Films We Can’t Wait to See in 2026 (and Some Random Observations)

By Original-Cin Staff

Surviving winter in Canada is a challenge, but the advent of a new year promises a whole new slate of blockbusters, arthouse titles, sequels, prequels, remakes, comedies, dramas, and who knows what else? (Consider the thoroughly bonkers Endless Cookie. Did anyone see that coming in 2025?)

As we take the first tentative steps into 2026, Original-Cin writers reveal the upcoming films we are keenest to see. We hope it puts you on the path of bountiful, eventful viewing. Thanks for reading.

A scene from the forthcoming Wuthering Heights

Liz Braun

An Untitled Mike Leigh Film. Say no more.

Wild Horse Nine. Martin McDonagh’s latest film concerns CIA agents on a mission in Chile, circa 1973. The cast includes Sam Rockwell, Steve Buscemi, and John Malkovich. Given the director’s other films — In Bruges, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, The Banshees of Inisherin —what’s not to look forward to?

Fjord. Director Cristian Mungiu has been a bit of an obsession ever since 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Fjord concerns a Romanian family living in Norway and a brush with the law. Not a feel-good movie, you might sense. On the upside, the cast includes Renate Reinsve and Sebastian Stan.

Also, I can’t wait to see Martin Scorsese’s What Happens at Night, a haunting tale about relationships and communication based on the novel by Peter Cameron. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence as a couple hoping to adopt a child in a faraway place… but its release date may not be 2026.

Thom Ernst

First, let’s get The Odyssey out of the way. Of course it’s on my list of anticipated films for 2026. But here’s my recurring problem with announcing movies I’m “looking forward to:” for me, anticipation is the antithesis of expectation. With food, they say hunger is the best spice. With movies — at least in my experience — it’s poison.

The films I’m most eager for almost always disappoint, buckling under the weight of my own hopes. It’s the ones that sneak up on me — armed only with the quiet leverage of a favoured director, a half-remembered source novel or a whisper of good casting — that tend to land hardest.

And yet, hard lessons are rarely learned. So once again, I’m publicly dooming the prospects of a good outcome by listing the films that have caught my attention, fully aware that this act of anticipation may be the very thing that ruins them.

The Bride! Written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, this relocates the myth to 1930, with Jessie Buckley in the titular role and Christian Bale as her studly betrothed. Think Bonnie and Clyde, if Bonnie had been reanimated and the crime spree unfolded among headstones.

Project Hail Mary was one of the funniest books I read this year. I wasn’t sure the film would lean into that humour — until I discovered it’s directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, of Spider-Verse, The Lego Movie, and the 21 Jump Street films. Humour feels safely assured.

Send Help strands Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien on a desert island after a plane crash, then delights in letting McAdams systematically turn the tables on her reprehensible boss. Survival, revenge, and workplace catharsis, laced with director Sam Raimi’s menace.

Karen Gordon

Disclosure Day. I've been following UFO-ology since I was a kid, and of course the concept of first contact is familiar territory for Steven Speilberg. So, UFOs + Steven Speilberg returning to the topic of contact? I’m in.

The Odyssey. I grew up on the sword-and-sandal epics that played as Saturday matinees at the Deluxe Theatre in Winnipeg’s North End. Plus, Greek mythology is another obsession of mine since childhood. Homer’s epic in the hands of Chirstopher Nolan, shooting in IMAX, is going to be an old-fashioned, big-screen experience. Even the poster makes my heart beat faster.

Wuthering Heights. Writer-director Emerald Fennell doing an interpretation of Brontë’s classic melodrama of deep, cosmic untameable love between soul mates who get ripped apart by society, circumstance, misunderstandings and emotional dysregulation? Gothic romance, man. You gotta love it.

Kim Hughes

Disclosure Day. Just about anything Steven Spielberg directs captures my imagination. But his return to sci-fi, especially after the highly personal (if less-than-scintillating) The Fabelmans, is particularly exciting. And the trailer is electrifying.

The Drama. This sort-of screwball dramedy could go either way, but its top-tier — and frequently risk-taking — cast of Robert Pattinson, Zendaya, and Alana Haim under director Kristoffer Borgli (see also the bananas Dream Scenario) promises to be watchable.

The Devil Wears Prada 2. Are guilty pleasures just pleasures, as my Neil Diamond-loving colleague Jim Slotek recently suggested? I loved the original, and the images snapped on the streets of New York last summer as this was being filmed make it look every bit as campy-cool as its predecessor. And gosh, that’s two out of three from me featuring Emily Blunt.

John Kirk

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu. This has been a long time coming, but The Mandalorian reignited a passionate love of Star Wars, set in the time just after The Return of the Jedi, when the franchise arguably saw its greatest enjoyment. Including beloved characters like Luke Skywalker, Asoka Tano, and Boba Fett only solidified its hold on fans. What will they give fans in this full-length feature film? Will we see a return of Paul Sun-Hyung Lee as Captain Carson Teva, for instance?

Coyote vs. ACME. Hardly blockbuster material, but I’ve always had a soft spot for the plight of the Coyote in his continued humiliation by that dastardly, sinister Roadrunner. Yeah – this time, it’s personal. Torontonian Eric Bauza lends his voice talents to this film and he’s a major success story I want to hear more of in the new year.

Avengers: Doomsday. If you’re comic fan, then this is definitely the film to wait for. The return of both fictional hero Captain America and actor Robert Downey, Jr. as Doctor Doom? There are a lot of questions to answer, and it’s very likely that Kevin Feige is going to have fun seeing the teaser drops for the film for the entire year.

Disappointment for 2026: the continued decline of honest-to-goodness fun Star Trek seems to loom on the horizon this year as 2026 sees the end of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds which — and readers may be divided on this — represented the last true gasp of reaching back to the core entertainment of Star Trek. Namely, exploration and dealing with inhuman ways in a normal, human way. Next year will see more of my coverage of Trek beginning with Star Trek: Starfleet Academy in January. Stay tuned for that.

Chris Knight

Disclosure Day. Spielberg’s first film (1964) was a sci-fi about aliens. He returned to the topic in ’77 (Close Encounters), ’82 (E.T.) and ’05 (War of the Worlds). I’m stoked for his next. If anything can unseat Arrival as my fave first-contact movie, it’s this.

Project Hail Mary. I loved The Martian (book and film) and just read Project Hail Mary by the same author. Let the adaptation commence!

Coyote vs. ACME. Released after years in legal limbo. (But then again, I never studied law.)

Biggest thrill of 2025: Sinners. Uses IMAX to the max, features a killer soundtrack, isn’t based on an existing IP. And this Oscar hopeful came out in April! It breaks all the rules!

Already a smash in Japan, Kokuho is highly anticipated.

Liam Lacey

These three films, which have already played festivals this year and have North American releases in early 2026, have some things in common: They’re long, subtitled, and meticulously recreate the past.

Magellan. Slow cinema auteur Lav Diaz (Norte, the End of History) takes us on a doomed adventure with the famous 16-century explorer (Gael Garcia Bernal). Set over 15 years, Magellan unfolds in a series of transfixing painterly shots depicting the wounds of colonialism while keeping the violence off-screen.

Silent Friend. In a casting coup, this film from Hungarian director Ildikó Enyedi (On Body and Soul) stars Tony Leung, Lea Séydoux, and a majestic Ginko biloba tree in a German university garden. Set in 1908, 1972, and 2020, this magical film explores the secret lives of plants and humans.

Kokuho. Director Lee Sang-il Lee’s backstage drama about “onnagata” actors, or men playing women in Kabuki theatre, became the highest grossing live-action Japanese film of all time this past summer and is Japan’s submission for the Oscars. Heartthrobs Ryo Yoshizawa and Ryusei Yokohama play friends and rivals (with Ken Watanabe in a supporting role) over 50 years. The triumph here is the presentation of the thrilling Kabuki performances.

Bonnie Laufer

The Bride! Maggie Gyllenhaal is back behind the camera, and her all-star cast includes husband Peter Sarsgaard and brother Jake Gyllenhaal (who doesn’t love an on-screen family reunion?) plus the amazing Jessie Buckley as “The Bride,” a murdered young woman brought back to life to be a companion for Frankenstein's monster. This could go either way but I’m betting on genius!

Michael. Say what you will but I am very much looking forward to director Antoine Fuqua’s telling of music icon Michael Jackson’s life played by the singer’s own nephew Jaafar Jackson. As turbulent and controversial as that life was, there is no denying Jackson’s music was a gift.

The Social Reckoning. My man Aaron Sorkin is back, having written and directed this “follow-up” to The Social Network starring Jeremy Allen White and Mikey Madison as, respectively, Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz and Facebook engineer Frances Haugen, who blew the whistle on the platform’s biggest secrets.

Biggest Thrill in 2025. There were some great offerings in 2025, but nothing stuck with and moved me more than Hamnet. I still burst into tears every time I think about the film's final scene. Jessie Buckley needs to win all the awards. That woman is a revelation.

Alice Shih

The Odyssey. Can't wait to see Master Nolan's next epic.

Michael. I was a huge Michael Jackson fan when I was young, and I'm eager to see the chemistry between Antoine Fuqua and Jafaar Jackson, bringing my hero back to life on screen.

Nv Zu (a.k.a. Shaolin Women's Soccer). Stephen Chow's sequel to the wildly popular comedy Shaolin's Soccer (2001) and Kung Fu Hustle (2004). It has been seven years since he last directed The New King of Comedy (2019).

Jim Slotek

Werwulf. There! Wolf! After getting Nosferatu out of his system, horrormeister Robert Eggers goes all the way back to 13th century England to unveil the lycanthropic reality behind the myths. Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Willem Dafoe, and Lily Rose Depp star in what Eggers says is the darkest script he’s ever written.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. Nia DaCosta replaces Danny Boyle as director, after the bang-up job he and writer Alex Garland did on 28 Years Later. I hope it’s not a bad sign that it’s the earliest release of the lot (January). But I’m keen to see Spike (Alfie Williams) falling under the thrall of cult leader Sir Jimmy (Jack O’Connell) while the hermit Dr. Kelso (Ralph Fiennes) makes further discoveries about “The Infected.”

The Odyssey. Director Christopher Nolan, having messed with us enough with Tenet and Interstellar, now gives us something presumably easier to wrap our heads around. Matt Damon is brave Odysseus, heading home to Anne Hathaway. Charlize Theron is a goddess and a witch, who also plays Circe. There’s your Cyclops and your sirens, and I wouldn’t miss it for all the drachma in the Ferryman’s coin pouch.