Films We’re Looking Forward to in 2026

Ryan Gosling heads to space, Meryl Streep puts on her Prada, Margot Robbie yearns for Jacob Elordi and Tom Cruise leads – checks notes – a comedy?! There’s plenty of star power in front of the camera in 2026, but also behind it with new movies from Steven Spielberg, Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve. Here, we’ve pulled together 20 films we can’t wait to watch, featuring franchise entries, festival favourites, international cinema and everything in between. 

Wuthering Heights

Promising Young Woman (2020) shocked, Saltburn (2023) scandalised and now Wuthering Heights is set to glue-gun rhinestones all over Emily Brontë’s sweeping Gothic romance. Academy Award-winning provocateur Emerald Fennell’s latest film – featuring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi as the star-crossed lovers – is bound to get people talking. In fact, it already has. The casting was pored over, as were on-set stills, particularly one in which Robbie’s Cathy wears a flowing red PVC skirt. Judging by the trailer, we’re expecting a sexy, button-pushing romance with Instagram-ready aesthetics and a decidedly pop sensibility (the latter helped along by new music from It girl of the moment Charli XCX). Whatever it turns out to be, it’s certainly not the Wuthering Heights of your GCSE English exam. Expect more than a little passion from audiences when it arrives in cinemas.

In cinemas 14 February.

The Social Reckoning

The Oscar-winning screenwriter of The Social Network (2010) returns to the story of Mark Zuckerberg, focusing this time on the explosive 2021 testimony of whistleblower Frances Haugen. Aaron Sorkin also takes over directorial duties from David Fincher, and Jeremy Strong has replaced Jesse Eisenberg as Zuckerberg. It’s a smart move for Strong, whose portrayal of Roy Cohn in The Apprentice (2024) and Jon Landau in Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (2025) cemented his status as one of contemporary American cinema’s most compelling actors. In her first role since Anora (2024), Mikey Madison plays Haugen, while Jeremy Allen White portrays Jeff Horwitz, the investigative journalist upon whose book, Broken Code (2024), the film is based.

In cinemas 9 October.

No Other Choice

There’s a steely precision to Park Chan-wook’s films, as evidenced by Decision to Leave (2022), The Handmaiden (2016) and Oldboy (2003). But there’s also an anarchic, subversive humour. That comes to the fore in the South Korean director’s latest, which sees Man-su, a middle-aged company man at a paper factory, lose his job. Struggling to find rewarding employment, he decides to – literally – wipe out his competition. Lee Byung-hun gives a career-best performance as the put-upon Man-su. His antics offer director Park the perfect opportunity to skewer middle-class work culture with a satirical force few filmmakers could match.

In cinemas 23 January.

The Bride! 

The trailer to director Maggie Gyllenhaal’s second feature dropped just before Guillermo del Toro’s classical adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel appeared in cinemas. The footage offered an update of James Whale’s beloved Bride of Frankenstein (1935), moving the action to 1930s gangster-era Chicago, and pairing up the incendiary acting duo of Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale. Penélope Cruz, Jake Gyllenhaal, Annette Benning and Peter Saarsgaad also appear in a film that oozes sneering punk attitude and no small amount of style.

In cinemas 6 March.

Hamnet

Produced by Steven Spielberg, adapted – with the novel’s author Maggie O’Farrell – and directed by Nomadland (2020) Oscar winner Chloé Zhao, and starring Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley, the latter giving an awards-frontrunner performance, this Elizabethan-era drama is already a festival favourite. It tells of how Hamlet came to be the expression of Shakespeare’s grief over the loss of his son. But its main focus is on his wife, Agnes, whose sense of loss is incalculable. More than that, Hamnet is an exploration of a kind of love – familial, personal, sexual – that heals as much as it inspires.

In cinemas 9 January.

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

Don’t be surprised if Rose Byrne steals an award or two from Jessie Buckley this season for her committed, all-in portrayal of a mother who is looking after her sick child and whose mental state teeters precariously on the precipice of an emotional abyss. Mary Bronstein’s sophomore film remains focused on Byrne’s expressive face, while ensuring an undertow of dark humour keeps us on her character’s side. It’s a highwire act for both and they pull it off with great success.

In cinemas 20 February.

Two Prosecutors

Since his international breakthrough with the chilling My Joy (2010), Sergey Loznitsa has cemented his position as one of world cinema’s most strident voices. Recent years have seen him focus on a unique kind of documentary, employing archive footage to re-examine history. Most notable among them is State Funeral (2019), which charts the events following Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953. Two Prosecutors – Loznitsa’s return to narrative filmmaking – unfolds a little earlier, in 1937, at the height of Stalin’s Terror. It focuses on a newly appointed prosecutor (a superb Alexandr Kuznetsov) who decides to look into claims by a prisoner of corruption within the country’s secret police. Loznitsa is a master of dread, and this stunning drama conveys the inherent danger facing a man with principles in a society without values.

In cinemas 27 March.

The Testament of Ann Lee

Director Mona Fastvold, working with writing – and real-life – partner Brady Corbet (director of 2024’s The Brutalist), conjures a striking tale about the titular head of the Shaker movement. She left pre-industrial Manchester for America and caused a minor storm in New England with her ascetic approach to life and faith. Amanda Seyfried is outstanding in the lead, while The Brutalist’s Oscar-winning composer, Daniel Blumberg, impressively integrates spirituals from the era into his score. It’s the 18th-century musical about a religious cult you never knew you needed.

In cinemas 20 February.

Project Hail Mary

The sun is dying. Life on Earth is under threat. And only Ryan Gosling can save us! He plays an infamous molecular biologist-turned-schoolteacher who might be the right person to find a solution. Based on a 2021 novel by The Martian author Andy Weir, and directed by The Lego Movie’s Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, Project Hail Mary is an inventive take on the Robinson Crusoe narrative, with Gosling’s unwilling spaceman setting out to save humanity.

In cinemas 20 March.

Nino

What value does life hold, beyond the vagaries of our everyday existence? For Nino, impressively played by Théodore Pellerin, a surprising and serious medical diagnosis sees him look at the world anew, grappling with the things that are truly important over the detritus that clogs up our lives. Director Pauline Loquès’ feature debut follows Nino as he walks around the streets of Paris, ‘seeing’ places – and people – for the first time. Nino movingly conveys the feelings of someone knowing exactly what they have at the very moment they know they could lose it all.

The Devil Wears Prada 2

Of all the sequels, spin-offs and remakes coming out in 2026, few are as anticipated as this follow-up to the breakout 2006 hit, the highly quotable, highly stylish look at the inner workings of Vogue– sorry, Runway. Meryl Streep returns as the imperious Anna Wintour stand-in Miranda Priestly, along with former co-stars Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci and Emily Blunt, with Sydney Sweeney, Lucy Liu, Kenneth Branagh and Lady Gaga joining the ranks. Little is known about the plot, other than it grapples with an age in which magazines hold less sway with fashionistas, as reflected in Miranda’s faltering grip on the world she once reigned over. And of course, the film opens the weekend before the fashion event of the year: the Met Gala.

In cinemas 1 May.

Disclosure Day

A Steven Spielberg film is always an event. This is his first since 2022’s The Fabelmans and is rumoured to be a purely escapist adventure. Josh O’Connor’s star continues to rise as he takes the lead, opposite Emily Blunt, Colin Firth, Colman Domingo, Eve Hewson and Wyatt Russell. Spielberg co-wrote the original script with David Koepp, who penned Jurassic Park (1993) and War of the Worlds (2005). The teaser reveals that the director is revisiting one of his favourite cinematic subjects: alien life. 

In cinemas 12 June.

The Love That Remains  

Hlynur Pálmason is nothing if not unpredictable. Following his rapturous 19th-century clerical drama Godland (2022), in which even an animal’s decaying corpse was strikingly shot, The Love That Remains might initially appear to lack the scope and ambition of its predecessor. But don’t be fooled. An account of a family slowly coming apart, Pálmason’s film is both beguiling and nimble. The wife/mother in the family seeks separation. The husband/father sees that separation as temporary. Set over the course of a year, the film’s serial vignettes present an astute portrait of frayed relations, but any tension is relieved through Pálmason’s increasing embrace of the surreal. The deftness of his script and direction makes this one of the richer, more original treatises on the affairs of two mismatched hearts.

In cinemas 13 March.

The Stranger

François Ozon’s faithful adaptation of Albert Camus’ 1942 novella is one of his most strikingly beautiful films. Shot in crisp black and white, The Stranger stars Benjamin Voisin, the lead of Ozon’s Summer of ’85 (2020), as Meursault, a settler in French Algeria, who fatally shoots an Algerian. What shocks, beyond the crime, is his lack of remorse for his actions. There are hints of more contemporary attitudes to both the novel and post-colonial thought in Ozon’s film, which make it essential viewing.

In cinemas 10 April.

The Odyssey

Exactly a year before its release, tickets for the first-day IMAX release of Christopher Nolan’s new film sold out in seconds. It’s a small sign of the filmmaker’s status among cinema audiences. People don’t go to Christopher Nolan films for the plot, they go because it’s a Christopher Nolan film. And if you thought the three-hour Oppenheimer (2023) was an ambitious undertaking, his latest is a bold step. It’s a take on Homer's Ancient Greek tale of a heroic king’s arduous, 10-year journey home from the Trojan War. Along the way, he meets a multitude of monsters and temptations, while in his homeland various forces seek to usurp his throne. Matt Damon, who previously played supporting roles in Interstellar (2014) and Oppenheimer, here takes the lead, with Nolan regulars Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson and Himesh Patel in supporting roles.

In cinemas 17 July.

Digger

Tom Cruise, the world’s biggest film star, teams up with the director of Birdman (2013), The Revenant (2015) and the criminally underrated Bardo (2022) for a hugely ambitious film. With the logline ‘the most powerful man in the world causes a disaster and embarks on a mission to prove that he is the saviour of humanity’, it’s hard not to believe that the Cruiser might, in fact, be the Second Coming. The Mission: Impossible movies hinted at it, but Digger could be the film that proves it. It's being billed as 'a comedy of catastrophic proportions' so maybe, just maybe, old TC will be engaging in some self-deprecating, image-puncturing humour. 

In cinemas 2 October.

Dune: Part Three

On the subject of deities, Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atreides has now achieved near-god-like status after his Fremen conquered most of the known universe. Denis Villeneuve’s final film in the Dune series – before he tackles the James Bond reboot – adapts the second novel of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi sextet. The film’s action opens 12 years after the last one ended, and is more explicit in its critique of Paul as a problematic figure – questioning his cult status and stranglehold on power. Once again, Villeneuve is working on a massive scale, but Manichean conflict is replaced by something more opaque. The director has never shied away from thought-provoking cinema, and Dune: Part Three may have something potent to say about the riven, ideologically divided world we live in.

In cinemas 18 December.

The President’s Cake 

Iraq has just invaded Kuwait. Money and goods are in short supply, particularly in the country’s rural areas. But Saddam Hussein still demands that his birthday be celebrated. For nine-year-old Lamia (Baneen Ahmad Nayyef), who lives in the nation’s southern marshes, that means baking a birthday cake for her school. Hasan Hadi’s feature debut presents a fascinating portrait of 1990s Iraq, at a time when Hussein’s rule was at its most ruthless. But instead of a scathing portrait of a corrupt dictator, The President’s Cake is a moving account of everyday lives under duress. Balancing humour with high emotions, it succeeds in finding ways to see this world anew – a stark contrast to Iraq’s representation across decades of Western media coverage. 

In cinemas 13 February.

Mother Mary

Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel starring in a psychosexual horror thriller is probably enough for anyone to immediately buy their cinema tickets. Then there’s the premise. Hathway is a pop star, Coel is a fashion designer, and they’re having an affair. As if that weren’t enough, it features new music by Charli XCX. And it’s written and directed by David Lowery, the poetically visual filmmaker behind The Green Knight (2021). Consider us sold. Mother Mary promises to be one of the year’s more wayward entertainments.

Werwulf

Like David Lowery, Robert Eggers has carved a distinctive trail in recent US cinema. The Witch (2015) was close to perfect. The Lighthouse (2019) and The Northman (2022) offered up wildly eccentric takes on the claustrophobic psychodrama and Viking saga respectively. And Nosferatu (2024) saw Eggers realise a long-held dream of stamping his own vision onto FW Murnau’s 1922 silent classic. With Werwulf, the filmmaker takes on another trope of horror fiction – the lycan myth. Nosferatu cast members Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Lily-Rose Depp, Willem Dafoe and Ralph Ineson all appear, with The Northman co-writer, acclaimed Icelandic novelist Sjon, penning the script with Eggers. Expect something Gothic, unsettling and bloody as hell.