TL;DR
- 2026 still has an unusually stacked final four months, with major releases arriving from September through Christmas.
- Marvel closes the year with Avengers: Doomsday, while Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Three opens on the exact same weekend.
- Horror remains especially strong with Resident Evil, Clayface, Onslaught and Robert Eggers’ Werwulf.
- Major franchises returning include The Hunger Games, Godzilla, Street Fighter, Practical Magic and Jumanji.
- Filmmakers including David Fincher, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Aaron Sorkin and Martin McDonagh also have major projects arriving before the end of the year.
- This ranking is based on anticipation, filmmakers, casts, franchise potential and what has been revealed so far—not reviews of movies that haven’t been released yet.
Anyone worried that 2026 had already burned through its biggest movies by the end of summer can relax.
The final four months of the year may actually contain some of its most interesting releases.
September starts with horror, science fiction, thrillers and a long-awaited return to the Owens family. October brings Tom Cruise working with Alejandro G. Iñárritu, a new DC horror movie and another attempt to finally crack Street Fighter on the big screen. November delivers Godzilla, Haymitch Abernathy and the unexpected combination of David Fincher, Quentin Tarantino and Brad Pitt.
Then December gets ridiculous.
Avengers: Doomsday and Dune: Part Three are currently scheduled to open on the same day, while Robert Eggers is waiting until Christmas to unleash his medieval werewolf movie.
With release dates always capable of shifting, this list reflects the North American schedule as of September 2, 2026. These aren’t movies we’re declaring masterpieces months before seeing them. They’re the films with the most potential, the most intriguing creative teams or simply the biggest reasons to keep going to the theater before the year is over.
20. Hexed
Release Date: November 25
Disney Animation’s big Thanksgiving release introduces Billie, an unconventional teenager who discovers that she possesses magical abilities and is thrown into a hidden witch realm called Hexe.
Hailee Steinfeld voices Billie, while Rashida Jones plays her mother, Alice. The pair eventually have to work together while uncovering secrets about their own family and the larger magical world surrounding them.
Disney has struggled at times to launch completely original animated properties in an era dominated by sequels, but Hexed has an appealing setup that mixes family drama, fantasy and witch mythology. If the studio has another Encanto-style surprise waiting, this could become one of the holiday season’s biggest family films.
19. Verity
Release Date: October 2
Colleen Hoover adaptations aren’t slowing down.
Verity takes the author’s bestselling psychological thriller in a considerably darker direction than a traditional romance. Dakota Johnson plays a struggling writer hired to finish the remaining books in a successful author’s series after that author becomes unable to continue working.
Things become increasingly disturbing when she discovers an unfinished manuscript containing information that may completely change what she believes about the family.
Anne Hathaway and Josh Hartnett join Johnson in a story built around secrets, obsession and unreliable information. The source novel already has a massive readership, which makes this one of the year’s more interesting book-to-film tests.
18. Heart Of The Beast
Release Date: September 25
Brad Pitt versus the Alaskan wilderness is a fairly easy pitch.
Directed by David Ayer, Heart of the Beast follows a former Army Special Forces soldier and his retired combat dog after their plane crashes in remote Alaska.
Ayer’s best work tends to emerge when he strips stories down to people operating under extreme pressure, and a survival thriller gives him exactly that opportunity.
After years of increasingly enormous franchise movies, there’s also something appealing about a straightforward survival story built around one man, one dog and an environment that would very much like to kill them both.
17. Hope
Release Date: September 9
The return of The Wailing filmmaker Na Hong-jin would already make Hope worth watching.
The cast makes it even harder to ignore.
The science-fiction film brings together Hwang Jung-min, Zo In-sung and Squid Game breakout Hoyeon alongside Alicia Vikander, Michael Fassbender and Taylor Russell.
Na has kept much of the movie’s larger mystery intact, but the combination of science fiction, horror and an isolated community encountering something extraordinary gives Hope the potential to become one of 2026’s biggest genre surprises.
16. Onslaught
Release Date: September 4
Adam Wingard is leaving giant monsters behind for something meaner and smaller.
Onslaught stars Adria Arjona as an Army sniper forced to protect her daughter after genetically engineered super soldiers escape in the desert.
Wingard has moved between low-budget horror, action and enormous studio franchises throughout his career, and Onslaught sounds like an opportunity to combine all three instincts.
Dan Stevens, Rebecca Hall, Michael Biehn and Drew Starkey round out an unusually fun ensemble for what A24 is essentially selling as an unapologetic action-horror movie.
15. Practical Magic 2
Release Date: September 11
Nearly three decades after Practical Magic, Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman are heading back to the Owens family.
Bullock returns as Sally, while Kidman once again plays Gillian. Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest are also back, with Joey King and Maisie Williams representing a younger generation of the family.
The original wasn’t a massive critical success when it opened in 1998, but its mixture of romance, witchcraft, sisterhood and autumn atmosphere helped transform it into a cult favorite.
The sequel now has the difficult job of recreating that very specific magic without simply becoming a nostalgia exercise. Having Bullock and Kidman together again is already a very good start.
14. The Social Reckoning
Release Date: October 9
Aaron Sorkin is returning to Facebook, but this isn’t simply The Social Network 2.
The Social Reckoning moves beyond the creation of Facebook to examine the company’s later influence, controversies and the revelations of whistleblower Frances Haugen.
Jeremy Strong takes over the role of Mark Zuckerberg, while Mikey Madison plays Haugen. Sorkin writes and directs this time after winning an Oscar for his screenplay for David Fincher’s 2010 film.
The original Social Network increasingly feels like a prologue to what social media eventually became. Revisiting that world more than 15 years later could make this considerably more than another unnecessary legacy sequel.
13. Jumanji: Open World
Release Date: December 25
The modern Jumanji movies accomplished something that initially seemed almost impossible: they revived a beloved property without simply recreating the Robin Williams original.
The next installment arrives on Christmas Day under the title Jumanji: Open World.
Plot details remain relatively guarded, which may be for the best. The biggest question is how the franchise evolves after Welcome to the Jungle and The Next Level established the video-game concept so effectively.
This series has become one of Sony’s most reliable crowd-pleasers, and Christmas is exactly where a large-scale adventure comedy like this belongs.
12. Street Fighter
Release Date: October 16
Hollywood has tried this before.
It hasn’t gone particularly well.
The new Street Fighter has a chance to change that.
Set in 1993, the movie follows estranged fighters Ryu and Ken as Chun-Li recruits them into the World Warrior Tournament. Andrew Koji plays Ryu, Noah Centineo is Ken and Callina Liang takes on Chun-Li.
Director Kitao Sakurai appears to be leaning directly into the games rather than apologizing for their absurdity. That’s probably the correct approach. Audiences don’t need a grounded explanation for Hadoukens. They need a movie that understands why throwing fireballs at people in a tournament is fun.
11. Wild Horse Nine
Release Date: November 6
Martin McDonagh directing John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell, Steve Buscemi, Parker Posey and Tom Waits almost sells itself.
Wild Horse Nine takes place shortly before the 1973 Chilean coup and follows two CIA agents sent from Santiago to Easter Island.
Naturally, the assignment becomes considerably more complicated once personal relationships and conspiracies begin colliding.
McDonagh previously directed Rockwell to an Oscar in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and his ability to mix bleak drama, absurd comedy and deeply flawed people makes the unusual political backdrop particularly intriguing.
10. Resident Evil
Release Date: September 18
Video-game movies have improved dramatically in recent years.
Now Resident Evil gets another chance.
This time, one of the biggest reasons for optimism is Zach Cregger. The filmmaker behind Barbarian and Weapons is directing the new adaptation, with Austin Abrams leading the cast.
The Resident Evil games contain enough horror, monsters, conspiracies and ridiculous science to support several different styles of adaptation, but previous movies have often drifted far away from what makes the games frightening.
Cregger has already demonstrated that he understands how to build tension before completely changing what audiences think they’re watching. Giving him Raccoon City sounds dangerous in the best possible way.
9. Klara And The Sun
Release Date: October 23
Kazuo Ishiguro’s acclaimed novel gets the big-screen treatment from Taika Waititi.
Jenna Ortega plays Klara, an Artificial Friend who becomes part of a human family while trying to understand love, loneliness and the complicated behavior of the people around her.
Amy Adams and Natasha Lyonne also star.
This isn’t the loud science-fiction of spaceships and explosions. Ishiguro’s story uses artificial intelligence to ask questions about humanity, sacrifice and whether something created to imitate human emotion might actually understand us better than we understand ourselves.
In 2026, those questions don’t exactly feel less relevant.
8. Clayface
Release Date: October 23
One of the boldest decisions James Gunn and Peter Safran have made with DC Studios is allowing Clayface to be a horror movie.
Tom Rhys Harries plays Matt Hagen, an emerging actor whose disfigurement ultimately sends him down a horrifying path toward becoming the shape-shifting Batman villain.
James Watkins directs from a screenplay credited to Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini, based on a story by Flanagan.
Rather than forcing another Batman villain into a traditional superhero structure, DC appears to be embracing the body-horror possibilities of a man physically losing control of his face and identity.
If that creative freedom continues, Clayface could become one of the most important tests of what the new DC Universe is willing to attempt.
7. Digger
Release Date: October 2
Tom Cruise has spent much of the last decade repeatedly risking his life for increasingly elaborate action sequences.
Now he’s working with Alejandro G. Iñárritu.
That’s considerably harder to predict.
Cruise stars as Digger Rockwell, described as the most powerful man in the world, who desperately tries to prove that he can save humanity after causing a disaster that threatens everyone.
Riz Ahmed, Sandra Hüller, John Goodman, Jesse Plemons and Michael Stuhlbarg join him, while cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki reunites with Iñárritu.
The movie was shot entirely in VistaVision, but the real attraction isn’t the format. It’s seeing one of the world’s biggest movie stars collide with one of its most uncompromising filmmakers.
6. The Hunger Games: Sunrise On The Reaping
Release Date: November 20
Panem isn’t finished with us yet.
Sunrise on the Reaping goes back 24 years before Katniss Everdeen’s story to the 50th Hunger Games—the infamous Second Quarter Quell that Haymitch Abernathy ultimately survived.
Joseph Zada plays the young Haymitch, with an enormous supporting cast that includes Ralph Fiennes, Jesse Plemons and Glenn Close.
Suzanne Collins gave the franchise one of its strongest stories in years with the source novel, and Haymitch is exactly the kind of familiar character whose past still contains enough unanswered questions to justify a prequel.
Anyone who knows what the older Haymitch eventually becomes also knows this isn’t heading somewhere cheerful.
5. Godzilla Minus Zero
Release Date: November 6
Godzilla Minus One didn’t merely deliver another good Godzilla movie. It became a worldwide phenomenon and won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.
Director Takashi Yamazaki now returns for Godzilla Minus Zero.
The sequel takes place two years after the previous film, with Ryunosuke Kamiki and Minami Hamabe returning as Koichi and Noriko. Japan has struggled to rebuild after war and Godzilla’s destruction when another threat emerges.
Perhaps most excitingly, the sequel is the first Japanese production filmed for IMAX.
Yamazaki already proved he understands that Godzilla works best when the human story matters just as much as the monster. If he can repeat that balance on an even larger canvas, Minus Zero could become one of the rare sequels capable of matching an instant classic.
4. The Further Mis-Adventures Of Cliff Booth
Release Date: November 25 In IMAX
There are strange filmmaker combinations, and then there is this.
Quentin Tarantino wrote a movie about Brad Pitt’s Cliff Booth.
David Fincher directed it.
Pitt returns to the role that earned him an Academy Award in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, while Fincher reunites with the actor after Se7en, Fight Club and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
The film receives an exclusive global IMAX run beginning November 25 before eventually arriving on Netflix.
Watching a Tarantino character filtered through Fincher’s visual precision could produce something that feels connected to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood while being completely different in tone.
There may not be a stranger major studio experiment left on the 2026 schedule.
3. Werwulf
Release Date: December 25
Robert Eggers making a werewolf movie set in medieval England sounds almost suspiciously perfect.
Werwulf reunites Eggers with The Northman co-writer Sjón and stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Lily-Rose Depp and Willem Dafoe.
Focus Features has described the movie as a story of devotion, damnation and the devil within, while the footage shown so far points toward something brutal, grimy and deeply rooted in historical superstition.
Eggers has built his career around taking folklore seriously. The Witch, The Lighthouse, The Northman and Nosferatu all feel less like modern stories wearing historical costumes and more like nightmares excavated from another era.
Applying that approach to werewolf mythology makes Werwulf easily one of the year’s most exciting horror releases.
And releasing it on Christmas Day is wonderfully deranged.
2. Dune: Part Three
Release Date: December 18
Denis Villeneuve isn’t simply returning to Arrakis.
He’s finishing his trilogy.
Dune: Part Three jumps nearly two decades beyond Paul Atreides’ rise to power. Paul is now Emperor, but controlling the Imperium has brought consequences that victory couldn’t solve.
Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya return alongside Florence Pugh, Anya Taylor-Joy, Javier Bardem and Rebecca Ferguson, while Jason Momoa returns to the franchise and Robert Pattinson joins the ensemble.
The first two films transformed a novel once considered nearly impossible to adapt into one of modern science fiction’s defining cinematic achievements.
The third film also has the opportunity to tackle the part of Frank Herbert’s story that complicates everything audiences thought they understood about Paul.
He’s no longer simply the hero fighting an oppressive empire.
He’s the person sitting on the throne.
That shift could make Part Three the most challenging—and potentially the best—film in Villeneuve’s trilogy.
1. Avengers: Doomsday
Release Date: December 18
There really couldn’t be another movie at the top.
Avengers: Doomsday is Marvel Studios’ biggest attempt yet to recreate the kind of cinematic event that surrounded Infinity War and Endgame.
Anthony and Joe Russo return to direct, with Robert Downey Jr. coming back to the MCU in a completely different role: Victor von Doom.
The cast is enormous.
Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Anthony Mackie, Tom Hiddleston, Letitia Wright and Paul Rudd are joined by the Fantastic Four, members of the New Avengers and returning X-Men stars including Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, James Marsden, Rebecca Romijn, Alan Cumming and Kelsey Grammer.
Marvel’s official synopsis says heroes from three distinct universes are placed on a collision course while facing an existential threat unlike anything they’ve encountered before.
That description tells us surprisingly little, but that’s part of what makes Doomsday so fascinating.
The MCU has spent years introducing new characters, alternate realities and multiversal problems. This is where Marvel finally has to prove those pieces actually fit together.
Downey playing Doom gives the movie an emotional weapon no ordinary villain could provide, particularly for characters who knew Tony Stark. The returning X-Men create possibilities Marvel couldn’t touch during the Infinity Saga. The Fantastic Four provide another universe and another connection to Doom.
And everything is ultimately leading toward Avengers: Secret Wars in 2027.
Avengers: Doomsday therefore isn’t merely another Marvel sequel. It’s the movie responsible for making years of MCU setup feel worthwhile.
No pressure.
Honorable Mentions
The remaining 2026 calendar is deep enough that several promising movies didn’t make the Top 20.
- By Any Means – September 4: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Mark Wahlberg headline a 1960s-set crime thriller directed by Elegance Bratton.
- The Uprising – September 10: Paul Greengrass directs Andrew Garfield as a farmer who becomes involved in a rebellion against King Richard II.
- Sense and Sensibility – October 16: Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles lead Focus Features’ new adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel.
- Other Mommy – October 9: Jessica Chastain stars in a supernatural horror story involving a threatening presence emerging from a child’s closet.
- Wicker – October 30: Olivia Colman commissions Peter Dinklage’s basket maker to create her a husband, who somehow ends up looking like Alexander Skarsgård.
- The Cat in the Hat – November 6: Bill Hader voices Dr. Seuss’ troublemaking feline in Warner Bros. Pictures Animation’s new adaptation.
- Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol – November 13: Johnny Depp plays Ebenezer Scrooge in Ti West’s new interpretation of the Dickens classic.
- Focker In-Law – November 25: Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller return to the Meet the Parents franchise, with Ariana Grande joining the family chaos.
December 18 Could Be The Craziest Movie Weekend Of 2026
One date deserves special attention.
As things currently stand, Avengers: Doomsday and Dune: Part Three are both scheduled for December 18.
Those aren’t merely two recognizable franchises competing for the same weekend. They’re potentially two of the biggest movies of the entire year, both built around premium-format screens and audiences that will want to experience them theatrically.
It’s essentially superheroes versus sandworms.
Neither studio has moved yet, and if the date holds, movie theaters could be looking at one of the most fascinating box-office battles since Barbie and Oppenheimer turned opening on the same weekend into an event of its own.
The difference is that Doomsday and Dune will be fighting over substantially more of the same IMAX and premium-format real estate.
Something may eventually give.
If nothing does, December 18 is going to be expensive for movie fans.
2026 Still Has Plenty Left
What makes the remaining calendar interesting isn’t simply the number of franchises.
There is genuine variety here.
One weekend gives audiences a Colleen Hoover thriller and a Tom Cruise movie directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu. Another offers a DC body-horror movie alongside a Taika Waititi adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro. November contains Japanese Godzilla, political dark comedy, The Hunger Games, Disney animation and a David Fincher movie written by Quentin Tarantino.
Then Robert Eggers celebrates Christmas with werewolves.
That’s before getting to Marvel and Dune attempting to dominate the same December weekend.
Some of these movies will inevitably disappoint. Others that aren’t generating enormous hype right now may become the films everyone is talking about by January.
That’s part of the fun.
2026 may be entering its final stretch, but the movie year is nowhere close to finished.
DC Fanboy! Superman is the greatest comic book character of all time. Favorite movies are Man of Steel, Goonies, Back To the Future
