The 25 movies we can’t wait to see in 2025
With the end of the year in sight, what better time to start thinking ahead? The 2025 release calendar is filled with several potential awards contenders, including new films from Oscar nominees and/or winners Bong Joon Ho, Danny Boyle, Guillermo del Toro, James Cameron, James L. Brooks, Spike Lee, Chloé Zhao, Noah Baumbach, Celine Song, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Steven Soderbergh,
Ahead the 25* movies we care about for ’25 in chronological order.
*This list goes to 27 because there are just too many good movies coming out next year.
WINTER
1. Mickey 17 (March 7)
Director: Bong Joon Ho
Cast: Robert Pattinson, Steven Yeun, Toni Collette, Mark Ruffalo
Five years after winning Best Picture with Parasite, director Bong has finally returned with Mickey 17. This one has taken a long, strange trip to the theater – first scheduled for release in 2024, before landing a January 31, 2025 release date following the writers’ and actors’ strikes last year. But Warner Bros. shifted the date again in November, pushing it to the spring. On Friday, the studio moved it again, swapping release dates with Sinners (more on that one below). However, expectations are high no matter when it comes out due to its trippy trailer and Bong’s obvious pedigree.
2. Black Bag (March 14)
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Cate Blanchett, Rege-Jean Page, Marisa Abela, Naomie Harris, Tom Burke, Pierce Brosnan
It’s always a good year when Soderbergh releases a film, and in 2025, the master craftsman has two features. In January, Soderbergh’s 2024 Sundance premiere Presence will finally debut. But the low-fi horror film is but an appetizer to Black Bag, a thriller about two married and deadly spies (Blanchett and Fassbender) on the opposite side of a bigger conspiracy. Soderbergh is a pro in this format (Haywire, No Sudden Move), as is Fassbender (The Killer, The Agency).
SPRING
3. Sinners (April 18)
Director: Ryan Coogler
Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Jack O’Connell, Hailee Steinfeld, Delroy Lindo, Jayme Lawson, Li Jun Li, Wunmi Mosaku
Coogler and Jordan team up for the fifth time following Fruitvale Station, Creed, and the two Black Panther films for a period supernatural thriller that has been rumored to have a vampire component to its central mystery. The Sinners trailer is high on tension, with Jordan playing the two lead roles: twin brothers who return to their hometown to escape their troubled lives and find a dangerous new threat. Coogler reunited with several of his close collaborators for this film, including Oscar winners Ludwig Goransson (score), Ruth E. Carter (costumes), and Hannah Beachler (production design).
4. A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (May 9)
Director: Kogonada
Cast: Margot Robbie, Colin Farrell, Jodie Turner-Smith, Phoebe Waller-Bridge
Beloved indie filmmaker Kogonada (Columbus, After Yang) reconnects with his After Yang costars Farrell and Turner-Smith for this family drama that also marks Robbie’s first onscreen role since Barbie. Little is known about this one besides its pedigree: It’s an original film about “two strangers and the extraordinary emotional journey that connects them.” Sony is reportedly bullish about A Big Bold Beautiful Journey – even to the point where the studio allegedly toyed with the idea of releasing it in time for the 2025 Oscars.
5. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (May 23)
Director: Christopher McQuarrie
Cast: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Hannah Waddingham, Angela Bassett, Vanessa Kirby, Pom Klementief, Esai Morales
Cruise and McQuarrie are finally ready for the eighth (and maybe last?) Mission: Impossible film. Final Reckoning has been in the works since the pandemic, shot alongside Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning” (indeed, Final Reckoning was once called Dead Reckoning – Part 2). Cruise has continually upped the ante in this franchise, but it has never been a major awards player despite impeccable craft and filmmaking prowess. Whether that changes with the potential last ride remains to be seen.
6. The Life of Chuck (May 30)
Director: Mike Flanagan
Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, Mark Hamill
Based on the novella by Stephen King, The Life of Chuck has to be on any early list of 2026 Oscar contenders due to its performance in 2024. The movie had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September and won the prestigious Audience Award, a bellwether for Oscar success. Every TIFF Audience Award winner since 2011 has received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture.
SUMMER
7. 28 Years Later (June 20)
Director: Danny Boyle
Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jodie Comer, Ralph Fiennes, Cillian Murphy
Oscar-winning director Boyle returns with his first movie in six years, the highly anticipated continuation of the 28 Days franchise. Boyle teams again with co-writer Alex Garland on the zombie thriller that continues the apocalyptic story and brings the Oscar-winning Murphy back to the franchise (in a potentially undead capacity). The trailer for 28 Years Later looked like a return to form for Boyle and audiences reacted in kind, pushing it to millions of views in its first 48 hours of release.
8. F1 (June 27)
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Cast: Brad Pitt, Damsom Idris, Kerry Condon, Javier Bardem
What if Top Gun: Maverick but on the Formula 1 circuit? Set to debut this summer in theaters via Warner Bros., the Apple Original Films release puts Pitt behind the wheel of an F1 racer and brings Kosinski’s expert large-scale craft to the forefront. If the finished product is anything like the trailer, expect F1 to find itself competitive in several 2026 Oscar craft categories (including sound, cinematography, editing, and visual effects).
9. (tie) Superman (July 11)
Director: James Gunn
Cast: David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, Nicholas Hoult
The Fantastic Four: First Steps (July 25)
Director: Matt Shakman
Cast: Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Joseph Quinn
Superhero movies are never slam-dunk awards contenders, but let’s put these two highly-anticipated franchise starters together because it’s easy to imagine one or both popping up with audiences and critics. For Superman, Gunn trades some of his trademark humor for truth, justice, and the American way – and it could be a major below-the-line threat. Fantastic Four, meanwhile, casts four beloved stars (mostly best known for their beloved television shows), and sends them back to the 1960s for an origin story about Marvel’s “first family.” At the very least, expect both to compete for the Golden Globes’ Cinematic and Box Office Achievement honors.
10. Untitled PTA (August 8)
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Alana Haim, Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, Chase Infiniti
What a time to be alive, when Paul Thomas Anderson gets a massive budget and planned Imax release for his next film. Warner Bros. will release Anderson’s Licorice Pizza follow-up, a conspiracy-minded thriller potentially based in part on Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland – or maybe not at all. Even the title remains a mystery, although some started calling it The Battle of Baktan Cross. Whatever its name, whatever its plot, the juice here is that Anderson and DiCaprio have teamed up for the first time – although Anderson did work with DiCaprio’s father on Licorice Pizza.
FALL
11. (tie) The Bride! (Sept. 26)
Director: Maggie Gyllenhaal
Cast: Jesse Buckley, Christian Bale, Penélope Cruz, Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro
Frankenstein (TBD)
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Cast: Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth, Christoph Waltz
Another double-feature. Following the success of her debut film The Lost Daughter, Gyllenhaal leaps forward with The Bride! a fresh take on Frankenstein’s monster that has musical elements, an all-star cast led by Oscar winner Bale, and a murderer’s row of below-the-line folks including Oscar nominees Lawrence Sher (cinematography), Dylan Tichenor (editor), Johnny Greenwood (score). Warner Bros. will release The Bride! in theaters in the fall.
Meanwhile, over on Netflix, Oscar-winner del Toro has his take on the Frankenstein tale, with Isaac as the good doctor and Elordi as his troubled monster.
12. Michael (Oct. 3)
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Cast: Jafaar Jackson, Miles Teller, Colman Domingo, Nia Long, Laura Harrier
Fuqua directs the cradle-to-grave musical biopic about the controversial Michael Jackson, with Jackson’s nephew Jafaar playing the singer as a grown man. Based on the Academy’s history with musical biopics – including this year’s awards contenders A Complete Unknown and Maria – expect Michael to be in the thick of the conversation despite Jackson’s well-documented legal troubles and accusations.
13. Bugonia (Nov. 7)
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Cast: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Alicia Silverstone
It wouldn’t be a calendar year without a new movie from Lanthimos and Stone. They’re back with Plemons after this year’s Kinds of Kindness for a film about “two conspiracy-obsessed young men kidnap the high-powered CEO of a major company, convinced that she is an alien intent on destroying planet Earth.”
14. Wicked: For Good (Nov. 21)
Director: Jon M. Chu
Cast: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, Ethan Slater, Jonathan Bailey
The second half of Wicked, now subtitled For Good, arrives just under one year after the first. Fans of the musical know how this one will turn out, but everyone will be left surprised by the inclusion of two original songs written for the film by creator Stephen Schwartz. Expect one or both to factor heavily into next year’s awards season.
15. Avatar: Fire & Ash (Dec. 19)
Director: James Cameron
Cast: Zoe Saldaña, Sam Worthington, Kate Winslet, Sigourney Weaver
The next installment in Cameron’s epic Avatar franchise will try to scale the previous films’s box-office heights and continue the series streak of Best Picture nominations.
TBA
16. After the Hunt
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Cast: Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, Ayo Edebiri
Fresh off directing Challengers and Queer, Guadagnino swerves into adult thriller mode with After the Hunt, about “a college professor (Roberts) who is forced to grapple with her secretive past after one of her colleagues (Garfield) is faced with a serious accusation.” Very early buzz suggests this might be one of Roberts’s best modern-day roles and it’s easy to imagine the former Oscar winner back in the conversation with Guadagnino behind the camera.
17. Die, My Love
Director: Lynne Ramsey
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson, Lakeith Stanfield
Based on the book by Ariana Harwicz, Die, My Love is Ramsey’s first film since 2017’s You Were Never Really Here. The film is a martial drama with juicy roles for Lawrence and Pattinson: “ In a farmhouse in the Montana countryside, a woman has mental health issues as her marriage breaks up.”
18. Eddington
Director: Ari Aster
Cast: Emma Stone, Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Austin Butler
Beau Is Afraid auteur Aster teams again with Phoenix for what’s described as a dark comedy Western about a small-town sheriff with larger aspirations. With this all-star cast, including Oscar winner Stone and nominee Butler, this could be Aster’s awards breakthrough.
19. Ella McCay
Director: James L. Brooks
Cast: Emma Mackey, Ayo Edebiri, Jamie Lee Curtis, Woody Harrelson, Rebecca Hall, Kumail Nanjiani, Albert Brooks
The legendary Oscar-winning Brooks is back with his first film in 25 years, this one about a young politician (Mackey) who is struggling to balance her ascendant political career and her personal life.
20. Hamnet
Director: Chloé Zhao
Cast: Paul Mescal, Jesse Buckley
Zhao is back from the Marvel Cinematic Universe with a small-scale drama that tells the fictionalized story of how William Shakespeare (Mescal) and his wife Agnes (Buckley) put their lives back together following the death of their son, Hamnet.
21. Highest 2 Lowest
Director: Spike Lee
Cast: Denzel Washington, Jeffrey Wright, Ice Spice
Inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s classic High and Low, Lee and Washington reunite for the fifth time overall and first since 2006’s Inside Man for a crime thriller that could scratch the itch for those still bummed Lee never got to make an official sequel to “Inside Man.”
22. Untitled Noah Baumbach Movie
Director: Noah Baumbach
Cast: George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Laura Dern, Billy Crudup, Riley Keough, Emily Mortimer, Greta Gerwig
Baumbach’s back. The Barbie cowriter teamed with co-writer Mortimer for a new film that is supposedly akin to a coming-of-age movie for grownups. Netflix will release the film after having handled Baumbach’s 2022 misfire “White Noise.”
23. Materialists
Director: Celine Song
Cast: Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal
Past Lives Oscar nominee Song wrote and directed this romantic comedy about a matchmaker, her ex-boyfriend, and a wealthy businessman.
24. Wake Up, Dead Man
Director: Rian Johnson
Cast: Daniel Craig, Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close, Cailee Spaeny, Mila Kunis, Josh Brolin. Andrew Scott. Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Thomas Haden Church
Benoit Blanc has returned for the next Knives Out installment. Little is known about this one – O’Connor appears to be playing a priest. However, expect tomfoolery and mystery and potential Oscar buzz for eight-time nominee Close.
25. Warfare
Director: Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza
Cast: Charles Melton, Joseph Quinn, D’Pharoah Woon-a-Tai, Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis
Garland and Mendoza worked together on Civil War (with Mendoza as the film’s military advisor) and their relationship was so strong they’re back together to collaborate on Warfare, a real-time war-is-hell thriller “based on the memory” of the soldiers who lived through the Iraq War.