From a cinematic perspective, 2025 provided almost as much agita as it did great art. For all the big studio swings (Sinners, One Battle After Another, Weapons) and plucky indies (Blue Moon, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You), the industry was besieged by turmoil and uncertainty. Besides anxiety over mediocre box office and thin release schedules, there was worry that the upcoming sale of Warner Bros. would mean fewer anticipated films in 2026, which could then lead to fewer theaters and a declining industry.
Yet as surely as “Dumpuary January” follows the fall awards season, a new year brings a slew of new films to anticipate. If the industry is in trouble, nobody has told these directors. Here are a few of the more scintillating possibilities coming to a multiplex near you in 2026.
EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert – Director: Baz Luhrmann (Neon)
While researching his Austin Butler-starring as Elvis Presley biopic, Baz Luhrmann came across mounds of concert footage from the King’s Las Vegas residency and 1970s tours. One might think that seeing all this material shined, buffed, and blown up for IMAX is not what we need for cinema in the 2020s, but since the format has been used so often for simply gouging more money out of audiences who are going to the theater anyway (pay extra to experience Avengers: Doomsday on a somewhat larger screen!), seeing IMAX used as a vehicle for time-traveling people back to a different era of performance is an exciting prospect.
It’s possible that Luhrmann’s take is simply a spiffed-up version of Denis Sanders’ 1970 concert film Elvis: That’s the Way It Is. That film was a wonderfully sweaty, bell-bottomed spectacle that gets laughs at the excess and pomp (plus “In the Ghetto”, a truly unique time capsule of a song) while still showing Elvis’ true magnetism as a performer. Having Luhrmann put Elvis back in theaters this February feels like a glittering gift at the tail end of a very cold, dark winter.
EPiC US Release date: 20 February.
The Christophers– Director: Steven Soderbergh (Neon)
It isn’t clear how or when Steven Soderbergh sleeps or has a life, but as long as he keeps knocking out a couple of films a year at his recent level of quality (e.g., slippery and surprising ghost story Presence, this-is-how-you-do-it-right spy thriller Black Bag), work/life balance will be a Soderbergh problem; the rest of us can just enjoy his nonstop, genre-spanning work. Seeing him nimbly skip over to another kind of film will always prick up one’s ears.
Picking up good buzz at last year’s festivals, The Christophers is a two-hander about a reclusive art monster of a painter (Ian McKellan) whose children hire an art restorer (Michaela Coel) to pretend she’s his assistant when in fact she’s there to complete some of his unfinished paintings and make a mint for the offspring. It sounds more character-based than much of Soderbergh’s recent work, which has often leaned on gimmicks or plot, suggesting there’s potential to see more of the close observational skills he used in Sex, Lies, and Videotape.
The Christophers US release date: 10 April.
Mother Mary– Director: David Lowery (A24)
We will not be seeing the next Brady Corbet film until 2027 at least (maybe a four-hour century-spanning NC-17-rated epic about immigration called The Origin of the World? One can dream). If needs must, in the meantime, we can make do with Corbet’s closest analogue auteur.
Looking like a more nightmarish version of Corbet’s Vox Lux, David Lowery’s Mother Mary appears to be an Anne Hathaway showcase in which she plays a pop star who cuts her tour short after undergoing a breakdown that leads her to seek out an old friend and onetime costume designer (again, Michaela Coel). Lowery’s sensibilities to date have been more 19th- and 20th-century than modern-day, but the Mother Mary trailer presents a vision of celebrity obsession and pop iconography that explicitly mirrors the current era’s over-the-top quasi-cultish approach to musical fandom.
There is no guarantee this will do for Taylor Swift poptimism what Lowery’s The Green Knight did to Arthurian mythology, but hope springs eternal.
Mother Mary US release date: 17 April
The Odyssey – Director: Christopher Nolan (Universal)
Saying you are excited about the new Christopher Nolan film is like expressing interest in the new pizza place that Eater and Gourmet have been raving about. (It’s pizza, of course you’re interested.) That cinephiles have spent the last two decades eagerly anticipating the next Nolan, no matter its subject matter, is exceptional by itself.
It is difficult to think of another filmmaker since Alfred Hitchcock whose each release was treated with such anticipation, and for good reason. We all know not every Nolan film is a masterpiece. Yet except for maybe Insomnia, each and every one has been an event based not just on hype but the oft-earned belief we are about to see a new classic delivered into the world.
At some point, Nolan’s streak will end, of course. It is very possible that by trying to turn a massive, complex, repetitive, frequently confusing, and illogical sprawl of lyric oral poetry into a crisp piece of epic cinema, he will finally have met his match. If not, The Odyssey will be yet another Nolan film worth clearing your calendar for.
The Odyssey US release date: 17 July.
The Adventures of Cliff Booth – Director: David Fincher (Netflix)
Before the MCU created its interlocking web of characters and storylines, Quentin Tarantino was trying to make his own cinematic universe. He dropped Easter eggs throughout his films, referencing characters from other films, and planned a project about the Vega brothers (Michael Madsen’s Vic Vega from Reservoir Dogs and John Travolta’s Vincent Vega from Pulp Fiction). In 2021, he wrote his first book, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which was less a straight novelization of the 2019 feature than loosely organized riffs, including backstories and interior monologues that expand the world of the film.
In an impressively unpredictable zag, Tarantino not only wrote this sequel script (something he never does), he handed it off to another director (nobody else has directed his writing since Robert Rodriguez handled From Dusk Till Dawn in 1996) and gave it to Netflix (though until now he has been staunchly theatrical-first). It’s an intriguing choice, since a visualist like David Fincher has never been comfortable with the dynamic dialogue Tarantino specializes in. However, Mank proved Fincher could get out of his usual dour zone and deliver something closer to manic comedy, albeit dark. Whether that same spirit shows up for The Adventures of Cliff Booth is a long shot, but it’s also a welcome surprise in a very risk-averse time.
The Adventures of Cliff Booth US release date: TBA