Talk about a tough act to follow.
The summer of 2026 has been a historic one for the movies on multiple fronts. Christopher Nolan’s groundbreaking epic “The Odyssey” has crossed the $1.1 billion mark worldwide, as fans made pilgrimages to screens with IMAX 70mm film capabilities, and theaters scheduling showings in the middle of the night to keep up with demand. “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” and “Toy Story 5” were massive hits as well. Meanwhile, the low-budget psychological horror film “Obsession” enjoyed a sensational run and became the ultimate summer sleeper hit, actually earning more on each of the first three weekends of June than it did when it opened in late spring.
We’re not going to see the same level of box-office success for the fall season, defined as films released from Labor Day weekend through Thanksgiving. Still, there’s no shortage of major sequels and prequels, star-powered vehicles and intriguing smaller films.
Here are my most anticipated movies for fall 2026:
“Practical Magic 2” (September 11)
This is kind of a strange choice for a legacy sequel, given the original in 1998 was neither a critical nor commercial favorite. Still, I’ve got it on the list because the massively talented quartet of Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing are returning, with Joey King and Maisie Williams joining the cast. Perhaps more important, the brilliant Susanne Bier, who has teamed up with Bullock on “Bird Box” and with Kidman for “The Undoing” and “The Perfect Couple,” is directing. Set a quarter-century after the events of the first film, “Practical Magic 2” finds the witchy Owens sisters, played by Bullock and Kidman, embarking on a journey to end the family curse once and for all. Given the director/cast combination here, there’s reason to hope the sequel will surpass the original in quality and box-office performance.
“The Weight” (September 18)
I’m often asked to name my favorite genre of movie and that’s an almost impossible question to answer — but whether it’s a Western or a crime thriller or a character study, I am partial to films that look like they could have been made in the “New Hollywood” era of the 1960s and 1970s, regardless of the time period in which they’re set. (Recent examples would include films such as “Licorice Pizza,” “X,” “The Card Counter” and “Tony.”) It looks like “The Weight” could fill that bill, as it’s reportedly a gritty, historical drama set in 1933, with Ethan Hawke playing an incarcerated man in Oregon who is offered a devil’s bargain by the warden, played by Russell Crowe: smuggle a load of gold through the wilderness and win his freedom. Ethan Hawke is riding a career wave with a series of great performances in challenging roles, and Russell Crowe — well, we know he can play relentless and intimidating.
“Resident Evil” (September 18)
Every few years we get another “Resident Evil” movie, but anticipation is high for this year’s edition. The gifted director Zach Cregger (who gave us the dark and clever “Barbarian”) is a hardcore fan of the original Japanese survival-horror video game, and we’re told Cregger and his team will be incorporating cutting-edge technology to mirror gaming mechanics, from the camera angles to weapon upgrades.
Austin Abrams, who was the best thing in the disappointing Clooney-Pitt vehicle “Wolfs” and was so terrific in “Weapons,” seems like an inspired casting choice to play a medical courier who is caught in the middle of a catastrophic viral outbreak. The supporting cast includes two of the best characters in the world: Zach Cherry and Paul Walter Hauser.
“Verity” (October 2)
Novelist Colleen Hoover has been a mini-studio over the past couple of years, with adaptations of “It Ends with Us” (2024), “Regretting You” (2025), “Reminders of Him” (2026) and now “Verity” arriving in rapid fashion. This is a psychological thriller that sounds a little bit like “Misery” meets “The Ghostwriter” meets “After the Hunt.” Dakota Johnson plays an unaccomplished and financially desperate writer named Lowen Ashleigh, who is hired to move into the estate of the best-selling author Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway) and finish Crawford’s works after an accident leaves her incapacitated. Miraculously, the two become best friends. No, not really. What follows is an increasingly twisted and chilling tale straight out of the Hitchcock playbook.
“Digger” (October 2)
If only Tom Cruise would come out of his shell and do a little publicity once in a while, we would have heard of this movie! Cruise has been the quintessential movie star through five decades, but I’ve always been partial to the roles where he’s stepped out of his comfort zone, e.g. “Tropic Thunder” and “Magnolia.” Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu (“21 Grams,” “The Revenant”) has long been a master at memorably creative and intense experiences. I can’t wait to see this satirical black comedy that has a nearly unrecognizable Cruise playing the world’s most powerful man, who must save the world from a cataclysmic disaster of his own making. Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Hüller, Jesse Plemons and Michael Stuhlbarg are along for what could be a wild ride.
“The Social Reckoning” (October 9)
David Fincher’s “The Social Network” was ranked the best movie of the 2010s by a number of critics, including yours truly. It was a perfectly crafted anti-hero origin story — but I think it’s safe to say public opinion of Mark Zuckerberg and the dominant social media platforms he’s created has only become more intense and polarizing over the past decade and a half. Aaron Sorkin, who won an Oscar for the screenplay for “The Social Network,” is writer and director this time around. With the exceptionally proficient Jeremy Strong taking on the role of Zuckerberg, “The Social Reckoning” will focus on the 2021 Facebook data leak. Oscar-winner Mikey Madison plays whistleblower Frances Haugen, and Jeremy Allen White takes the role of Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz. This could be the best movie of its kind since Michael Mann’s 1999 masterwork “The Insider.”
“Clayface” (October 23)
We haven’t yet seen this so we can’t guarantee it’ll be great, but this much we know for sure: “Clayface” will not be another assembly-line superhero movie. The big-screen treatment of one of Batman’s most notorious enemies is said to be an all-out body horror film, with the title character as the centerpiece of a character-driven psychological tragedy. Tom Rhys Harries plays Matt Hagen, an actor whose life is destroyed after he is disfigured when an affair with a gangster’s girlfriend is discovered. When an experimental corrective procedure goes terribly wrong (as they always do in comic-book movies), Hagen is transformed into a shape-shifting creature made of living clay. Kudos to DC Studios for attempting something truly different.
“Klara and the Sun” (October 23)
Adapting Kazuo Ishiguro’s acclaimed and popular literary triumph is a daunting task — and in the hands of the polarizing but undeniably talented Taika Waititi (“Jojo Rabbit”), it could go either way. Here’s hoping Waititi rises to the challenge of bringing big-screen vibrancy to the story of Klara (Jenna Ortega), an “AI Friend” who provides companionship to children and is hired to care for a sick teenager named Josie (Mia Tharia). The ubiquitous and versatile Amy Adams plays Josie’s mother. If the screenplay by Waititi and Dahvi Waller strikes the right notes, this could be the most profoundly moving film of the season.
“I Play Rocky” (November 6)
One of the most famous pieces of Hollywood lore is the story of how a struggling actor named Sylvester Stallone wrote a spec script called “Rocky” and refused to let anyone else star in it. That origin story has been turned into a movie with the perfect title of “I Play Rocky,” with Anthony Ippolito playing the young Stallone and Matt Dillon as his father, Frank. I’ve always loved how Stallone’s own story mirrored the classic underdog story of Rocky, and if “I Play Rocky” is even half as good as the winner of Best Picture of 1976, that’s a TKO.
“Wild Horse Nine” (November 6)
Writer-director Martin McDonagh (“In Bruges,” “The Banshees of Inisherin”) is one of my favorite filmmakers, and I’m keen to see what he does with what could be another darkly funny and wonderfully strange story. “Wild Horse Nine” is set in Chile in 1973, with the fantastically quirky pairing of Sam Rockwell and John Malkovich as CIA agents sent to Easter Island on an assignment that spirals wildly out of control. I’m feeling a vibe akin to “The In-Laws” — the 1979 classic, not the 2003 disappointment.
“Paper Tiger” (November 13)
When director James Gray is clicking on all cylinders, he delivers memorable stories and searingly effective visuals, e.g., “The Lost City of Z” (2016) and “Ad Astra” (2019). Set in mid-1980s Queens, “Paper Tiger” re-teams Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver, who brought out the absolute best in each other in “Marriage Story.” They’re joined by another of our most consistently interesting actors, Miles Teller, in a crime drama that follows two brothers who get entangled with the Russian mob — and as we’ve learned from every movie about getting entangled with the Russian mob, from “Eastern Promises” to “John Wick” to “The Equalizer” to “Nobody,” it’s rarely a good thing.
“The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping” (November 20)
The 50th Hunger Games were said to be the most historically brutal and punishing games ever, and that’s where we find ourselves in this prequel, set nearly a quarter-century before Katniss Everdeen’s story. Joseph Zada plays the young Haymitch, taking on the younger version of the character originated by Woody Harrelson, in a time before Haymitch became deeply cynical and traumatized. With a wide-ranging and intriguing cast including Whitney Peak, Mckenna Grace, Jesse Plemons, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Maya Hawke and Ralph Fiennes. “Sunrise on the Reaping” promises to touch on the franchise’s core themes about oppressive governments, the evils of propaganda and the nobility of rebellion and sacrifice.
Richard Roeper is the Sun-Times’ former movie critic and current contributor.