The Most Anticipated Movies of Late 2026 (And the December Collision Nobody Asked For)

Five months of 2026 remain and the calendar is unusually front-loaded with things people already have opinions about. Below is what is currently scheduled, in date order, with an honest note on which entries are safe bets and which are question marks.

August: the late-summer run

The Dog Stars

2026 · 1h 58m

The Dog Stars - 26 August

• 1h 58m
• Adventure, Science Fiction, Thriller

The most overlooked film on this list. Ridley Scott directing a post-apocalyptic survival story, with Jacob Elordi, Josh Brolin, Margaret Qualley, Guy Pearce, and Allison Janney.

Scott's late career has been wildly uneven, producing both genuinely great work and films that feel assembled rather than directed. But the source material here is well regarded, the cast is unusually strong for a film getting this little attention, and "Ridley Scott doing bleak" has historically been where he is at his best.

If you only take one recommendation off this page, this is the one worth a punt.

Watch it if: you want the autumn's most promising film that nobody is talking about.

Coyote vs. Acme

2026 · 1h 43m

Coyote vs. Acme - 20 August

• 1h 43m
• Comedy, Adventure, Family

The film with the strangest journey to a cinema in recent memory. Completed, shelved, and then rescued after a public campaign, it finally arrives with Will Forte, John Cena, and Lana Condor in a live-action and animation hybrid where Wile E. Coyote sues the Acme Corporation for product liability.

That premise is drawn from a 1990 New Yorker humour piece and it is genuinely a great idea for a courtroom comedy. Dave Green directs.

Whether a film can survive that much post-production limbo is the open question, but there is enough goodwill attached that it is worth finding out.

Watch it if: you followed the saga, or you just want a courtroom comedy about a cartoon coyote.

Also in August: Insidious: Out of the Further on the 19th, with Lin Shaye returning for the sixth entry in a franchise that has outlived most of its contemporaries. Mutiny the same day, with Jason Statham for Jean-François Richet, who made the excellent Mesrine films. And Toxic on the 15th, an Indian production with Yash in the lead following his enormous success in the KGF films.

September and October: the genre months

Resident Evil

2026

Resident Evil - 16 September

• Horror, Science Fiction

The most interesting appointment of the year. Zach Cregger, who came out of sketch comedy and made one of the sharpest horror films of the decade, is directing a fresh adaptation of Resident Evil with Austin Abrams, Kali Reis, and Paul Walter Hauser.

Every previous Resident Evil film has treated the source as an action franchise. Cregger's defining quality as a director is structural mischief: he builds films that repeatedly hand the story to someone else and change genre while you are watching. Applying that to a series about a house full of things that should not be there is a genuinely good idea.

This is the single film on the list with the widest gap between low expectations and plausible outcome.

Watch it if: you gave up on video game adaptations and want a reason to reconsider.

Also this stretch: Fall 2: Deadpoint on 2 September, a sequel to the extremely effective low-budget height thriller, now directed by the Spierig brothers. And Wicker on 21 October, which has an absurdly good cast for a folk-horror film nobody is discussing yet: Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgård, Peter Dinklage, and Elizabeth Debicki.

November: two very different epics

Ramayana

2026

Ramayana - 6 November

• Drama, Fantasy, Action

Potentially the biggest film of the year worldwide and the one most likely to be under-covered in English-language press. Nitesh Tiwari directs an adaptation of the Ramayana with Ranbir Kapoor, Sai Pallavi, and Yash as Ravana.

The scale here is genuinely enormous. Indian cinema has spent the last decade proving it can out-gross Hollywood in its home market with mythological epics, and this is the most expensive attempt yet at the single most culturally central story in the tradition.

It also makes for an interesting pairing with The Odyssey: two 2026 films adapting foundational epic poems that predate almost everything else in the canon.

Watch it if: you want the year's largest-scale production, and you are open to subtitles.

Ebenezer

2026

Ebenezer - 11 November

• Drama, Fantasy, Comedy

Ti West directing a Christmas Carol adaptation with Johnny Depp as Scrooge, Rupert Grint, Andrea Riseborough, and Ian McKellen.

West made his name on slow-burn period horror with immaculate texture, and A Christmas Carol is, when you strip the sentiment away, a genuine ghost story about a man being shown his own grave. Taking it seriously as horror is a legitimately good idea that almost nobody has tried.

Whether the casting overshadows the film is a fair question, and one the marketing will not be able to avoid.

Watch it if: you want to see the most adapted story in English handled as actual horror.

December: the collision

Here is the situation. Avengers: Doomsday and Dune: Part Three are currently both listed for 16 December 2026. Then Jumanji: Open World arrives a week later on the 23rd.

Two enormous films on the same day is not unprecedented, and the industry occasionally discovers it works out fine for both. But these two are competing for substantially the same premium large-format screens, which is where both make a disproportionate share of their money. Something usually gives. If you are planning around this, assume the date may move.

Dune: Part Three

2026

Dune: Part Three - 16 December

• Science Fiction, Adventure

Denis Villeneuve completing the trilogy, with Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Florence Pugh, and Rebecca Ferguson returning, plus Jason Momoa.

Dune: Part Two was the best pure spectacle of the decade and ended in a place that demanded a third film. The material this one is drawing on is considerably stranger than the first two books, and how much of that strangeness survives into a mainstream blockbuster is the interesting question.

Our Villeneuve retrospective covers where the first two sit in his filmography. He has not made a bad film yet.

Watch it if: you have seen the first two, in which case this is not optional.

Avengers: Doomsday

2026 · 2h 45m

Avengers: Doomsday - 16 December

• 2h 45m
• Science Fiction, Action, Adventure

The Russo brothers return, and the cast list is the largest assembled for a film of this type: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Pedro Pascal, and Paul Rudd among many others.

Downey and Evans appearing in a post-Endgame Avengers film is the fact everyone will discuss, and the how of it is the film's central question. Given Mark Ruffalo's appearance in Spider-Man: Brand New Day four and a half months earlier, it is reasonable to expect that film to feed into this one.

The Russos made Infinity War, which remains the best-executed version of this specific kind of enormous ensemble film, so the track record is there.

Watch it if: you have kept up, or you are willing to watch the eight films that actually matter.

Jumanji: Open World on 23 December brings back Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Karen Gillan, and Awkwafina, with Jake Kasdan directing again. The previous two were considerably better than they needed to be, and a Christmas week family comedy is a genuinely well-chosen slot.

The full calendar

How to actually plan around this

Three practical notes. First, if you are behind on the MCU, do not attempt to catch up on everything. Eight films give you the arc that Doomsday is paying off, and we cover which ones in our franchise binge guide.

Second, if you want to be ready for Dune: Part Three, you need roughly five and a half hours: Dune and Dune: Part Two. Do it over a weekend rather than a night.

Third, the smaller films on this list are the ones that will be hardest to catch later. The Dog Stars, Wicker, and Resident Evil will all have short theatrical windows. The two December giants will be available forever.

For what is out right now, see best movies of 2026 so far, or check upcoming releases and now playing, both of which update continuously.