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Narnia! Dune! Charli xcx! The 2026 films Guardian writers are most excited about
From much-anticipated sequels to music mockumentaries to auteur returns, the next 12 months offers up a wide variety of intriguing new movies
Doomed lovers, high heels, and The Odyssey: more films to get excited about this year
I doubt very much that 2026 will see anything in the Marty Supreme league, but here’s hoping one of the most bizarre side-steps of the decade turns out as interesting as it hopes. Short of Christopher Nolan signing on to the new Mr Men movie, I didn’t think much would throw the industry a loop as when Greta Gerwig decided to follow up bubblegum blockbuster Barbie with …… a Narnia movie. More specifically, Gerwig – previously a skilled purveyor of achingly hip alt-indie comedy with Lady Bird, Frances Ha and Damsels in Distress – is restarting the Narnia series, which had got through three of CS Lewis’s series before Netflix took over the rights. To my mind, though, The Magician’s Nephew, Lewis’s origins/prequel to the Wardrobe/Caspian/Dawn Treader narrative, is the most interesting of the entire Narnia canon, with its Edenic fall, “deplorable word” and mystical apple. We know some of the cast: Emma Mackey is the future White Witch, Carey Mulligan the terminally ill mother of one of the main kids, and Daniel Craig might be Aslan or mad inventor Uncle Andrew – or both, or neither. All eyes will be naturally be on Gerwig, but I have confidence she will pull it off in style. Andrew Pulver
2026 Movie Preview: Get ready for superheroes, sequels… and an epic ‘Odyssey’
The ever-endangered movie theater is making another strong bid for your IRL attendance in 2026.
Many of the year’s most anticipated films are, unsurprisingly, sequels or updates to prior beloved material, with a few breaths of fresh air in the mix for good measure.
Here’s a taste of what our collective cinematic future holds:
Ralph Fiennes’ surprisingly genteel post-apocalyptic doctor returns in this fourth “28 Days Later†installment, conceivably picking up shortly after the rather bonkers ending of last year’s “28 Years Later.†Expect more naked zombies.
If the excessive strobe lights in the trailer haven’t put you off, this (we think) concert mockumentary covering Charli XCX’s “brat†tour might finally be the movie worthy of following in the footsteps of Madonna’s “Truth or Dare.â€
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The 14 movies we’re most looking forward to in 2026
Even as the best films of 2025 linger in memory — it truly was a good year — we’re not sorry to flip the calendar page. Bring on the new shiny stuff: epic Homeric hugeness from Chistopher Nolan and sci-fi aliens from Steven Spielberg. We await greatness from Greta (Gerwig, that is). And a Quentin Tarantino–David Fincher collab sounds perfectly fun to us. Here are the 2026 titles we jotted down quickly on the back of a cocktail napkin.
Those howls in the moors are literature fans fighting over whether this reimagining of Emily Brontë’s 1847 gothic romance will be confoundingly misguided or bodice-rippingly good. Either way, the latest provocation by Emerald Fennell (“Promising Young Woman,” “Saltburn”) is already triggering a reaction just from its trailer which boasted images of lobsters in top hats, Margot Robbie in period-scrambling red sunglasses and Jacob Elordi licking a wall. Tepid is not Fennell’s thing. But so far, Fennell tends to be my thing — I admire directors who are game to take salacious swings. Will her “Wuthering Heights” wind up being a juicy but familiar adaptation of the obsessive love affair between newlywed Cathy and her rich and cruel neighbor, Heathcliff? Or should audiences be reading into the suspicious air quotes around the title? A Valentine’s Day-adjacent opening hints it wants to make audiences hot and bothered. — Amy Nicholson
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