The Bleeding World will try to expand things again, bringing back Shaye as Rainer but putting her with new protagonists, played by Nope standout Brandon Perea and Amelia Eve from The Haunting of Bly Manor. Newcomer Jacob Chase will direct and co-write, but he is working with Conjuring vet David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick. 

The Dog Stars

August 28

No, Ridley Scott hasn’t decided to make a biopic about Keanu Reeves band from the ‘90s. Rather, The Dog Stars tells a post-apocalyptic tale about a pilot and an ex-marine navigating the world after a flu virus killed off most of humanity. Adapting a novel by Peter Heller, Scott directs from a script by Mark L. Smith and Christopher Wilkinson, with Jacob Elordi, Josh Brolin, and Margaret Qualley starring.

Coyote vs. Acme

August 28

Despite what some millennials might say about Space Jam, the Looney Toons have never really worked on the big screen. Yet, we can’t help but cheer for Coyote vs. Acme simply because Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav almost gave it the Batgirl treatment and buried it for a tax write-off before anyone could see it.

Based on a story by James Gunn, Jeremy Slater, and Samy Burch and directed by Dave Green, Coyote vs. Acme finally gives Wile E. Coyote his day in court. Will Forte and John Cena play opposing attorneys as the Coyote sues his infamously unreliable supplier. Will Coyote vs. Acme be as good as the Chuck Jones shorts that made the characters household names? Who knows, but people worked hard on it and deserves to be seen.

Clayface

September 11

Ever since he and Peter Safran became co-heads of DC Studios, James Gunn has said that he puts the story and script first. Nothing proves that better than the fact that B-list baddie Clayface gets his own movie before Batman. Gunn has insisted that he had no interest in making a movie about the shapeshifting Gotham City villain until writer Mike Flanagan came in with a pitch he couldn’t ignore. Directed by James Watkins and co-written by Hossein Amini, Clayface stars Tom Rhys Harries as actor Matt Hagan, who becomes titular monster.

Sense and Sensibility

September 11

Even though it came out more than 30 years ago, Ang Lee’s quiet take on Sense and Sensibility has dissuaded other directors from trying their hands at the Jane Austen classic. However, director Georgia Oakley and screenwriter Diana Reid are ready to give it a shot. Their version stars Daisy Edgar-Jones as Elinor Dashwood, who must navigate difficult economic waters after the death of her father. Esmé Creed-Miles and Bodhi Rae Breathnach co-star as Elinor’s sisters, Frank Dillane plays half-brother John, while Herbert Nordrum and George MacKay play love interests Colonel Brandon and Edward Ferrars, respectively.

Resident Evil

September 18

Zach Cregger’s career has been nothing but surprise after surprise. First, he worked with the sketch troupe The Whitest Kids U Know and co-directed the panned Miss March alongside late castmate Trevor Moore. Then, after appearing in a few sitcoms, Cregger directed two incredible and shocking horror films with Barbarian and Weapons.

All of which to say is that who shouldn’t be too shocked by Cregger’s pivot to helm a relaunch of Resident Evil, a video game adaptation that has already spawned several cult direct-to-video movies. Fittingly, we don’t know much about Resident Evil, other than it stars Weapons stand out Austin Abrams, Paul Walter Hauser, and Zach Cherry. Which is fine by us. We’re ready for another surprise.

Digger

October 2

Even though we now have a trailer and a title for the first collaboration between Birdman and The Revenant director Alejandro G. Iñárritu and Tom Cruise, we still don’t know anything about their movie Digger. All we see are shots of Cruise, dressed in shorts and boots, dancing to a Gorillaz track while holding a shovel, before getting the title card, which looks a lot like the Saul Bass poster for 1959’s Anatomy of a Murder. What does this mean? We don’t know, but we’re just happy to see Cruise working on an original film again, especially when he’s joining a cast that includes Jesse Plemons, Sandra Hüller, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Michael Stuhlbarg.

The Social Reckoning

October 9

In these dark days, it’s easy to mock the self-satisfied and whip-smart dialogue that Aaron Sorkin wrote for The West Wing and The Newsroom. But even the angriest Sorkin hater has to admit that he created something special when he teamed with David Fincher for The Social Network. Which is why we’re more than a bit worried about Sorkin’s decision to write and direct his sequel to the 2010 biopic about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. As its title suggests, The Social Reckoning plans to wrestle with Facebook’s role in modern elections, with Jeremy Strong stepping in for Jesse Eisenberg as Zuckerberg and Mikey Madison as whistleblower Frances Haugen.

Street Fighter

October 16

Look, we freaks here at Den of Geek love the 1994 Street Fighter and we won’t apologize for it. But we do understand that gamers may resent that movie’s, we’ll say, inattentive approach to the source material. So we share their excitement for the upcoming installment by director Kitao Sakurai and writer Dalan Musson.

Judging by the first looks, Street Fighter 2026 plans to stick to the games with its accurate costumes and tournament structure. But it also seems to be following in the 1994 movie’s crazy footsteps, with a cast that includes not just Noah Centineo and Andrew Koji as heroes Ken and Ryu, but also David Dastmalchian as M. Bison, wrestlers Roman Reigns and Cody Rhodes, comedian Eric André, and musicians 50 Cent and Orville Peck.

Remain

October 23

Since 2014’s The Visit, M. Night Shyamalan has been pulling a giant twist on moviegoers, bouncing back from stinkers like The Last Airbender and After Earth with a series of satisfying and surprisingly heartfelt B-movies. His latest film Remain may be his greatest shock yet, as he’s adapting a story by Nicolas Sparks, the author of audacious romance novels like The Notebook. The premise sure sounds like a Sparks story, as Jake Gyllenhaal plays an architect who returns to his beachside hometown and meets a compelling young woman. Here’s hoping M. Night will work in some of that horror movie magic to make Remain into something truly weird.

The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping

November 20

With the success of 2023’s The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, Lionsgate and director Francis Lawrence adapting Suzanne Collins’ next prequel novel, Sunrise on the Reaping, is a smart bet. Set some four decades after Songbirds & Snakes, and just 24 years before the events of The Hunger Games (2012), this film stars Joseph Zada as a young Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson in the original movies) as he competes and (no spoiler) wins in the 50th Hunger Games. Yet the trials and tragedies he faces along the way have made this novel a fan favorite since its publication. Once again, the story’s young tributes will be supported by all-star veterans, including Jesse Plemons, Ralph Fiennes, Kieran Culkin, Elle Fanning, and Glenn Close. Meanwhile, Mckenna Grace plays Maysilee Donner, a young tribute who has captured the minds of millions of readers.

Hexed

November 25

The latest Disney animation project sure sounds like the makings of House of Mouse classic. Hexed focuses on a teenage boy who discovers his odd-ball behavior is actually proof that he has magic abilities, which stresses out his high-strung mother. Whether Hexed can deliver on that premise remains to be seen, but it has a pair of Disney veterans at the helm in Josie Trinidad and Jason Hand.

Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew

November 26

In the 2010s, Walden Media tried to adapt three movies from C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia and, despite their excellent casts and massive budgets, failed to match the charm of the novels or of the BBC movies from the late 1980s. Enter Greta Gerwig, hot off her massive success with Barbie, who takes a crack at the series for Netflix. Instead of starting with the first book The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, Gerwig’s adapting the prequel The Magician’s Nephew, which details the creation of Narnia by the Godlike lion Aslan. David McKenna and Beatrice Campbell play the two children who arrive in the new land, while Emma Mackey portrays Jadis, the evil White Witch.

This could be the franchise-starter Netflix has been searching for.

Madden

November 26

Madden is a biopic about the famous football coach, TV commentator, and video game icon, directed by David O. Russell and starring Nicolas Cage and Christian Bale. That sentence pretty much sums up the entire appeal—and potential for disaster—that Madden poses. Russell always goes big, sometimes resulting in a glossy, overstuffed crowd-pleaser like Silver Linings Playbook and sometimes resulting in the nightmare that is Amsterdam.

Avengers: Doomsday

December 18

This is it: high noon for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This is the one that features the return of Infinity War/Endgame directors Anthony and Joe Russo, Robert Downey Jr. coming back not as Iron Man but Doctor Doom, the inclusion of the OG Fox X-Men cast, the rumored appearance of everyone from Chris Evans to Ryan Reynolds… and it all adds up to either a Hail Mary pass of titanic proportions or a glorious relaunch to box office dominance. Don’t let the reports of an unfinished script or extended reshoots fool you; Marvel can pull this off—they’ve done so in the past—but the question is whether the Avengers brand still has the power to bring the MCU back from its recent decline.

Dune: Part Three

December 18

Denis Villeneuve’s first two Dune movies were arguably the most epic, visionary genre releases since Peter Jackson bestowed The Lord of the Rings on us 20 years earlier. But concluding a trilogy has been the downfall of many a filmmaker, and Villeneuve faces a formidable task here. The movie will ostensibly be based on Frank Herbert’s Dune Messiah, a very different story from the original and in many ways a more difficult one to imagine as a film. But if Villeneuve keeps the core of the novel—the willful self-destruction of Paul Atreides—intact, he can stick this landing like a breaking Shai-Hulud. We’re rooting for him all the way.

Werwulf

December 25

With his four previous movies, writer/director Robert Eggers has proven himself as the master of grim, atmospheric period horror (yes, even The Northman was a horror story in its own way). He immerses us in barbaric worlds of the past like no other filmmaker currently working. Having conquered the most seminal of vampire tales with Nosferatu, he’s now turning his attention to lycanthropy with what he himself calls “the darkest thing I have ever written,” an original werewolf story set in 13th-century England. Blood, gore, mud, and disease? Sounds like Eggers is going to have us howling in terror when this thing crawls toward holiday theaters.

The Death of Robin Hood

TBD

If you’re going to give Robin Hood the Old Man Logan treatment, then you might as well get Hugh Jackman to do it, and that’s exactly what writer/director Michael Sarnoski has done with The Death of Robin Hood. Jackman plays a Robin Hood at the end of his life, coming to terms with the legend that’s built up around him, a legend that he considers at odds with his actual works. Jodie Comer co-stars as a woman who watches over the critically injured Robin as he thinks about his whole life, while Bill Skarsgård plays Little John, presumably in flashbacks. Whatever one feels about The Death of Robin Hood‘s treatment of the legend, or its running over ground already trod by Robin and Marian, we’re most excited to see what Sarnoski will do after winning our hearts forever with his excellent debut Pig.