2026 preview: 10 of the biggest upcoming movies worth the wait

It starts late summer with Ridley Scott going lean and mean on a Colorado airfield: a pilot keeps watch with his dog, a gruff ex‑Marine neighbor, and a vintage 1982 Cessna until a stranger’s voice crackles over the radio and upends his routines. From there the calendar stacks sequels, author adaptations, a tech-world drama and two giant December tentpoles landing the same day.

Two major releases land December 18: Avengers: Doomsday and Dune 3.

Release calendar at a glance

• The Dog Stars — August 28
  Scott adapts Peter Heller’s novel into a spare survival drama starring Jacob Elordi, Josh Brolin and Margaret Qualley. After a flu pandemic, a civilian pilot and his dog share an abandoned Colorado airfield with a gun‑toting ex‑Marine neighbor, scavenging to get by until a radio transmission hints at life beyond their perimeter—and pushes him to risk everything.
• Practical Magic 2 — September 11
  Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman return as the Owens sisters in a sequel that revisits the family curse condemning the men who love them. When Sally’s daughter sees signs her partner is in danger and tries a risky spell to break the lineage’s doom, it forces a reunion with the eccentric aunts and unleashes unintended fallout.
• Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil — September 18
  Fresh off Barbarian, Cregger delivers an original, claustrophobic take on the game franchise with Austin Abrams, Paul Walter Hauser and Kali Reis. A medical courier named Bryan sets out on a routine night shift as unexplained outbreaks erupt, trapping him in a real‑time nightmare of collapsing infrastructure and mutating horrors, heavy on practical creature effects and dread over military spectacle.
• Verity — October 2
  From Colleen Hoover’s bestseller: Dakota Johnson plays Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling ghostwriter hired to finish a hit thriller series after superstar author Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway) is left incapacitated by a mysterious car crash. Invited by Verity’s husband (Josh Hartnett) to stay at their opulent home, Lowen uncovers an unpublished autobiography filled with disturbing revelations. Michael Showalter directs.
• Digger — October 2
  Alejandro González Iñárritu teams with Tom Cruise for a wilderness survival thriller about Jack, a weathered former prospector who sneaks back into a hazardous, abandoned mine chasing evidence of a buried fortune. As rival prospectors and local law enforcement close in and oxygen thins amid cave‑ins, he fights the elements and human greed. With Sandra Hüller and Michael Stuhlbarg; expect immersive long takes underground.
• The Social Reckoning — October 9
  Aaron Sorkin revisits the social‑media era with a drama drawn from “The Facebook Files.” Mikey Madison portrays whistleblower Frances Haugen, alarmed by internal research on algorithms amplifying division and harming teens. She secretly collects thousands of pages of internal documents and, with help from an investigative reporter played by Jeremy Allen White, takes her case public and to Congress.
• Klara and the Sun — October 23
  Taika Waititi adapts Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel with Jenna Ortega as Klara, an “Artificial Friend” bought to comfort a sick girl named Josie. At home with Josie’s protective mother (Amy Adams), Klara observes human behavior with disarming empathy—and hatches a quiet plan to harness the sun she reveres to try to save her companion.
• Clayface — October 23
  A standalone Gotham‑set villain story centered on Matt Hagen, a rising Hollywood actor whose entanglement with a crime boss leads to an experimental chemical that mutilates his face and destabilizes his DNA. Chasing lost fame, he doses again and morphs into a shape‑shifting clay mass, spiraling into vengeance. Expect body‑horror intensity and a takedown of vanity and industry rot over capes and quips.
• Avengers: Doomsday — December 18
  Anthony and Joe Russo return to the MCU for a multiversal showdown that pulls teams of heroes across timelines to face a threat to reality itself. In the twist everyone will talk about, Robert Downey Jr. comes back to the franchise as Victor von Doom, the brilliant tyrant with eyes on total control as fractured timelines crash together.
• Dune 3 — December 18
  Denis Villeneuve adapts Frank Herbert’s Dune Messiah to close out his trilogy. Timothée Chalamet returns as Paul Atreides, now Emperor twelve years after a galaxy‑spanning holy war waged in his name, cornered by prophecy and palace conspiracies while trying to hold on to his humanity. Zendaya is back as Chani amid the shifting sands of Arrakis.