayed films- like Bong Joon-Ho’s Mickey-17, are finally getting a release this weekend (review coming soon), but most films were able to be shot this past year after 2023’s late end to the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strikes.

While Steven Spielberg’s next feature- The Dish- won’t hit theaters until 2026, the acclaimed filmmaker still (as per usual) has his fingers in a number of pies: he is producing Jurassic World Rebirth which is being helmed by VFX maestro Gareth Edwards, and Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, a fictional tale of William and Agnes Shakespeare. His companies are also putting out movies: Home Alone director Chris Columbus is returning to feature-filmmaking with whodunit The Thursday Murder Club for Amblin Entertainment (distributed by Netflix).

Disney will be putting out a few (comparatively) risky ventures: Dan Trachtenberg’s Predator: Badlands will hopefully continue a hot streak of quality features from 20th Century Studios, with James Cameron’s Avatar: Fire and Ash serving perhaps as a more reliable hit for the studio. Here’s hoping third time’s the charm for Matt Shakman’s The Fantastic Four, but with a solid cast including Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as the titular super-family, maybe it’ll surprise audiences and critics alike. Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo, WALL-E) will be helming his first live-action feature since John Carter, titled In the Blink of An Eye for Searchlight Pictures, a history-spanning journey through time that will reunite him with composer Thomas Newman.

The Fab Four

Paramount is hoping to continue leveraging Glen Powell in the post-Maverick world with a remake of The Running Man, which, more importantly, will be Edgar Wright’s first film in four years. Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning would have been the third film in a row for the 62-year old star had the strikes not happened, but the wait for the (probably not) final installment of one of our greatest franchises only makes the anticipation all the sweeter (it ranked highest on our cumulative list of anticipated films, appearing on almost every list). Meanwhile, Lionsgate returns to the world of John Wick with Ballerina, while Rian Johnson will dip his toes into the whodunit genre one last time with another star-studded Benoit Blanc movie, Wake Up, Dead Man over at Netflix.

Sony’s tentpole (in lieu of further Spider-Man spin-offs) is the sequel 28 Years Later: shot by Danny Boyle with an iPhone (mirroring the original’s use of DV cameras) will be the first of two parts, with follow-up The Bone Temple having been shot back-to-back. But non-Marvel superhero fans can rejoice in Warner Bros’ “make-or-break” test for studio head honcho David Zaslav: Superman flies into theaters this summer, sporting a new lead actor and a bold creative vision from Guardians of the Galaxy helmer James Gunn. Expect to fall in love with Krypto the Superdog.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Alfie Williams in 28 Years Later

Outside of franchise fare, Wes Anderson will be back with a new film, The Phoenician Scheme, while Terrence Malick will (allegedly) finally release his film about Christ, The Way of the Wind, likely premiering at Cannes. Speaking of that festival, Ruben Östlund hopes to make a splash there again this year with his Keanu Reeves-led The Entertainment System is Down, a comedy about what happens on a flight when the aforementioned entertainment system shuts off. The Rock will make a play for Oscar gold with Benny Safdie’s wrestling biopic The Smashing Machine, while Jerry Bruckheimer looks to essentially remake his own Days of Thunder with the $300 million F1.

Oscar hopefuls also abound- especially at Netflix- with Guillermo del Toro’s long-awaited Frankenstein starring Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi as Frankenstein and his creation respectively. While his girlfriend Greta Gerwig works on her new Narnia movie, Noah Baumbach will return with Jay Kelly, another film for the streamer starring George Clooney and Adam Sandler (expect a dialogue-heavy family drama set at least partially in New York for this one). Taika Waititi hopes to make a post-Love and Thunder rebound with his Kazuo Ishiguro adaptation of Klara and the Sun, a dystopian science-fiction story starring Jenna Ortega and Amy Adams.

As always, there are many more films that will crop up throughout the year that currently have no distributor, so keep an eye out as 2025 progresses!

Let us know in the comments what films you’d like to see us cover this year!