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2026 culture lookahead | | | | Classical and Opera | Concerts |
Walking into 2026 presents a challenge for the dedicated moviegoer. Will Netflix prevail in its war to subsume one of the last great Hollywood studios? Will movie theatres be able to make it out the other side of that situation, given that there will inevitably be fewer films set to open on the big screen? Will Donald Trump co-star alongside Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker in Rush Hour 4?
The next 12 months present too many distressing questions with too few answers. But, as always, we live in hope. Presenting the 10* most promising theatre-first films of 2026 – not necessarily only in pedigree, but for their potential to change the doom-and-gloom narrative. (*With two extra for fun)
Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie & Tony
A scene from Matt Johnson's Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, starring Johnson and co-writer Jay McCarrol.HO/The Canadian Press
Dedicated Globe and Mail readers are likely getting sick of me hyping up the latest creation from Canadian provocateur Matt Johnson. But the sci-fi-flavoured buddy comedy, starring Johnson and his long-time collaborator in mischief and mayhem Jay McCarroll, is just the kind of infectiously funny, lovably goofy, intimidatingly smart and extraordinarily only-in-Canada epic that deserves to be celebrated far and wide. Watch it this coming Valentine’s Day weekend with someone you love. And then hold onto that special someone for whenever A24 sets a release date for Johnson’s follow-up, Tony, which follows the life of a young Anthony Bourdain (Dominic Sessa) as he gets his feet wet as a chef. (NTBTSTM releases Feb. 13; Tony’s release is TBD)
Wuthering Heights & The Bride!
A still of Jessie Buckley in The Bride!Warner Bros. Pictures/Supplied
If 2026 might be the last year of Warner Bros. as we know it, then the 102-year-old studio is going out with a bang. First up in the year is Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, which promises to be either a tire fire of epic proportions (given Fennell’s grimace-inducing filmography of Salt Burn and Promising Young Woman) or the greatest love story ever told that features a height difference of, like, three feet. More immediately promising is Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride!, which transfers Marry Shelley’s Frankenstein to 1930s Chicago, with Christian Bale as the Monster and Jessie Buckley as his shock-haired betrothed. At the very least, it promises to be the more radical of recent Shelley adaptations. (Wuthering Heights opens Feb. 13; The Bride! opens March 6)
Project Hail Mary
Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace in Project Hail Mary.Jonathan Olley/Supplied
If you’ve been to a theatre over the past six months, there’s a good chance you’ve seen the overplayed trailer for this new Ryan Gosling space adventure adapted from the novel by Andy Weir. (Also, if you’ve been to the theatre in the past six months, we are officially lifelong friends.) But it hopefully speaks to the strength of Project Hail Mary that for all of the spot’s repetition, the clip doesn’t get all that old. Gosling, playing a high-school science teacher who is thrust into an interstellar mission to save Earth, is exceptionally charming. The dialogue is crisp, the action surprising and the tone perfectly in line with the previously delightful work of screenwriter Drew Goddard (The Martian, another Weir adaptation) and co-directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The LEGO Movie, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse). If the team can pull it off, then there might be hope for us all. (March 20)
Michael
Jaafar Jackson as Michael Jackson in Michael.Supplied
Last year at around this time, I made a bold declaration that Antoine Fuqua’s Michael Jackson biopic was going to be one of 2025’s biggest, and most controversial, films of the year. I stand by the latter half of that statement: After reportedly running into some last-minute legal troubles regarding Jackson’s immensely complicated personal history, Fuqua’s film abandoned its fall 2025 release to apparently rejig its structure. But now the curiosity factor has only ticked up higher. Will the film get torn to shreds if it ignores the pop icon’s scandal-plagued final years? Will the film’s lead, Jackson’s own nephew Jaafar Jackson, be able to recreate his uncle’s larger-than-life persona? It’s a real-time Thriller. (April 24)
Disclosure Day
For the first time in two decades, Steven Spielberg, the master of extraterrestrial cinema, is phoning home with this film about ... UFOs? Aliens? Something scarier? While details about the project are scarce, and the teaser trailer that was released the other week is short on details but big on atmosphere, we know that the movie is based on an original story by the director (with Spielberg’s War of the Worlds writer David Koepp handling the script) and stars Emily Blunt, Colin Firth and the leading man of the moment, Josh O’Connor. As they say, watch the skies. (June 12)
The Odyssey
After destroying the world with Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan is set to conquer it – or at least the Homeric-era version of the globe – with this massive adventure starring his very favourite actors: Matt Damon (marking his third collaboration with the director), Anne Hathaway (another three-timer), Robert Pattinson (two), Elliot Page (two) and roughly a thousand other high-profile names (Tom Holland, Zendaya, Charlize Theron, Jon Bernthal, Lupita Nyong’o). The first film to ever be completely shot on Imax’s 70mm cameras, The Odyssey promises to be the movie event of the year. (July 17)
Coyote vs. Acme
For all the talk about mourning the imminent death of Warner Bros., it’s not like the studio was immune to bad decision-making. Such as the studio’s head-slapping 2023 move to shelve this already completed Looney Tunes comedy in order to obtain a tax write-off. Fortunately, the upstart U.S. distributor Ketchup (yeah, that’s its name, what of it?) swooped in last year to rescue the hybrid animation/live-action flick (Expect the film to get a Canadian release, too, from Ketchup’s local partner up here.) Starring all your favourite Looney Tunes characters plus Will Forte, John Cena and Lana Condor as flesh-and-blood characters caught up in the hijinks, hopes are high for the second coming of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, or at the very least an alternative to the increasingly drippy fare coming out of Pixar. (Aug. 28)
Digger
There is no film that excites and scares me more than this collaboration between director Alejandro G. Inarritu and Tom Cruise, reportedly a dark comedy about the world’s most powerful man who must save humanity from some kind of crisis that he himself is responsible for unleashing. That’s one hell of a logline, if it proves true. But more than what the movie is actually about, it stands as a gigantic test for the creative execs at Warner Bros., the star power of Cruise following last year’s disappointing Mission: Impossible finale, and Inarritu’s awards-tier bona fides, given the disastrous reception to his most recent film, 2022’s Bardo. (Oct. 2)
Dune: Part Three
Is it a coincidence that this list features more titles from Warner Bros. than any other studio? Perhaps. Either way, all eyes on Earth and elsewhere will be on the third instalment in Denis Villeneuve’s Arrakis epic, especially as the Québécois director next heads to 007 land. This one gets extra sand-power from new-to-the-series stars Robert Pattinson and Anya -Taylor Joy, plus a return for Jason Momoa, whose wonderfully named warrior character Duncan Idaho seemingly bit the dust in the first movie (for those who haven’t read the novels, get ready for a big surprise). May the spice be with you. (Dec. 18)
Avengers: Doomsday
To clarify: I’m not exactly looking forward to this Marvel movie so much as exceptionally curious as to whether it will mark either the end or a gloriously profitable new era of the comic-book movie era. The Marvel machine has been grinding out product in such a haphazard way over the past few years that the company’s future rests upon the performance of this every-hero-at-once adventure, which also marks the return of Robert Downey Jr. (although playing the villain Doctor Doom this time around, not Iron Man). If it opens to less than, say, $150-million, then that’s it for the contemporary superhero-cinema landscape. If it blasts past those numbers and then some, then we’re in for another decade or so of further comic-book madness. It’s the Groundhog Day of movies, basically. (Dec. 18)