50 Most Anticipated Movies of Fall 2026

Now that Focus is gunning to be the new A24 (see: Obsession), A24 may be pivoting to toward becoming Lionsgate 2.0. Case in point: This pulpy-as-fuck thriller about a former Army sniper (Adria Arjona) who lives near a military base conducting some off-the-books experiments. The end result of this black-ops project — basically, super-soldiers who are “the human equivalent of a heat-seeking missile” — decide to go rogue and attack the locals, however. Which means our hero has to battle both genetically modified killing machines and some government “fixers” who have been dispatched to clean up the mess and leave zero witnesses. All this, plus Dan Stevens rocking a crazy German accent! Rebecca Hall, Queer‘s Drew Starkey and The Terminator‘s Michael Biehn costar.

Neon has a lit of high hopes (get it?!) for this wackadoo sci-fi opus from South Korean filmmaker Na Hong-jin (The Chaser, The Wailing), about a small town on high alert after a tiger is reportedly spotted in the area. It soon becomes clear that something far more sinister is going on. The cast is a mix of both South Korean actors like superstar Hwang Jung-min (A Bittersweet Life) and international names like Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, Mindhunter‘s Cameron Britton, and Bones and All‘s Taylor Russell. The vibe is a cross between relentless and batshit.

It is once again the season of the witch(es)! Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman reprise their roles as Sally and Gilly Owens, the two supernaturally gifted sisters from their 1997 cult movie, for a belated sequel — and yes, the family curse that dogged them roughly a quarter of a century ago is still wreaking havoc with their lives. In fact, it’s been passed down to their daughters, played by Joey King and Game of Thrones‘ Maisie Williams, which forces the whole clan to head to the United Kingdom and get to the source of this centuries-old spell once and for all. Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest return as the spell-casting aunts; Lee Pace joins the fun as a magic scholar with eyes for Bullock’s character.

The year is 1381, and a ploughman named Wat Tyler (Andrew Garfield) has had it with the endless taxing and various abuses of power perpetrated by King Richard II (C’mon C’mon‘s Woody Norman). He will soon kickstart a rebellion known as the Peasant’s Revolt, leading hundreds of angry citizens to the streets of London and demanding that the regent recognize their calls for reform. Historians will back us up when we say, with vast understatement: It does not exactly end well for all concerned. The fact that Paul Greengrass (Bloody Sunday, Captain Phillips, a coupla Bourne movies) is the filmmaker behind this recreation bodes extremely well — although really, what could a 14th-century populist pushback against a tyrannical leader willing to use the power of the state against his own people possibly have to say about our current moment? [Cough, cough] Also on deck for the sound and fury: Jamie Bell, Katherine Waterston, Jonny Lee Miller, Tom Holland, Shogun‘s Cosmo Jarvis, Tom Hollander, Thomasin McKenzie, and Game of Thrones‘ Stephen Dillane.

If you’ve seen the HBO show How To with John Wilson, then you know that its director-slash-tour-guide has a knack for finding life lessons in New York’s more idiosyncratic nooks and crannies. The question was always: Could he sustain something like that in a longer format? The answer is a resounding [in John Wilson voice], “Um, well… yes.” Much like a supersized episode from his cult series, his exploration into everything you wanted to know about concrete (but were afraid to ask) takes any number of odd detours that lead Wilson from Rome to Ridgewood, Queens, and veers off into tangents that include a visit with a professional gum-remover and a seminar on how to write the perfect Hallmark movie. The gent really is a genius.

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, a courier — 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” plaguing Raccoon Valley. The filmmaker calls it a “love letter” to the games. OK! The trailer alone is a first-rate creepfest.

Ethan Hawke stars as a Depression-era dad who ends up in a brutal work camp out in the Oregon wilderness because of a misunderstanding. He just wants to do his time and get back to his daughter. But there’s this corrupt warden (Russell Crowe), see, and he has an offer for the prisoner: Smuggle a mother lode of gold through 100 miles of unforgiving terrain, and if you make it through, you can go free. The task is way, way harder than it sounds. This throwback to 1970s-era survivalist thrillers was one of the better things we caught at Sundance this year, and trust us when we tell you: The Walter Hill vibes are 150-proof strong here.

Should you need a heaping helping of Jack London vibes with a dash of gung-ho militarism this autumn, look no further than director David Ayers’ survivalist thriller about a retired Special Forces officer (Brad Pitt, looking rugged AF) who travels to Alaska with his PTSD-suffering combat scouting dog. When their plane crashes in the wilderness, the man and his trusty mutt have to battle wolves, raging rivers and a generally unforgiving Mother Nature in order to make it to safety. Expect thrills, spills, and possibly some very manly tears.

Have a seat for Lance Oppenheim’s movie about the origins of a 20th century TV phenomenon: To Catch a Predator. No less than Robert Pattinson is playing Chris Hansen, the journalist who turned a Dateline segment involving luring online child predators to a “date” — and then filming the confrontations — into something like a true-crime brand and a cottage vigilante industry. Judging from the trailer, this biopic-of-sorts will get into the TCAP‘s rise and slight fall after one of their sting operations goes south in a big way. The fact that the real Hansen has issues with the project could be a good thing or a bad thing. Either way, you see how this looks, right?

That long-awaited Blade movie starring Mahershala Ali may have had a permanent stake put through its heart — sorry! — but the Oscar-winning star and director Bassam Tariq (Mogul Mowgli) still managed to team up for what sounds like a far more interesting project, to be honest. A devoutly religious father is forced to raise three kids on his own when his wife unexpectedly dies, and he’ll do anything to make sure to fulfill both sides of the parenting equation in her absence. Did we happen to mention that he’s a hitman, and must navigate the seriously shady criminal underworld in Houston in order to survive? Do we have your attention now? Also starring John Cho (rocking a seriously flashy grill), Giancarlo Esposito, Tramell Tillman, and Ramy‘s Laith Nakli.

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. The star plays 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 with his signature shovel (see title) 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.

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.

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.

A couple (Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve) move with their family to her small hometown in Norway. Soon, rumors begin to swirl around the village regarding the way these new residents behave with their kids; the fact that he’s Romanian only seems to fuel the locals’ mistrust. The combination of these actors, filmmaker Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days), and a scenario brimming with mistrust, paranoia, and good old-fashioned fear of the other — not to mention the fact that it won the top prize at this year’s Cannes — means this is likely to get tongues wagging quite a bit this awards season.

Once upon a time, Misty Green was an Emmy-winning star with a hell of a singing voice. Then her career took a bit of a nosedive — something about bad behavior on sets and personal demons getting the best of her — and she’s on a bit of a professional downslope. A reconnection with her old agent and a potential role in an upcoming project may mean that a second chance at stardom, however, is right around the corner, if she can just keep the old habit from coming back. Chris Rock does triple-duty as writer, director, and actor (he plays the agent) in this character-driven drama from A24, and he’s packed the cast: Adam Driver, Daniel Kaluuya, Anna Kendrick, Topher Grace. But this really looks like a major showcase for Rosalind Eleazar, a British actor who’s been a big presence on TV in the UK (Harlots, Slow Horses) and, if this trailer is any indication, will likely generate a lot of awards-season chatter with her performance as the title character.

It’s a tale of two underdogs — one who’s a Philly pugilist trying to prove he can go the distance, and another who’s a struggling actor who is determined to play the lead part in a script he just wrote. The fictional boxer is named Rocky Balboa. The real-life performer is Sylvester Stallone. You all know what happens next. Peter Farrelly (Green Book) directs this origin story about the Italian Stallion fighting to get the first Rocky movie made, starring Anthony Ippolito as the young and hungry Sly, determined to do whatever it takes to make his dream a reality. [Cue theme music]

Netflix has extremely high hopes for this Spanish epic from the duo known colloquially as “Los Javis” — Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo — that pinballs between three different timelines (1932, 1937, and 2017) and three different, slightly interconnected stories of gay desire among three different men. If you’ve seen the Javis’ stellar HBO series Veneno (or even better, their multigenerational genre mash-up show La Mesías), you know these gents have a way of mixing the outrageous, the emotionally devastating, and the sort of grand storytelling that requires a large canvas. This may be the most ambitious project yet, and given the rapturous reception out of Cannes, has breakout potential written all over it.

Alex Gibney has never been one to shy away from controversial subjects (Scientology, Enron, scandals within the Catholic church) or notorious public figures (Elliot Spitzer, Jack Abramoff, Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky). The documentarian now gives us a two-in-one combo with this four-hour portrait of Elon Musk, a person who — and we feel pretty safe saying this — has a few dollars in the bank and also inspires no shortage of opinions among the general populace. Expect a few surprises, a greatest-hits reel or two of Musk’s morally questionable decisions over the past decade, and that sense of dread you get when recalling what happens when a certain type of intelligent innovator acquires too much money, too much power and not enough accountability.

In 1972, the late, great filmmaker William Greaves (Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One) sent out an invite to the last living creators and emissaries of the Harlem Renaissance: Come to Duke Ellington’s apartment on the corner of West 157th and St. Nicholas Avenue for a night of cocktails and conversation. He proceeded to document a who’s who of songwriters, authors, poets, theater bigwigs, journalists, movers, and shakers sitting around and reminiscing. The footage remained virtually unseen — until now. Thanks to David Greaves, William’s son (who was also operating one of the cameras on that fateful night), we now get to be a fly on the wall as a host of legends detail how they made history and changed American art forever. It’s a victory-lap testament to an absolutely vital American cultural movement.

The great John Turturro plays a career thief who’s been plying his sticky-fingers trade for decades, lifting just enough wallets and perusing enough purses on the sly to take care of his infirm wife. Then our old-school thief ends up stealing the wrong thing, which puts him in the crosshairs of a brash kid (Will Price) with Mob connections. A sleeper out of this year’s Sundance, writer-director Noah Segan’s crime-inflected character study is a throwback to the NYC indies of yesteryear, complete with Steve Buscemi playing a pawnshop owner and Giancarlo Esposito as a cop who’s busted Turturro’s pickpocket more than once over the years. Also onboard: Jamie Lee Curtis and Tatiana Maslany.

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.

Never mind the Borat — Sacha Baron Cohen brings back his original faux-journalist character, a B-boy named Ali G who had a habit of asking important people ridiculous questions. This new joint seems to be following the gonzo format of dropping a cosplaying Cohen into real situations and seeing what chaos ensues; the trailer suggests the usual shenanigans, just updated for the Tik-Tok era. Speaking of which: A lot has definitely changed since the last time Ali G graced the small screen in 2014. but to everyone who’s now screaming that the caricature is offensive and are suddenly demanding boycotts, we can only ask: Where exactly haz you been for the last few decades?

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 behind Doctor Sleep, Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House adaptation, and the upcoming Carrie TV series — 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 will play the title character; Naomi Ackie is the scientist who helps transform him; Max Minghella and Eddie Marsan show up to lend support.

Taika Waititi takes a stab at Kazuo Ishigoro’s 2021 novel about the not-so-distant future, in which androids act as “artificial friends.” One such older model, Klara (Jenna Ortega), prays to her deity, a.k.a. the sun (see title) that she’ll be picked to be part of the perfect home. Hope arrives in the form of a girl named Josie (Mia Thara), who purchases the ‘bot and begins to teach her about life. Josie’s mother (Amy Adams) has a secondary agenda in mind regarding the latest addition to the family, however. Steve Buscemi, Natasha Lyonne, Rachel House, and Simon Baker round out the cast.

It’s been eight years since writer-director Lee Chang-dong gave us Burning, and the latest from the Korean filmmaking legend sounds like an equally intense psychological minefield. A worker (Sul Kyung-gu) and his wife (Jeon Do-yeon) are left reeling when a labor-rights strike turns into a public tragedy. They encounter another married couple, a businessman (Zo In-sung) and a filmmaker (Parasite‘s Cho Yeo-jeong); the latter wants to make them the subject of her new documentary. Soon, the notion of ethics around journalism, who gets to tell whose story, and what happens when the lives of those behind the camera and those in front of it get way, way too entangled. We can’t wait to see this.

Patricia Highsmith (Helen Mirren) wrote five books about Tom Ripley, the charismatic, class-conscious con man who would end up being her greatest creation. Her publishers, however, would very much like a sixth one, so they send a young, up-and-coming editor (Alden Ehrenreich) to Zurich in order to make the case in person. Let’s just say that the author’s penchant for psychological mind games aren’t strictly relegated to the page, at least in this fictionalized literary thriller. Olivia Cooke costars as a stranger on a train who becomes entangled with the visitor; Anton Corbijn (Control, A Most Wanted Man) directs.

They brought you Coraline and Kubo and the Two Strings — now stop-motion animation house Laika gives you this adaptation of Carson Ellis and Colin Meloy’s novel about two classmates who must travel into an enchanted forest. The reason: One of the girl’s family members, her brother, has been kidnapped by crows. You say you want all-star voice talent when it comes to watching first-rate artisanal ‘toons? Ok, then how’s about Carey Mulligan, Angela Bassett, Mahershala Ali, Jemaine Clement, Tom Waits, Awkwafina, Richard E. Grant, Amandla Stenberg, Charlie Day, Jake Johnson, Maya Erskine, and Jacob Tremblay? Is that good enough for you?!

Writer, director, and actor Jordan Firstman — he’s the publicist on I Love L.A. — went to Cannes as just another American with a movie premiere. He left the festival as the next-big-thing triple threat with a major deal from A24 and a deafening amount of buzz around his feature debut. Now see what all that fuss was about. An NYC club promoter (Firstman) ends up in a threesome during a drug-fueled late night, as one does. A decade or so later, a young man (Reggie Absolom) is deposited at his door — it’s the promoter’s hitherto unknown son from that hook-up. Suddenly, Mr. Party ‘Til the Break of Dawn Every Night has to figure out how to be a dad. It sounds corny, right? Trust us, it’s better than you can possibly imagine, thanks to Firstman’s unique comic sensibility, and you should believe the hype.

Remember when 2023’s Godzilla Minus One took everybody by surprise, and turned out to be the best Godzilla movie in a generation or two? Japanese writer-director Takashi Yamazaki returns with a sequel to massive monster-movie hit, in which the big green guy once again wreaks havoc, and the former pilot (Ryunosuke Kamiki) and his family from the first movie continue to deal with the fallout. Bring on the fire-breathing, kaiju-gone-berserk mayhem!

A veteran C.I.A. operative (John Malkovich) and his younger counterpart (Sam Rockwell) take a trip to the Easter Islands together. The nature of their assignment may or may not involve inter-organization skullduggery surrounding the fact that one of them is writing a book about all the dirty tricks they’ve pulled in the name of American diplomacy over the years — something the agency tends to frown upon, more or less. The new film from Martin McDonagh to have everything you’d expect from the gent who gave us Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and The Banshees of Inershin: whipcrack dialogue, incredible performances, a lot of profanity, father-figure relationships with fraught psychological baggage, pitch-black humor, and even more profanity. Plus Steve Buscemi, Tom Waits, and Parker Posey join in the fun as well.

It’s one thing to liberate banks of their greenback stacks — and a whole other thing to post videos online detailing exactly how to do it and get away with it, all in the name of class revolt. Director David Leitch (Atomic Blonde, Bullet Train) adds a heavy dose of populist rage to the heist movie, with Nicolas Hoult’s mask-loving mastermind becoming a YouTube folk hero thanks to his instructional robbery primers. Pete Davidson and Shōgun‘s Anna Sawai are his literal partners in crime; John C. Reilly is the federal agent doggedly pursuing the righteous crook; Zoe Kravitz is a hacker recruited to help find the gang.

It’s 1986, and Irwin Pearl (Miles Teller) wants more for his wife (Scarlett Johansson) and kids than just a comfortable middle-class life in Queens. Enter his cocky ex-cop brother, Gary (Adam Driver), who thinks he has the solution to his kin’s problems: a lucrative opportunity involving the Russian Mob, the Gowanus Canal, and a loose sense of what constitutes legal business practices. Soon, things fall apart, the center cannot hold, etc. It’s the sort of gritty, moody, character-driven thriller that writer-director James Gray cut his teeth on back in the day, as well as a highly personal look at what happens when you chase the American Dream and instead wake up in a capitalistic nightmare.

The year is 1853. The setting is Ensor House, a remote manor filled with properly dark hallways and shadowy corners. The latest addition to the estate’s staff is one Winifred Notty (Longlegs‘ Maika Monroe), a governess. Strange things are afoot shortly after her arrival, which may or may not be a coincidence. Given our deep knowledge of Gothic thrillers and the evocative title of director Zachary Wigon’s addition to the subgenre, we’re gonna opt for “totally not a coincidence.” Also skulking around in various states of 19th-century gloom: Thomasin Mckenzie, Jason Isaacs, Ruth Wilson, and Hamnet‘s Jacobi Jupe.

British theatergoers knew Ian Charleson as one of the most accomplished actors to ever tread the boards. Filmgoers around the world primarily knew him as one of the Olympic runners in the Oscar-winner Chariots of Fire. In the winter of 1989, Charleson would play the lead role in Hamlet for the National Theatre, and give what many feel remains the definitive 20th century take on the melancholy dane. He would be dead from AIDS-related complications a few months later. Andrew Scott steps into some might big shoes to play Charleson in the final year of his life, as he prepares to for one last go at the Shakespeare play and wrestles with notions of more things on heaven and earth that are dreamt of in most folks’ philosophies. Olivia Colman, Billie Piper, Peter Mullan, Juliet Stevenson, and Agatha All Along‘s Joe Locke round out the cast.

Every Sunday, a jock-ish dad (Channing Tatum) and his eight-year-old daughter, Josephine (Mason Reeves), go running in the park near their apartment in San Francisco. One morning, the girl strays off their usual path, and happens to witness an assault. The child is then forced to grow up way too quickly when the case goes to trial, while her dad and mom (Gemma Chan) try to manage the collateral damage. The near-consensual pick for the best film to come out of this year’s Sundance, writer-director Beth de Araujo’s sophomore film confirms she’s a major next-generation talent; even if you shuddered appreciatively at her debut, the 2022 Neo-Nazi Karen parable Soft & Quiet, you simply won’t be prepared for the emotional wallop this packs.

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). Also dropping by the dystopian nation of Panem: Elle Fanning, Kieran Culkin, Glenn Close, Ralph Fiennes, Jesse Plemons, Maya Hawke, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Billy Porter, Iris Apatow, and Lily Taylor. The franchise’s resident auteur Francis Lawrence directs.

If you’ve read Quentin Tarantino’s novelization of Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, then you know that there’s a vast, untapped reservoir of stories revolving around Brad Pitt’s stuntman/personal assistant/Manson family hater Cliff Booth. The good news: Mr. Tarantino decided to write up one of these “mis-adventures” into a script, which allegedly catches up with Booth close to a decade after the events of the first movie. The even better news: Pitt is back to reprise his Oscar-winning role, with Timothy Olyphant, Elisabeth Debicki, Yahya Abdul-Mateen III, Carla Gugino, Peter Weller, Holt McCallany, and Scott Caan joining in the fun. The best news of them all: David Fincher (!!!) is directing it.

Drive My Car director Ryusuke Hamaguchi sets his sights on this equally delicate, emotionally resonant tale of a French healthcare manager (Virginie Efira) who befriends a Japanese playwright (Tao Okamoto) dying of terminal cancer. That one-sentence synopsis can’t begin to do justice to what lies in store for moviegoers here. Let’s just say that Hamaguchi’s breakthrough Oscar-winner wasn’t a fluke; there are few contemporary world-cinema heavy hitters with the ability to go big and small as gracefully as he does; both actors deserve every award on the planet for what they’re doing here; and you won’t believe how compelling a near-20-minute-sequence involving a person explaining capitalism’s effect on medical practices can be in the right hands. Simply stunning.

Yes, those Fockers are back! Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro’s best-frenemies franchise returns, once again proving that when you pair social awkwardness with old-school hypermasculine intimidation, the result is comedy gold. (And at least, y’know, gold-ish.) This time, Ariana Grande is joining the family, with everyone coming together to celebrate the engagement of her character and Greg Focker’s kid, Henry (Skyler Gisando). The fact that she’s a former FBI hostage negotiator who thinks Henry’s parents infantilize him is bad news for Dad, and great news for his ex-C.I.A. father-in-law-slash-longtime tormentor. Teri Polo reprises her role as Mother Focker; series regulars Owen Wilson and Blythe Danner are back as well; and Beanie Feldstein joins the crew as Henry’s sister.

Who better to play the larger-than-life Oakland Raiders coach, NFL personality, and face of the greatest console sports videogame ever made (no offense, Tony Hawk) than Nicolas Cage?! His Cageness steps on to the gridiron to portray the football icon for director David O. Russell’s biopic. Christian Bale plays Raiders’ owner Al Davis (!); Kathryn Hahn is John’s wife, Virginia; John Mulaney is Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins; Sienna Miller and Shane Ellis are in the scrimmage as well.

Just because you’re a gifted musician doesn’t mean you have your shit together — professional cellist Alex Serian (Pedro Pascal) would be the first to tell you that. A former child prodigy who’s played a high-profile gig with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for years, Serian decides to return to his home town of Los Angeles after an affair blows up in his face. Film-score gigs beckon, but he’s still got to deal with a rough family legacy and his own demons. Writer-director Tony Gilroy may be best known for creating Andor, but his debut feature Michael Clayton proved he was an expert at character-driven storytelling right from the jump — and this sounds like the perfect vehicle for what he does best. Plus it’s got an exclamation point in its title, so you just know this is going to be lit! Olivia Wilde, Will Arnett, Eva Victor, Hank Azaria, and Matthew Lilliard contribute actorly harmonies and counter-melodies.

Added to the U.S. Constitution in 1868, the 14th amendment guarantees that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Perhaps you’ve noticed that this specific section in one of our nation’s foundational documents has become a hotly contested topic among people who value human rights vs. those in our government who most certainly do not? Much like she did with her previous documentary 13th (which examined the connections between the amendment to abolish slavery and the modern prison-industrial complex), Ava DuVernay dives into the particulars of what this statute means in today’s context, how’s it’s been used and abused by various factions, and the way those 28 aforementioned words have defined who is and isn’t considered to be an American.

A new Mike Leigh film is always a big deal for movie lovers — and his new film, following a social worker (Widow’s Bay‘s Kate O’Flynn) who moves in with an old childhood friend (Alice Bailey Johnson) after a bad breakup, is laced with a bit of bittersweetness. The British director behind such stone-cold classics as Life Is Sweet, Naked, Topsy-Turvy, Vera Drake, Happy-Go-Lucky, and Hard Truths, to name just a handful, has hinted that this may be his last project. If so, it sounds like he’ll be going out making the kind of brilliantly observed, actor-friendly, humanistic dramas that’s made him an invaluable part of cinema history.

We were curious as to how Jesse Eisenberg would follow up his Oscar-winning dramedy A Real Pain. The answer: a tale of a frustrated housewife (Julianne Moore) who auditions for a musical. She then begins to butt heads with the production’s diva-like director (Paul Giamatti), who’s “basically the biggest name in New Jersey community theater!” Maybe he sees great potential in this amateur thespian, however. Maybe this whole experience will be the best thing to ever happen to her. Maybe you’ll laugh, cry, and slightly wince at some of the more cringe-comic moments. Personally, you had us at “the biggest name in New Jersey community theater.” Also starring Eisenberg, Bernadette Peters, Halle Bailey, Havana Rose Liu, and Better Call Saul‘s Patrick Fabian.

Sophie Okonedo (Hotel Rwanda, The Wheel of Time, Slow Horses) stars in this adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, in which the title character is rushing around to prepare a lavish dinner party in her Lagos home. Alas, she pines for her youth, when she was a love with a poet and she still felt she had choices as to which way her life might go. The word out of Cannes was particularly strong on this one, and given that we’re big fans of sibling filmmakers Arie and Chuko Asiri’s debut This Is My Desire, we’re very curious to check out their take on this literary totem. Ayo Edibiri, David Oyelowo, and Nikki Amuka-Bird costar.

Danny Boyle rewinds back to the late 1960s, when a meeting between British newspaper editor Larry Lamb (Sinners‘ Jack O’Connell) and Australian tycoon Rupert Murdoch (Guy Pearce). The latter has just bought the Sun, the runt of Fleet Street; he wants the former to turn it into a first-rate tabloid by making the news it covers more sensationalistic. They end up accomplishing their goal far, far too well. The Trainspotting director and screenwriter Jack Graham (adapting his play of the same name) aren’t saying that this is the moment that Western Civilization begins to collapse into the sociopolitical shitshow we’re dealing with today. But they’re not not saying it, either.

Pixar O.G. (The Incredibles, Ratatouille) and all-around modern animation godhead (The Simpsons, The Iron Giant) Brad Bird concocts a futuristic sci-fi ‘toon about a gumshoe named Ray Gunn (voiced by Sam Rockwell) who walks the means streets of a 1930s-style planet filled with dames, swells, aliens and robots. He takes a case involving a huge star named Venus Nova (Scarlett Johansson) and, well, let’s just say that much like the private detectives of yore, our man gets in way over his head. Tom Waits and John Ratzenberger lend their pipes to the project as well.

Marvel Studios is gearing up its next big crossover-event, 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 is designed to 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 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 and rocks a creepy blond dye-job as a shape-shifting bad guy.

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.