To survey the cinematic horizon of 2027 is to contemplate a landscape at once exhilarating and faintly absurd, a terrain in which auteurs of genuine distinction jostle for screens with talking hedgehogs, resurrected heist franchises and a remarkably persistent appetite for demonic possession. Hollywood, that venerable cathedral of the recycled, has assembled a calendar of such sprawling ambition that one suspects the studios have simply decided to release everything at once and let the box office sort out the theology.
Yet beneath the familiar architecture of sequels and prequels lies something more intriguing: a cohort of directors whose sensibilities are too idiosyncratic to be fully domesticated by corporate intellectual property. Greta Gerwig is entering Narnia (a subversion that likely won’t yield dividends). Mike Flanagan is inheriting The Exorcist. Even the inevitable superhero colossus arrives with a dramatic irony worthy of Sophocles, given who has been cast as its villain.
Release dates, as ever, remain provisional. The studio calendar is less a schedule than a statement of aspiration, and dates have a way of migrating like restless birds. Proceed, therefore, with optimism tempered by experience. Below is a curated list of the most anticipated films for 2027, ones you should earmark on your calendar.
Winter’s Most Anticipated Films
Children of Blood and Bone (January 15)
Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood
Cast: Thuso Mbedu, Damson Idris, Amandla Stenberg, Tosin Cole, Cynthia Erivo, Lashana Lynch, Zackary Momoh, Richard Mofe-Damijo, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Regina King, Idris Elba, Viola Davis
Tomi Adeyemi’s bestselling 2018 novel, set in the West African-inspired kingdom of Orïsha, where magic has been brutally suppressed, finally reaches the screen after the sort of protracted development cycle that turns adolescent readers into middle-aged ticket buyers. Prince-Bythewood, who demonstrated with The Woman King that historical spectacle and emotional intelligence need not be mutually exclusive, seems an inspired choice. The cast list reads less like an ensemble than a summit of the industry’s most commanding performers, with Viola Davis and Idris Elba lending the proceedings considerable gravitas.
Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew (February 12)
Director: Greta Gerwig
Cast: Emma Mackey, Daniel Craig, Meryl Streep, Carey Mulligan, Ciarán Hinds, David McKenna, Beatrice Campbell
C.S. Lewis’s origin story for Narnia, in which the wardrobe’s prehistory is finally explained, falls into the hands of a filmmaker who turned a plastic doll into a meditation on mortality and still earned a billion dollars. Gerwig’s literary sensibility, honed on Little Women, seems well suited to Lewis’s blend of Edwardian mischief and cosmological grandeur. The casting of Meryl Streep inevitably raises the question of which role she has not yet played, and the answer appears to be, at last, almost none.
The Exorcist: Martyrs (March 12)
Director: Mike Flanagan
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jacobi Jupe, Sasha Calle, Hamish Linklater, Carl Lumbly, John Gallagher Jr., Benjamin Pajak, Carla Gugino, John Leguizamo, Diane Lane, Laurence Fishburne
The last attempt to revive William Friedkin’s masterpiece was received with all the warmth of a requiem mass. So the franchise has turned to the one contemporary horror director whose preoccupations with faith, grief and family make him a natural custodian. Flanagan’s work on The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass suggests he understands that the scariest thing in an exorcism film is not the demon but the theology.
Spring’s Anticipated Films and Assorted Revivals
Spaceballs: The New One (April 23)
Director: Josh Greenbaum
Cast: Mel Brooks, Rick Moranis, Bill Pullman, Lewis Pullman, Keke Palmer, Daphne Zuniga, George Wyner, Josh Gad, Anthony Carrigan
Nearly four decades after Mel Brooks lampooned Star Wars with merchandising jokes that proved alarmingly prophetic, the parody returns. Brooks himself, born in 1926 and apparently immune to the concept of retirement, is back in the cast. The return of Rick Moranis, who largely stepped away from screen acting years ago, is a minor miracle of persuasion. The presence of both Bill and Lewis Pullman introduces a pleasing dynastic symmetry. Whether satire can still wound a franchise that now parodies itself with considerable diligence remains an open question.
Star Wars: Starfighter (May 28)
Director: Shawn Levy
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Flynn Gray, Matt Smith, Mia Goth, Aaron Pierre, Simon Bird, Jamael Westman, Daniel Ings, Amy Adams
Lucasfilm’s latest attempt to persuade audiences that the galaxy far, far away still contains unexplored real estate arrives with Ryan Gosling in the cockpit. Shawn Levy, fresh from Deadpool & Wolverine, brings a proven facility for crowd-pleasing spectacle. Mia Goth’s presence suggests at least one character may be considerably less wholesome than the marketing department would prefer.
Summer’s Most Anticipated Films
Possession (June 11)
Director: Parker Finn
Cast: Margaret Qualley, Callum Turner, Diego Calva, Paul Dano
To remake Andrzej Żuławski’s 1981 cult provocation, a film in which a marriage disintegrates into something genuinely unclassifiable, requires either visionary courage or a cheerful disregard for consequence. Parker Finn, whose Smile films demonstrated a gift for unsettling grins, now attempts the cinematic equivalent of restaging an earthquake. Margaret Qualley, never one to shy away from physically demanding roles, inherits a role whose ferocity has passed into legend. Brave, foolhardy or both; the jury is sequestered.
Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse (June 18)
Directors: Bob Persichetti and Justin K. Thompson
Cast: Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Brian Tyree Henry, Lauren Vélez, Jake Johnson, Jason Schwartzman, Karan Soni, John Mulaney, Kimiko Glenn, Daniel Kaluuya, Mahershala Ali, Nicolas Cage, Oscar Isaac
Across the Spider-Verse ended in 2023 on a cliffhanger so audacious it bordered on a breach of contract, leaving audiences suspended for four interminable years. The conclusion of Miles Morales’s trilogy now carries the burden of resolving a narrative that has fractured into countless dimensions, each rendered in its own idiosyncratic visual grammar. The animators deserve hazard pay. The audience deserves an ending.
Ocean’s Eleven Prequel (June 25)
Director: Bradley Cooper
Cast: Margot Robbie, Bradley Cooper, Wagner Moura, Monica Barbaro, Josh Gad, Vicky Krieps, George MacKay, Lauren Ridloff, Jack Holden, Omar Sy
Steven Soderbergh’s caper series was always more about cool than plot, a sort of cinematic cocktail party at which the heist was merely the excuse for gathering attractive people in good tailoring. Bradley Cooper, directing and starring, inherits that ethos alongside Margot Robbie. The ensemble is certainly glamorous enough. Whether a prequel can capture the energy of the originals, or merely imitate it, is the true heist at stake.
Autumn and the Year-End Crush
The Great Beyond (October 1)
Director: J.J. Abrams
Cast: Glen Powell, Jenna Ortega, Emma Mackey, Sophie Okonedo, Merritt Wever, Samuel L. Jackson
J.J. Abrams has made a career of the mystery box, that tantalizing promise of revelation which occasionally contains something marvelous and occasionally contains only more boxes. This film, cloaked in characteristic secrecy, pairs Glen Powell, Hollywood’s most industrious leading man, with Jenna Ortega. Expect lens flares, enigmatic trailers and a marketing campaign designed to reveal precisely nothing.
Avengers: Secret Wars (December 17)
Directors: Anthony Russo and Joe Russo
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Benedict Cumberbatch, Anthony Mackie, Hayley Atwell, Letitia Wright, Paul Bettany, Simu Liu, Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Sadie Sink, Ryan Gosling, Noah Jupe
The Russo brothers return to orchestrate yet another convergence of Marvel’s sprawling pantheon, this time with Robert Downey Jr., the man who launched the entire enterprise as Iron Man, now cast as Doctor Doom. There is something exquisitely Marvel about resurrecting your most beloved hero as your most formidable villain. It is either an act of narrative genius or the clearest evidence yet that nobody in Hollywood can bear to let anyone leave. The supporting roster, assembled from every corner of the franchise, resembles a family reunion at which several relatives are technically from other universes.
The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum (December 17)
Director: Andy Serkis
Cast: Andy Serkis, Ian McKellen, Kate Winslet, Jamie Dornan, Leo Woodall, Lee Pace, Elijah Wood, Anya Taylor-Joy
Andy Serkis, who spent years crawling across motion-capture stages to give Gollum his tortured soul, now directs the creature’s story himself. The return of Ian McKellen and Elijah Wood lends the project a reassuring continuity. Sharing an opening date with the Avengers is either supreme confidence or a strategic miscalculation of Tolkienian proportions. My precious box office, indeed.