Dragons, superheros, showgirls, karate kids, lanky blue aliens and killer robots—2025 has it all! It’s shaping up to be a big year for movies, as this epic guide from Eliza Janssen proves.
Return to this list—which includes both cinema and streaming titles—for updated release date info on the year’s most exciting movies. Or add some titles to your watchlist, and we’ll ping you when they’re out.
28 Years Later
28 Years Later
Go watch the trailer for this sequel to Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s horrifying zombie-demic movie, if you haven’t already. Eerie poetry from WW1 soundtracks shots of corpses sprinting through fields, of Jodie Comer and Aaron Taylor-Johnson fighting for their lives at the seeming end of the world. With such a drastic time jump from the franchise’s beginning (and hell, since the last time we saw any Danny Boyle filmmaking at all), anything is possible.
Avatar: Fire and Ash
Avatar: Fire and Ash
Shot simultaneously with 2022’s The Way of Water, the third instalment in James Cameron’s epic Avatar saga seems to be following an elemental theme pretty closely. Cameron has promised greater character development for the upcoming chapter, plus new characters played by David Thewlis and Oona Chaplin. When the second Avatar movie pulled through at the box office, Cameron confirmed that he would seemingly be locked into the Navi story for the rest of his creative career: “it looks like I can’t wiggle out of this and I’m gonna have to do these other sequels,” he told Variety. Hope your gamble pays off, Jim.
Babygirl
Babygirl
Praise Kidman! We’re finally getting a steamy, adult erotic thriller that’s not based on Twilight fan fiction! Our Nic plays a powerful tech CEO drawn into an illicit affair with her intern Harris Dickinson: he’s younger, but more dominant. And just FYI, the husband she’s got waiting at home is played by Antonio Banderas. It’s certain to be one of the year’s hottest movies. Director Halina Reijn of Bodies Bodies Bodies fame will add a lacquer of respectability to the whole experience with sensuous, carnal craft.
Ballerina
Ballerina (2025)
Yeah, we’re not going to use this action spin-off’s unwieldy official title, From the World of John Wick: Ballerina. Ana de Armas stars as an elite dancer/assassin out to avenge her father’s death through the traditions of the Wickiverse’s Ruska Roma order, in explosive sequences that take place between the third and fourth John Wick movies. Yep, that means there’s a strong chance Keanu shows up for a shootout or two! Anjelica Huston, Gabriel Byrne, Norman Reedus and the late, great Lance Reddick feature too.
The Bride!
The Bride!
The Universal Monsters are seemingly so hot in 2025, with Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man preceding this edgy feminist retelling from director Maggie Gyllenhaal. Christian Bale is the Monster, but Jessie Buckley takes centre stage as his Bride (exclamation mark!). It’s being touted as a science fiction musical monster movie, which is frankly music to our ears. Buckley has serious pipes, whether she’s belting out a sad monstrous lament or recreating Elsa Lanchester’s panicked shrieking from the 1935 original.
Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy
Number four in the frustrating, relatable, hilarious Bridget Jones franchise, this sequel sees Renée Zellweger’s desperado choosing between two hunks all over again. Nope, not Colin Firth and Hugh Grant: tragic circumstances (!!) see her picking either Chiwetel Ejiofor or young bloke Leo Woodall, and probably embarrassing herself a lot in the process. At this point we’d follow Bridget until she’s falling on her face and going on disaster dates in a retirement home.
The Brutalist
The Brutalist
It’s always difficult to depict genius in movies: to have a character get celebrated on screen as a visionary artist, and convince the viewer that they really are that good. Luckily enough, director Brady Corbet’s tale of a brilliant migrant architect (Adrien Brody) is getting rave reviews for its tale of art vs commerce in the American dream. It might even be a work of great genius itself, with some reviews trumpeting that the film belongs in the same canon as The Godfather and Citizen Kane.
Captain America: Brave New World
Captain America: Brave New World
Marvel has faced some calamity lately from fans and critics, and this especially-political sequel might augur more trouble. But hey: it’s got a grumpy Harrison Ford as Red Hulk (a Hulk that is red instead of green!) and Anthony Mackie stepping into the titular hero’s boots, despite his lack of super soldier abilities. Plagued by reshoots and a morass of confusing recastings, the movie—like the new Cap—has an upward battle ahead.
Companion
Companion
The first film Zach Cregger directed, the sleeper hit Barbarian, captivated us with its escalating sense of mystery. The guy’s gone and done it again with his sophomore feature, which we know almost nothing about. “A new kind of love story,” the tagline taunts, with rising scream queen Sophie Thatcher seeming to be trapped in a torturous domestic bubble with not-so-nice-nice-guy Jack Quaid. Cannot wait to see how this turns out. We’ll be avoiding spoilers like the plague.
A Complete Unknown
A Complete Unknown
How does it feel, Timmy? Wearing a subtle prosthetic nose and adopting a pretty plausible Bob Dylan sneer in his voice, the wispy Chalamet gets into the biopic game—under the direction of James Mangold (Walk The Line), no less. They’re playing all the greatest hits: Dylan’s rise to stardom, complicated romances, electric rebellion and friendships with Woody Guthrie and Johnny Cash. It’ll be less flashy than Elvis, but better than Back To Black. Anything’s better than Back To Black, really.
Disney’s Snow White
Disney's Snow White
The latest in Disney’s questionable string of live action remakes of their animated classics, this princess movie stars the luminous Rachel Zegler as a nice gal with short roommates, and Gal Gadot as the narcissistic evil queen. The project has tried to dodge any accusations of poor dwarf representation by not casting any little people, instead opting for uncanny looking mocap CGI dwarves. We might end up biting this poison apple anyways. Hi-ho.
Emilia Peréz
Emilia Pérez
Cartel crime saga? Trans drama? Musical? This celebrated genre-bender from Jacques Audiard is a little bit of everything. Plus performances from Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez, and the groundbreaking Karla Sofía Gascon are certain to rack up even more awards this season than they’ve already nabbed. It follows a Mexican crime kingpin (Gascon) who undergoes gender-affirming surgery, which sends their faithful lawyer (Saldaña) and troubled wife (Gomez) into a manic, musical tailspin.
F1
F1
A bunch of actual Formula One legends appear as themselves in this action flick. But thankfully they’re not the main cast—that’s Brad Pitt, Damson Idris and Javier Bardem. Directed by Joseph Kosinski, this movie should capture everything that gets fans so hooked on the motorsport, following a driver coming out of retirement after a terrible crash and mentoring a promising rookie. Nyoom!
Fantastic Four: First Steps
The Fantastic Four: First Steps
None of the Fantastic Four adaptations we’ve seen onscreen so far have really cut the mustard, perhaps struggling with the Richards clan’s somewhat silly powers. The 37th film in the MCU at least has terrific casting going for it, with Pedro Pascal as the stretchy Mister Fantastic, Vanessa Kirby as Invisible Woman, Joseph Quinn as hothead Human Torch, and Eben Moss-Bachrach as The Thing. Let’s not stop there: the supporting cast also rocks, including Natasha Lyonne, Ralph Ineson, John Malkovich, and Paul Walter Hauser—plus Julia Garner as a gender-flipped Silver Surfer. Whew!
Final Destination: Bloodlines
Final Destination: Bloodlines
It’s been way too long since horror fans got another chapter in this mean-spirited, deliriously watchable franchise in which survivors of horrific disasters slowly realise that death still holds a grudge. In the decade since Final Destination 5, the creators have had plenty of time to think up some spectacular, unlucky kills, and that subheading in the title makes us suspect there’ll be some deep lore involved. Could our victims be descendants of the earlier film’s characters?
The Gorge
The Gorge
An Apple TV+ original with a big question mark at its centre, this action movie stars big names Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy, with a stamp of approval from genre queen Sigourney Weaver as support. The pair play American and Russian forces falling in love…in their respective watch towers, where they’re guarding a mysterious chasm. What’s at the bottom? Will they meet and smooch? Those are the questions we’re tuning in for.
How To Train Your Dragon
How to Train Your Dragon (2025)
Dreamworks has always strived to beat Disney at their own game—so here’s their crack at turning a beloved animated work into a live-action feature. Gerard Butler reprises his role as a grumpy Viking chieftain, but the main cast of rebellious dragon riders are all relative unknowns—particularly Mason Thames as the meek Hiccup, who unexpectedly bonds with an adorable black dragon named Toothless. The original film is so gorgeously put together that plenty of its shots have been copied frame-for-frame.
I Know What You Did Last Summer
I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025)
Sarah Michelle Gellar gave a hilarious response when asked if she’d be appearing in this legacy sequel, basically replying: “guys, did you not notice that my character died horrifically in the first movie?” OGs Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. do reprise their roles, alongside a fresh new cast of young bloodbags suffering for mortal crimes they thought they’d left in the past.
Karate Kid: Legends
Karate Kid: Legends
As Cobra Kai closes its dojo doors, a new chapter begins. Because of course it does, and why not fold Jackie Chan’s karate guru into the mix too, after his previously disconnected appearance in a 2010 remake of The Karate Kid? Featuring Ralph Macchio and young martial arts talent Ben Wang as an ascendant hero, it’ll be pure nostalgia for 80s babies.
The Last Showgirl
The Last Showgirl
Everyone’s been keen to give Pamela Anderson her flowers lately. The embattled tabloid sensation might get her dues in this beautifully captured movie from Gia Coppola. Pammy plays a Las Vegas showgirl whose long-running revue is finally coming to a close, leaving her with countless questions and dead ends. Expect sobering themes of ageism and beauty, plus plenty of feathers and rhinestones.
Lilo and Stitch
Lilo & Stitch (2025)
That bastard alien blue koala is back! Disney’s original, animated Lilo and Stitch has never been properly appreciated for its quirkiness and heart, following an orphaned Hawaiian kid who bonds with a dangerous yet adorable mutant from outer space (I reckon it did Frozen’s themes of sisterhood way better, way earlier). Here’s hoping that a slicker, live action retelling won’t rob us of any of those soulful and sweet moments, such as Lilo feeding a tropical fish a peanut butter sandwich so that it’ll retroactively prevent her parents’ death (just go back and watch the movie, okay?).
Maria
Maria (2024)
It ain’t over until Angelina Jolie sings. Depicting the final week of legendary opera star Maria Callas’ life, this tragic biopic features Jolie lip-syncing along to the great Greek soprano’s vocals, her own singing only delicately unveiled in the film’s final act. Director Pablo Larraín simply cannot stop himself from making movies about sad rich gorgeous ladies, from Jackie Kennedy to Princess Diana, and he can count on Jolie earning an Oscars nod for her troubles.
M3GAN 2.0
M3GAN 2.0
A demonic AI doll with some serious, TikTok-friendly dance moves, M3GAN captured our hearts back in Blumhouse’s 2022 horror film. Perhaps this welcome sequel will offer a bit more splatter, considering the relatively PG scares we enjoyed before. Allison Williams is back as the worst babysitter of all time: the scientist who designed the killer robot in the first place, and who will certainly be craven enough to give it a redesign.
Michael
Michael (2025)
An MJ biopic was always inevitable. But just how do you cast some nobody as the heralded, one-in-a-million, darkly controversial King of Pop? The answer: you train up the real guy’s nephew Jaafar Jackson for the role, and surround him with greats like Colman Domingo and Nia Long to play his troubled family. It’s a top-to-tail history, following the problematic icon from his Jackson 5 days to his bleak end. But with the Jackson estate’s permission and approval behind the project, let’s not expect anything too warts-and-all.
Mickey 17
Mickey 17
We’re desperate to see Bong Joon-ho’s next feature, a wacky sci-fi black comedy in which Robert Pattinsons do dirty work in outer space and get cloned each time they die violently. The dang release date has been bumped countless times, which hopefully doesn’t indicate a troubled production. Co-starring Toni Collette, Steven Yeun and Mark Ruffalo, it’ll be a trippy and thought-provoking good time along the lines of director Bong’s The Host, methinks.
A Minecraft Movie
A Minecraft Movie
Directed by the bloke behind Napoleon Dynamite and featuring Jason Momoa and Jack Black, this cubic comedy for the whole family has a big target on its back. So many video game movies do, really. They inevitably struggle to draw in addicted gamers who already love the IP, while making core concepts enticing to those who’ve never played. At best, it’ll be a fun and ridiculous time, with wall-to-wall CGI bringing the game’s humble aesthetic vibrantly to life.
Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning
Shot back-to-back with 2023’s Dead Reckoning, this might just be Ethan Hunt’s last ride. The whole Impossible Missions gang is obviously on board, with new characters Hayley Atwell and AI-wielding baddie Esai Morales presumably sprinting right from the seventh movie’s train sequence into however this second part explosively begins. I’m excited to see more of Pom Klementieff’s flamboyant baddie, who might pull off a face turn and join the good guys.
The Monkey
The Monkey
Longlegs was held up as 2024’s scariest movie (and it was crowned Flicks’ 11th favourite movie of the year, too!). Director Oz Perkins thankfully offers us something a tad lighter in 2025, adapting Stephen King for this horror comedy about a nasty vintage monkey toy. Two brothers, both played by Theo James, find that their dad’s abandoned knick-knack might possess devious accursed power, their journey to ditch the thing resulting in plenty of splatter.
Naked Gun
Naked Gun
Directed by the Lonely Island team based on an original story by Seth MacFarlane, this sequel promises comedy gold. I’m serious: Liam Neeson is an absolutely perfect casting choice to take over from Leslie Nielsen. He’s playing Frank Drebin Jr., apparently “no relation” to the original character. Lol. Lmao, even. Pamela Anderson, CCH Pounder and Paul Walter Hauser sweeten the deal, in a movie that refreshingly aspires to do little else than make you laugh until you pee.
Nightbitch
Nightbitch
This could be a neat double feature with Wolf Man (see below). Amy Adams plays a bored housewife who believes she is transforming into a dog, and that should be all you need to know to buy a ticket. Adams can sell us any role, and we’d love to see her unleashed. A feminist black comedy with a streak of surreal horror, it’s directed by Marielle Heller, always an astute and funny hand at character studies.
The Running Man 2025
The Running Man (2025)
2024 was a big year for Glen Powell, and starring in this Stephen King adaptation from director Edgar Wright shouldn’t hurt his star trajectory one bit. An entertaining dystopian action movie set in 2025 (huh?), it’ll see Powell and fellow contestants Katy O’Brian and Daniel Ezra fighting for their lives in Josh Brolin’s twisted gameshow-of-death. Wright is a real student of shlock, and should be able to put a fresh spin on the outrageous concepts and production design that Arnie dealt with back in 1987.
Small Things Like These
Small Things Like These
Good on you, Cillian Murphy. Right after winning an Oscar for Oppenheimer, the sinewy Irish actor chooses to shine a spotlight on his country’s atrocities concerning the Catholic church’s Magdalene Laundries—a laudable follow-up project. Murphy’s character is a family man whose stability and morality is questioned when he comes across a young pregnant woman, exposing a system of oppression in the name of faith. It’ll be a tearjerker for sure, and perhaps a provocative exposé too.
Superman
Superman (2025)
Here’s the big relaunch of DC, brought boldly back into the blockbuster conversation with James Gunn’s crack at the big blue boyscout mythos. Brit David Corenswet is Clark Kent, Rachel Brosnahan will be a fiery, whip-smart Lois Lane, Nicholas Hoult is the iconic baddie Lex Luthor. The right step here is something hopeful and grand, not gritty like Zach Snyder’s DC attempts or silly and over-complex in Marvel’s manner.
Thunderbolts*
Thunderbolts*
With Marvel’s Avengers long out of the picture, it’s about time a new, perhaps stranger supergroup got together. The lineup this time around features Florence Pugh and David Harbour as a Russian assassin fam, Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes, Wyatt Russell as the rip-off Captain America, Olga Kurylenko as the sharp-reflexed Taskmaster, and Lewis Pullman as a dude called Bob. Antiheroes all, they’ll need some convincing and serious bonding time to get onto saving our planet.
Tron: Ares
Tron: Ares
In a year of predictable sequels, spin-offs and legacy nostalgia bait, here’s a follow-up nobody was expecting. Jared Leto stars in this techno action flick about a computer program entering our mushy, flawed human world, a neat reversal of Disney’s earlier Tron movies. With original gamer Jeff Bridges signed up, it should be an extremely handsome production with new ideas about AI folded into the action.
Queer
Queer
Luca Guadagnino has been a busy, busy boy of late! After the spicy, summery fun of last year’s Challengers, he also gifts us this William S. Burroughs adaptation, a more somber and repressed sort of love story. Daniel Craig plays an American expat in Mexico City, who suffers the agony of falling for a younger man (Drew Starkey) who can’t quite admit that he’s gay. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross do the soundtrack again, which tellingly features a song titled “The Saddest Man In The World.”
We Live In Time
We Live in Time
Starring the tremendous twin piston talents of Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh, this romantic drama isn’t your typical cancer weepie. Its non-linear structure will send audiences reeling through the highest and lowest points of one couple over the course of a tumultuous decade. She’s a figure-skater-turned-chef, he’s an ad man, there’s tragic diagnoses. All we really know is that the much-memed stupid carousel horse on the movie’s poster has completely stolen the spotlight.
Wicked: For Good
Wicked: For Good
I have bad news for those who loved, sang, and wept over the first part of this mega-musical screen adaptation. In my humble opinion, the second act of Wizard of Oz alternate-history musical Wicked is far weaker than the first, with no huge hits to rival the banger “Defying Gravity.” Still, judging by the monster box office success of Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Glinda’s (Ariana Grande) first outing, there’s no doubt that throngs of pink-and-green-clad theatre kids will show up for part two regardless.
Wolf Man
Wolf Man (2025)
Aussie horror maestro Leigh Whannell absolutely knocked The Invisible Man out of the park, so his modern update to this more hirsute Universal monster should be a piece of cake. Christopher Abbott is the titular hairy bugger, a devoted dad who helplessly turns on his family after receiving a nasty bite under the full moon. The terrific Julia Garner is his wife, forced to fight back against the one she loves if she and her daughter are to survive the night. We can’t wait to see the werewolf’s full design.
Zootopia 2
Zootopia 2
Can you believe it’s almost been 10 years since we first took a trip to Zootopia? Flipping that first Disney film’s script, this time it’s wily fox Nick (Jason Bateman) who has to convince sincere rabbit cop Judy (Ginnifer Goodwin) of the power of justice and community. The bad guy this time is Ke Huy Quan, voicing a criminal snake who leads our heroes on a wild serpent chase through the mysterious Marsh Market. Perfect school holiday programming for this time next year—as if the wait hasn’t been long enough already.
