Summer is winding down, which for true film nerds means the most wonderful time of the year is upon us. That’s right, it’s fall movie season, when studios drop their major awards contenders and buzzed-over festival hits. The overall film year has felt particularly end-heavy: while the first half of 2025 came with its share of critical and commercial hits, from Sinners to Weapons, the back of the calendar looks loaded, with big releases from beloved directors like Paul Thomas Anderson, Kathryn Bigelow and Lynne Ramsay, a few heavily tipped Oscar contenders, a couple smaller films with the potential to surprise everyone – and even some blockbusters. Here are the movies we’re most excited about in fall 2025.
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Four years after the freewheeling romcom Licorice Pizza, Paul Thomas Anderson returns with a movie that’s both in and out of his wheelhouse, a time-shifted adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland featuring pregnant women shooting machine guns and Leonardo DiCaprio looking severely stressed out. Are you ready for a PTA action flick? We are. Bring it on.
In cinemas worldwide Sept 26
Is it a sequel or reboot? No one’s quite sure, but the first Tron movie in 15 years looks to switch things up quite significantly, introducing Jared Leto as a highly advanced AI being sent from the Grid to the physical world on a top-secret mission. The biggest reason to get excited, though? A new score from Trent Reznor, for the first time under the Nine Inch Nails imprimatur.
In cinemas worldwide Oct 10
Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi’s Palme d’Or winner follows a former political prisoner seeking revenge against the officer who tortured him while imprisoned. As an outspoken critic of the Islamic Republic who’s faced government persecution in the past, Panahi is intimately familiar with the subject matter, but framing it in the context of a tense thriller is new terrain. Obviously, it seems to work.
In US cinemas Oct 15
Like Robert Eggers and Nosferatu, remaking James Whale’s foundational monster movie is Guillermo del Toro’s childhood dream project, so you know he put his back into this one, and based on the trailer, it shows. Oscar Isaac plays the doctor, while Jacob Elordi is his abominable creation. Thankfully, Netflix is giving this a limited theatrical run, because the big screen is where you’re going to want to see it.
In cinemas worldwide Oct 17. On Netflix Nov 7
In just three years, Dan Trachtenberg has managed to make two of the three best movies in the Predator franchise, 2022’s Prey and this year’s animated Killer of Killers, the latter of which serves as a prelude to his next instalment in the series, an apparent Predator coming-of-age story? With Elle Fanning as its android bestie? Wild.
In cinemas worldwide Nov 7
Danish director Joachim Trier’s last film, the wistful 2021 romcom The Worst Person in the World, has seen its esteem rise over the last four years, to where it’s now considered one of the best movies of the 2020s. Naturally, his followup arrives with a good deal of hype, and it’s already being handicapped as a Best Picture frontrunner. Stellan Skarsgård stars as a fading film director who attempts to cast his estranged daughter (Worst Person’s Renate Reinsve) in a movie about his childhood.
In US cinemas Nov 7
George Clooney as a suave but aging A-list actor? Wonder if he can pull that off. Noah Baumbach directs this midlife-crisis dramedy, in which Clooney and his manager, played by Adam Sandler, journey across Europe, coming to terms with their life choices along the way. Clooney’s character might have the title, but it’s Sandler who’s already generating Oscar buzz.
In cinemas worldwide Nov 14, on Netflix Dec 5
At this point, either you’re all-in on The Wizard of Oz: The College Years or you couldn’t care less, although the numbers say there are far more folks in the former camp. Director John M Chu wraps up his blockbuster two-part adaptation of the Broadway phenomenon, this time featuring new songs not in the stage musical.
In cinemas worldwide Nov 21
Director Chloé Zhao dusts herself off from the hard flop of Eternals and tackles a different kind of IP: Maggie O’Farrell’s bestselling, widely celebrated 2020 novel, about William Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes, grappling with the death of their young son. It’s not Marvel, but literary audiences will be anticipating the adaptation with similar fervor. Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley star.
In cinemas worldwide Nov 27
After a run of bad press and forgettable franchise non-starters, Dwayne Johnson looks to get back in the public’s good graces with his most actorly role yet as former UFC fighter Mark Kerr in director Benny Safdie’s debut solo outing sans brother Josh. Under prosthetics rendering him borderline unrecognisable, it might be Johnson’s Raging Bull, or at least his The Fighter, as he traces Kerr’s battles in and out of the octagon and his relationship with his wife, played by Emily Blunt.
In cinemas worldwide Oct 3
Luca Guadagino is the new busiest man in Hollywood, dropping his third film in a year and a half. Julia Roberts is a college professor reeling from accusations of sexual misconduct levied against her colleague (Andrew Garfield), dredging up her own chequered past.
In cinemas worldwide Oct 10
Daniel Day-Lewis comes out of retirement to lead his son Ronan’s directorial debut, a tense, creepy-looking drama, in which he appears to play a father who’s ABANDONED HIS CHILD, along with the rest of his family. Ugh, so sick of these nepo babies taking all the plum acting jobs!
In US cinemas Oct 10 and UK cinemas Nov 7
Rose Byrne’s performance as a single mother coming unglued in writer-director Mary Bronstein’s psychological dramedy was the talk of Sundance, and she’s all but penciled in for a strong awards run. Conan O’Brien co-stars as her therapist, while the ascendant rapper-turned-actor ASAP Rocky builds off his impressive showing in Highest 2 Lowest. It looks like Uncut Gems for parenting.
In cinemas worldwide Oct 10
Real-life criminal Jeffrey Manchester is given the compliment of a lifetime, having Channing Tatum portray him in this crime-comedy based on his bizarre exploits. The former soldier was arrested for robbing several McDonald’s franchises in the late 1990s, eventually escaping from prison and hiding out for months in a Toys “R” Us – and that’s only half the story. Derek Cianfrance, of the decidedly unfun dramas Blue Valentine and A Place Beyond the Pines, directs what should be a wild true-crime caper.
In cinemas worldwide Oct 10
In the same year we’re getting an action movie from Paul Thomas Anderson, audiences are also being gifted a heist film from Kelly Reichardt. Josh O’Connor is a suburban dad in the 1970s moonlighting as an art-thief who’s forced to go on the run. Sign us up.
In cinemas worldwide Oct 17
In her first new film in eight years, the great Lynne Ramsay delves into a postpartum character study, with Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson as new parents who relocate from New York to Montana and begin to experience a kind of shared psychosis. Not much is known at this point, but the teaser of Lawrence and Pattinson crawling toward each other in a meadow is evocative enough.
In US cinemas Nov 7 and UK cinemas Nov 14
On the one hand, who doesn’t want Nigel Tufnel, David St. Hubbins, Derek Smalls and [insert doomed drummer here] back on the big screen? On the other hand, the trailer shows many signs of legacy-sequelitis: too many celebrity cameos, call-backs and a seeming misreading of what made the first film an all-time comedy classic. Then again, if a Naked Gun reboot can work in 2025, why not Spinal Tap?
In cinemas worldwide Sept 13
Mononymous filmmaker Kogonada follows up 2021’s acclaimed After Yang and his work on the Apple TV+ series Pachinko with a romantic fantasy involving Colin Farrell, Margot Robbie and a rental car equipped with a magical GPS that transports them through time, space and several painted landscapes. So it’s What Dreams May Come meets Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, maybe? Consider us cautiously optimistic.
In cinemas worldwide Sept 19
Marlon Wayans is a Hall of Fame-level quarterback on the verge of retirement who invites a young phenom (Tyriq Withers) to train with him – and that’s when things get freaky. It looks a bit like the sports version of The Menu or Opus, exploring where the cult of celebrity meets literal cult, which is obviously a bit overdone. But Jordan Peele – who’s producing, with Dear White People alum Justin Tipping directing – wouldn’t put his name on something that isn’t smart, funny and scary as hell.
In cinemas worldwide Sept 19
After her history-making Oscar win a decade and a half ago, it’s been mostly quiet on the Kathryn Bigelow front, owing largely to the disappointment of 2017’s Detroit. Now she’s back, in Netflix form, with essentially a modern update of Sidney Lumet’s Fail Safe, a political thriller about an impending missile attack on the United States. Let’s hope it’s a welcome return, because when she’s on, there are few better directors.
In UK cinemas Oct 3 and US cinemas Oct 10. On Netflix Oct 24
The second biggest musical of the year stars Jennifer Lopez as Golden Age screen idol Ingrid Luna in Chicago director Bill Condon’s adaptation of the 1970s stage play. Condon, of course, knows how to put together these sort of lavish productions and make them sing, so to speak – and the film is said to feature a starmaking performance from the mononymous young actor Tonatiuh.
In cinemas worldwide Oct 10
Did you know Bruce Springsteen’s childhood bedroom didn’t have a floor? And that music is his way of filling the floorless bedroom in his heart, and that of New Jersey, and that of the entire world? Honestly, the trailer for Scott Cooper’s biopic, covering the recording of the Boss’s stark 1982 masterpiece Nebraska, looks like Oscar Bait 101. But it’ll probably work: Jeremy Allen White is already the Best Actor frontrunner, sight-unseen. And he’ll probably deserve to win it, too.
In cinemas worldwide Oct 24
Yorgos Lanthimos released arguably his best and worst movies in less than a year, so it’s hard to gauge the fervor for his next project, a remake of a 2003 South Korean film about two men who kidnap a pharmaceutical CEO they believe is an alien in disguise. But adventurous cinephiles should treat everything the Greek does as an event – especially when Jesse Plemons and his muse Emma Stone are involved.
In cinemas worldwide Oct 24
Richard Linklater has two historically-informed films coming out within weeks of each other, the first being the Rodgers and Hart chamber drama Blue Moon. More intriguing for cinephiles is his dramatisation of the production of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 game-changer Breathless, with Guillaume Marbeck as the director, Zoey Deutch as Jean Seberg and Aubry Dullin as Jean-Paul Belmondo. Is there much fresh insight to be drawn from one of the most pored-over films of all-time? Remains to be seen, but Linklater’s film seems to replicate the freewheeling energy of the French classic it’s based on.
In cinemas worldwide Oct 31. On Netflix Nov 14
Edgar Wright applies his kinetic visual flair to a remake of the 1987 sci-fi action satire, based on a Stephen King novel. Glen Powell replaces Arnold Schwarzenegger as the contestant competing for $1 billion on a dystopian life-or-death game show, a move that should infuse the film with more everyman relatability. But after Squid Game, is the idea of a guy being hunted for entertainment all that novel anymore?
In cinemas worldwide Nov 7
After breaking through with the leftfield 2024 hit Longlegs, Osgood Perkins followed up quickly with the ham-fisted comedy-horror lark The Monkey. He looks to be back into his wheelhouse with this chiller starring Tatiana Maslany and Rossif Sutherland. The eerie trailer gives little away in terms of plot details but it seethes with Perkins’ signature sense of overwhelming dread – a good sign.
In cinemas worldwide Nov 14
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