2025 was one of those rare years where film felt alive again. It was a year full of surprises, risks, and stories that actually meant something, the kind you kept turning over in your head days later. 2026 looks like it’s carrying that momentum forward. Below are the 26 films I’m most excited about this year. I’ve tried to list them from least to most anticipated, but honestly, the order is arbitrary and will probably shift the moment a trailer drops or a piece of score hits. Still, this is where my curiosity and my heart are leaning today.
26. Crime 101
Bart Layton adapting Don Winslow with Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Barry Keoghan, Halle Berry, and Jennifer Jason Leigh is exactly the kind of adult, character‑driven crime film I’ve been starving for.
25. Flowervale Street
Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor anchoring an ’80s family drama with strange, possibly time‑bending events feels like David Robert Mitchell returning to that dreamy, suburban‑surreal mood I love.
24. I Want Your Sex
Gregg Araki coming back with an erotic thriller is enough to get my attention; Olivia Wilde, Cooper Hoffman, Charli XCX, Daveed Diggs, and Johnny Knoxville only make it stranger in the best way.
23. Michael
I’m cautiously optimistic. Antoine Fuqua can deliver real power, but he’s also capable of films that feel uneven or oddly flat. This could go either way.
22. Ready or Not 2
The original was such a sharp, nasty surprise, and the directing duo proved they know how to blend tension, satire, and genuine emotional stakes.
21. Send Help
Sam Raimi is the entire reason this makes the list. Even when he’s messy, he’s one of the few directors who can fuse sincerity, chaos, and a handmade emotional texture that’s unmistakably his.
20. The Adventures of Cliff Booth
David Fincher directing a film set in Tarantino’s alternate‑history Hollywood is a collision I never expected. Fincher doesn’t do nostalgia; he does autopsy, and watching him dissect a character born from Tarantino’s romantic haze could be electric.
19. I Play Rocky
Peter Farrelly tackling the making of Rocky is such an intriguing swing. It’s an underdog‑about‑an‑underdog story that could hit hard if Farrelly finds the honesty it needs.
18. The Drama
Kristoffer Borgli directing Zendaya and Robert Pattinson is exactly the kind of chaotic, uncomfortable character energy I crave. After Dream Scenario, I trust him to turn anxiety into something painfully human and weirdly funny.
17. The Devil Wears Prada 2
David Frankel returning with Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci is honestly the only reason this sequel feels remotely promising.
16. Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man
With Tom Harper directing and Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy, Paul Anderson, and Anya Taylor‑Joy returning, this feels bigger than a tidy wrap‑up. Steven Knight seems to be steering the story into a stranger, dream‑soaked register where the Shelby mythology becomes folklore whispered around a fire.
15. Wuthering Heights
Emerald Fennell taking on Wuthering Heights with Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi instantly shifts the novel’s stormy obsession into something sharper, sexier, and far more volatile than a traditional period piece.
14. How to Rob a Bank
David Leitch automatically makes this more interesting. His films are stylish and genuinely fun, and with Nicholas Hoult, Zoë Kravitz, John C. Reilly, Pete Davidson, and Christian Slater, it feels like he’s leaning into a chaotic heist vibe; his sweet spot.
13. Here Comes the Flood
Fernando Meirelles directing a heist film with Denzel Washington, Robert Pattinson, Daisy Edgar‑Jones, and Danai Gurira is such a rich, unexpected combination. I’m excited to see him return to something propulsive.
12. The Entertainment System Is Down
Ruben Östlund making a film about an airplane full of people forced to sit with their own boredom is exactly the social‑chaos experiment he lives for. With Kirsten Dunst, Keanu Reeves, Daniel Brühl, and Nicholas Braun, the humiliation‑ego‑unraveling trifecta feels inevitable.
11. Werwulf
Robert Eggers making a 13th‑century werewolf film is the kind of feral, historically obsessive swing that gets under my skin. With Aaron Taylor‑Johnson, Lily‑Rose Depp, Willem Dafoe, Ralph Ineson, and Simon McBurney, this looks like Eggers returning to mud, myth, and elemental dread.
10. Asad
Mohamed Diab making a 19th‑century Egyptian slave‑revolt drama gives this an immediate sense of urgency. With Mohamed Ramadan leading a cast rooted in regional talent, it feels poised to be angry, grounded, and free of prestige gloss.
9. Wild Horse Nine
Martin McDonagh making a 1973 Chile‑set CIA thriller is such a sharp pivot that it becomes fascinating by default. With Sam Rockwell, John Malkovich, and Steve Buscemi, it reads like McDonagh leaning into something brittle, paranoid, and morally frayed.
8. The Dog Stars
Ridley Scott directing Jacob Elordi, Margaret Qualley, Josh Brolin, Guy Pearce, and Benedict Wong gives this adaptation real weight. It looks like Scott aiming for something more intimate and character‑driven than his recent epics.
7. The Bride
Maggie Gyllenhaal assembling Christian Bale, Jessie Buckley, Penélope Cruz, and Annette Bening signals something bold and unruly. Her take on the Frankenstein myth looks fiercely feminine; desire, power, and creation colliding in sharp, contemporary ways.
6. Project Hail Mary
Phil Lord and Christopher Miller adapting Andy Weir with Ryan Gosling gives this a mix of emotional weight and playful ingenuity that could actually match the book’s tone instead of flattening it.
5. Dune: Part Three
Denis Villeneuve returning with Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Florence Pugh, and Rebecca Ferguson is thrilling, especially as the story enters its strangest, most prophetic territory where politics, religion, and destiny blur into something mythic.
4. The Social Reckoning
Aaron Sorkin directing Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, and Wunmi Mosaku feels like a moral collision waiting to happen; less procedural, more pressure cooker. It reads like a spiritual successor to The Social Network, but angrier and far less interested in mythologizing tech.
3. Disclosure Day
Steven Spielberg returning to UFO territory with Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, and Colman Domingo feels like a grounded, human‑scale sci‑fi drama that still carries the charge of the unknown.
2. Digger
Alejandro González Iñárritu directing Tom Cruise, Sandra Hüller, John Goodman, Jesse Plemons, Sophie Wilde, and Riz Ahmed turns this into a satire with real teeth. It looks like political absurdity colliding with existential panic, with Cruise spiraling in ways that could get dark, strange, and uncomfortably close to real life.
1. The Odyssey
Christopher Nolan adapting Homer with Matt Damon as Odysseus, alongside Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Lupita Nyong’o, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, and Charlize Theron, gives this the weight of a full‑blown mythic action epic. Shot entirely on IMAX, it looks like Nolan treating the poem as both brutal survival story and meditation on guilt, ego, and the cost of getting home.
