Blockbusters coming in hot

Weekend Mix reviewer Amasio Jutel reveals 15 movies to watch in 2026.

Changing out the calendar and marking down new key dates helps identify the kind of year it’s going to be at the movies. Looking back in the 2025 wrap-up and looking ahead here has me optimistic about these new frontiers. In 2026, be excited for a whirlwind of original blockbusters and in-theatre auteurist projects outlined below.

Although I’m very excited to hit the ground running with a fresh slate of movies, the delayed arrival of Oscar contenders to Aotearoa’s shores means we’re not quite done with 2025 yet.

Kicking off the new year are Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme (January 22), in which Timothée Chalamet plays an egomaniacal ping pong player, Park Chan Wook’s anti-capitalist thriller/satire about an unemployed man knocking off his competition, No Other Choice (February 19), and Kleber Mendonca Filho’s Brazilian crime/thriller, The Secret Agent (January 22).

Three powerhouse directors come in hot with three blockbuster movies. First, Steven Spielberg’s return to the extra-terrestrial, Disclosure Day (June 11), starring Emily Blunt and Josh O’Connor. Christopher Nolan succeeds the tremendously successful Oppenheimer with an adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey (July 16). Produced, shot, edited, and scored by the same team that won that abundance of Oscars, the film stars Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, Zendaya and Charlize Theron — wow. Finally, Villeneuve is rounding out his science-fiction trilogy of sand, spice, and space worms with Dune: Part Three (December 17).

Resident Evil (September 17) is the follow-up feature of the most exciting director working in the horror genre right now, Zach Cregger. Austin Abrams plays a courier delivering a package to a remote hospital, who finds himself caught in an outbreak of mutated creatures. October (expected October) reunites director Jeremy Saulnier with Green Room star Imogen Poots in a Halloween thriller. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (TBA) is a queer camp slasher from Jane Schoenbrun starring Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson. Their last feature, I Saw The TV Glow, is a transcendently shot and scored film about a teen in the ’90s experiencing gender dysphoria.

In the world of absurd and surrealist sci-fi/comedies, director and rapper Boots Rielly, of 2018’s Sorry To Bother You, returns with I Love Boosters (expected May) about a crew of professional shoplifters. Looney Tunes courtroom comedy, Coyote vs. Acme (expected August), follows Wile E. Coyote as he sues the Acme Corporation for their perpetually failing products in his pursuit of the Road Runner. Flowervale Street (expected August) is a contemporary dinosaur movie from David Robert Mitchell starring Anne Hathaway.

Finally, some undated but highly anticipated auteur projects likely to be released in 2026 include Fjord (TBA), a "social alienation" drama following a couple played by Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve, Here Comes The Flood (TBA), an "unconventional heist movie" from City of God director, Fernando Meirelles, starring Denzel Washington and Robert Pattinson, and Jack of Spades (TBA), a gothic thriller from Joel Coen starring Josh O’Connor.