10 Most Anticipated Movies of Summer 2026 Fueling the Biggest Box Office Buzz

After what felt like an endless winter in New York, summer has finally arrived, which has me wanting to actually plan things again. I’ve been keeping a list in the Notes app called “Summer 2026 movies” since March, around the time I gave up waiting for winter to end. There are aliens. There’s a baby Cthulhu. Anne Hathaway is in four separate films. Spielberg is back on UFOs for the first time since 2005, and Christopher Nolan spent $250 million adapting Homer. Translation: I’m going to be in a theater nearly every weekend.

Below, in order of release, are the 10 films I’ve already started rearranging weekends for. A few are huge studio events with the kind of marketing budgets you can feel from across the room. A few are smaller indies your group chat probably hasn’t gotten to yet. They’ve all earned a spot on the list.

1. ‘Disclosure Day’ (June 12)

Steven Spielberg making a UFO movie for the first time in over 20 years would already get people into theaters. The fact that he cast Emily Blunt as a Kansas City meteorologist and former journalist, with Josh O’Connor as a young cybersecurity expert and whistleblower, plus Colin Firth, Colman Domingo and Eve Hewson around them, is genuinely a lot to process. The plot: a weather reporter becomes a conduit for alien communication during a live broadcast, while a cybersecurity expert tries to leak proof of extraterrestrial life.

The screenplay is by David Koepp, who also wrote: “Jurassic Park” (one of my all-time faves), “War of the Worlds” and “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” for Spielberg. Koepp has compared the tone to 1970s paranoid conspiracy thrillers, name-checking ‘Three Days of the Condor’ specifically, which tells you essentially everything.

2. ‘Toy Story 5’ (June 19)

Listen. “Toy Story” is my favorite film franchise in the world. I have seen each of the first four enough times to quote them from cold, and the idea of getting a fifth in 2026 still does not feel real to me. If you feel this way too, brace yourself.

Pixar’s official logline is “Toy meets Tech,” which is them being cute about the fact that Woody, Buzz, and Jessie are now up against the smart tablet. Greta Lee voices Lilypad, a frog-shaped tablet device with strong opinions about what Bonnie (now eight, which makes me feel personally attacked) actually needs. Andrew Stanton (“WALL•E” and “Finding Nemo “) directs, with Kenna Harris co-directing, and Randy Newman returns to score his fifth ‘Toy Story’ film, which means yes, the first few notes of ‘You’ve Got a Friend in Me’ will play and I will immediately lose it.

Voice cast additions worth knowing: Conan O’Brien as Smarty Pants, a toilet-training tech toy, Ernie Hudson taking over for the late Carl Weathers as Combat Carl, and Keanu Reeves back as Duke Caboom. Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Tony Hale, all of them. Pixar is reportedly framing this one as Jessie’s story this time around. June 19 cannot come fast enough!

3. ‘The Invite’ (June 26)

Olivia Wilde got a real standing ovation when this premiered at Sundance in January, and one Letterboxd reviewer noted that’s not something Sundance crowds typically do. “The Invite” is her third feature as director, and she stars opposite Seth Rogen, with Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton as the upstairs neighbors. The premise: a married couple barely holding it together invites the very charismatic couple from the floor above for dinner. The night does not go where anyone thinks it will.

It’s an English-language remake of the 2020 Spanish film “The People Upstairs,” with a script by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack (who also wrote ‘Celeste & Jesse Forever’). A24 won a bidding war that went above $12 million after the Sundance premiere, which tells you exactly how loud that screening was. Critics keep comparing it to ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ That kind of reference does not get thrown around lightly. Limited release on June 26.

4. ‘Minions & Monsters’ (July 1)

I love the Minions, and I won’t be apologizing for it. The seventh film in the “Despicable Me” universe takes place in what appears to be old Hollywood, where the Minions become movie stars, lose everything, accidentally unleash monsters onto the world, and then have to clean up the mess they made. The official synopsis calls it “the rambunctious, ridiculous and totally true story” of all of this, which sounds about right.

The monster roster reportedly includes a baby Cthulhu, the Mummy, a fishman and a rage-bunny, because of course. Pierre Coffin returns to direct (and to voice the Minions, as always), and the voice cast includes Allison Janney, Christoph Waltz, Jeff Bridges, Jesse Eisenberg, Zoey Deutch and Trey Parker. This is Illumination’s second 2026 release after “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.” I’m going opening weekend, with or without a kid as cover.

5. ‘The Odyssey’ (July 17)

Christopher Nolan’s first film since “Oppenheimer” is an adaptation of Homer (the ancient Greek poet behind “The Iliad” and, well, “The Odyssey”), made on a $250 million budget. The film is also believed to be the first feature ever shot entirely on IMAX 70mm cameras, which is the kind of technical first that gets film people fully losing their minds. Then there’s the cast. Matt Damon as Odysseus, Tom Holland as Telemachus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Robert Pattinson as Antinous, Zendaya as Athena, Charlize Theron as Circe, Lupita Nyong’o, Mia Goth as Melantho, Jon Bernthal as Menelaus, Benny Safdie as Agamemnon, John Leguizamo as Eumaeus, Samantha Morton. Travis Scott (yes, that Travis Scott) is also in there.

And the interest is already massive. IMAX opening-weekend tickets went on sale a full year before the release date, an unprecedented move by a major distributor, and half the available U.S. screenings sold out within the first 12 hours. The full trailer hit 121 million global views in 24 hours, making it the eighth most-viewed trailer of 2025. Nolan filmed across Morocco, Greece, Italy, Scotland, Iceland and Ireland. This is Nolan we are talking about. He doesn’t miss.

6. ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ (July 31)

The “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” trailer hit 1 billion views across platforms in four days, making it the first film trailer in history to do so. Sony and Marvel are not playing. Tom Holland is back for his fourth solo Spider-Man. Four years after ‘No Way Home,’ Peter Parker has been erased from the memory of everyone he loves and is now on his own.

Destin Daniel Cretton directs. The supporting cast is genuinely stacked: Zendaya as MJ, Sadie Sink in a still-secret role, Jacob Batalon back as Ned, Jon Bernthal’s Punisher, Tramell Tillman, Michael Man and Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk. Yes, that’s Mr. Milchick from “Severance” making his MCU debut. Holland has been calling the film a “rebirth,” which is Marvel-speak for “we know, we’re trying again.” The “Spider-Man” movies are arguably the only thing the MCU has had a real winning streak with.

7. ‘Late Fame’ (August 7)

Kent Jones’s second narrative feature stars Willem Dafoe as Ed Saxberger, a forgotten poet who has worked in a New York post office for nearly four decades. When an eager young writer (Edmund Donovan) shows up at his door insisting his work is genius, Saxberger gets pulled into a downtown literary salon of twentysomething admirers, including Gloria (Greta Lee), an unpredictable, very magnetic actress.

The screenplay is by Samy Burch (who wrote “May December”), based on the Arthur Schnitzler novella of the same name. It premiered in the Orizzonti section of the 82nd Venice International Film Festival in 2025 and has been earning rave reviews ever since. Magnolia Pictures is releasing it on August 7. If “May December” was your kind of film, this absolutely is too.

8. ‘One Night Only’ (August 7)

Will Gluck made “Easy A,” “Friends With Benefits” and 2023’s $220-million-grossing “Anyone but You,” and now he’s back with the kind of premise you have to read twice: in this New York, premarital sex is legal exactly one night a year. On that night, Monica Barbaro plays Allie, a hopeful romantic and Callum Turner plays Owen, freshly dumped. They crash into each other, feel a real spark and then spend the whole night trying and failing to find each other across the city.

The supporting cast is the part you’ll want to write down: Maya Hawke, Julia Fox, King Princess, Ziwe, Ben Marshall, Molly Ringwald and LeVar Burton. The original Travis Braun script topped the 2024 Black List, with Gluck rewriting. Universal’s marketing pitch, in their own words: “If we don’t act now, love will leave theaters forever.” Honestly, they might be right.

9. ‘The End of Oak Street’ (August 14)

This is the one I’m most curious about. David Robert Mitchell has not released a film since “Under the Silver Lake” in 2018; before that, he made “It Follows.” “The End of Oak Street” stars Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor as parents on a suburban block who are uprooted by a mysterious cosmic event and transported to an unknown destination, where the family’s survival depends on staying together. The teaser ends on what looks like a dinosaur. I have no idea what kind of movie this is. I love that.

JJ Abrams produces under Bad Robot. Michael Giacchino is scoring. Hathaway is having an absurd 2026 (“Mother Mary,” “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” “The Odyssey,” this and “Verity” in October), and McGregor circling back to sci-fi is always worth attention.

10. ‘The Dog Stars’ (August 28)

Ridley Scott directing a post-apocalyptic survival film is a sentence I forget I want to read until I read it again. “The Dog Stars,” adapted by Mark L. Smith (“The Revenant”) from Peter Heller’s 2012 novel, follows Hig (Jacob Elordi), a former civilian pilot living in an abandoned airport hangar with his dog after a flu pandemic has wiped out most of humanity. He spends his days flying perimeter checks in his Cessna and missing his late wife. Then a faint radio transmission cuts through, and he sets out to find what’s on the other end.

Josh Brolin plays Bangley, a gun-toting ex-Marine and Hig’s companion, with Margaret Qualley as Cima, a young medic Hig meets along the way. Guy Pearce, Benedict Wong, and Allison Janney round out the ensemble. Scott is 88 and has zero interest in slowing down (“Gladiator II” came out in 2024). August 28 closes the summer slate, which is around the time most of us are finally admitting summer is over. A good month for an end-of-the-world story.

All ten films arrive between June 12 and August 28. IMAX 70mm tickets for “The Odyssey” have been selling out since they first went on sale in July 2025, so if that’s the screening you want, check Fandango sooner rather than later. For everything else, all you really need is a free night and a theater screen big enough to do the summer justice.

Featured image credit: A24 | InClub Magazine does not claim ownership of this image.