The fall movie releases in 2024 we’re most looking forward to run the gamut from splashy studio productions (hello, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and Gladiator II) to auteur-driven, awards-friendly titles (looking at you, Emilia Pérez and Anora) to wild swings of ambition (Megalopolis, your time has finally come) to titles that could possibly encompass all three of those categories. (Have we mentioned that Joker: Folie á Deux and Wicked are also being released this fall?)

The Best Movies of 2024, So Far

We’ve seen some of these titles already, at film festivals like Cannes and Sundance, as well as early screenings; others are still unknown entities, without so much as a trailer to their name. But either way, all 47 of the new fall movies have tantalizing possibilities. Explore them all—and decide which from our fall movie preview to put on your own bucket list—below.

1. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

The “Ghost With the Most” is finally making a comeback. Sure, it’s been 36 years since the original 1988 movie, but what’s a third of a century to those unfortunate spirits languishing in the eternal afterlife? Michael Keaton returns as the eponymous spook, and original castmates Catherine O’Hara and Winona Ryder are back too, with Jenna Ortega joining the family to make three generations of Deetz women. The 21-year-old promises the sequel will deliver a dose of strange. “To bring Beetlejuice back—of all of the stories—is so good because people need to revisit weird, strange, off-putting stories again,” she said earlier this year. —Anthony Breznican

2. His Three Daughters

Three estranged sisters gather under their dying father’s roof in Azazel Jacobs’s piercing grief drama. Yet this is no ordinary, predictable portrait of a family in crisis. Delicately scripted and explosively performed by Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne, and Elizabeth Olsen, His Three Daughters keeps its audience consistently off-balance through unique camerawork and dramatic revelations. “As [the characters’] point of view gets complicated, so does the audience’s,” Coon recently told Vanity Fair. “The audience is actually going on the same journey as the sisters are going on, as they’re rediscovering each other inside of that grief.” —David Canfield

3. My Old Ass

Written and directed by Megan Park, whose first feature was 2021’s school-shooting drama The Fallout, this Sundance standout takes a decidedly lighter tone. During a mushroom trip gone sideways, carefree teenager Elliott (Maisy Stella) is visited mid-hallucination by her 39-year-old self, played by Aubrey Plaza. The adult version of Elliott arrives bearing some sage advice about spending more time on their family’s cranberry farm during her final summer at home before college. But the older Elliott also shares an important warning about the future—one that adolescent Elliott grapples with for the rest of this spirited coming-of-age tale. —Savannah Walsh

4. A Different Man

When we meet Sebastian Stan’s aspiring actor Edward in A Different Man, the star is completely unrecognizable—portraying a character living with neurofibromatosis in a film shot like an icy New York noir. But this alienating setup proves to be a deliberate misdirect once Edward undergoes surgery to alter his appearance—and begins looking a whole lot like Sebastian Stan. So begins a blistering satire on celebrity, exploitation, and representation, featuring a bravura turn by supporting actor Adam Pearson that turns the whole movie upside down. —D.C.

5. Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story

At the center of a new documentary from McQueen filmmakers Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui is the quintessential Man of Steel, who portrayed Clark Kent and Superman across four films from 1978 to 1987. Reeve helped revolutionize the superhero landscape and starred in dozens of other films before being injured in a near-fatal horse-riding accident in 1995. The tragic event left Reeve paralyzed from the neck down, a new reality that he channeled into activism for others with spinal cord injuries. For the first time since his 2004 death at age 52, Reeve’s three children, as well as former colleagues, speak extensively about the actor’s lasting legacy. —S.W.

6. Wolfs

Guard your safes, there’s a mini Ocean’s Eleven reunion afoot. Oscar winners George Clooney and Brad Pitt reunite in the Apple TV + film Wolfs, which is set to premiere at the 81st Venice International Film Festival. Directed by Spider-Man: Far From Home helmer Jon Watts, Clooney and Pitt star as dueling fixers who insist on working solo. When they both get hired to work the same job, the longtime rivals must put their differences aside and find out how to work together. Wolfs also stars Gone Baby Gone’s Amy Ryan, Euphoria’s Austin Abrams, Never Have I Ever’s Poorna Jagannathan and Inside Out’s Richard Kind. If you want to see it in theaters, you’ll have to act quickly: After its Venice premiere, Wolfs will play in theatrical release for just a week, hitting theaters on September 20 before moving to Apple TV+ on September 27. But, if you’re worried that means Apple is trying to bury the film, don’t be: A Wolfs sequel has already been greenlit. —Chris Murphy

7. The Substance

Demi Moore delivers a bombastic performance as an aging actor turned fitness guru who is given a mysterious elixir that promises to bring out the best version of herself. The body-horror sci-fi flick, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May, allows Moore to soar in a way we haven’t seen in years. “Moore tears into The Substance, committing herself with the fire of someone with something urgent to say,” Vanity Fair critic Richard Lawson wrote in his review. While the film also stars Margaret Qualley and Dennis Quaid, The Substance is all about Moore’s daring, visceral performance, reminding audiences what has made her such a captivating actor to watch for all these years. —Rebecca Ford

8. Never Let Go

Halle Berry is firmly in her Birdbox era with Never Let Go, a spooky psychological thriller that seems like it must be hiding a twist or five. The Oscar winner stars as a mother who’s so determined to protect her twin sons from the evil allegedly lurking beyond their home that she tells them they must stay connected, emotionally and literally, at all times. Then one of the boys starts to doubt the accuracy of the story he’s been fed, leading to what Lionsgate calls “a terrifying fight for survival.” Think M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, but hopefully with a less disappointing ending. —Hillary Busis

8. Megalopolis

“I added everything I had ever read or learned about.” That’s how Francis Ford Coppola described this operatic passion project, the culmination of 85 years of living and five decades of formidable filmmaking that resulted in undisputed classics such as The Godfather, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now. Inspired by equal parts Americana and ancient Roman history, the film stars Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, and Nathalie Emmanuel in the story of a time-bending artist who seeks to build a utopia out of the ashes of a disaster-stricken city. The self-financed movie underwhelmed critics at the Cannes Film Festival, but landed a distribution deal with Lionsgate. The wilder, crazier, and more bewildering Megalopolis seems, the greater the enthusiasm to see what may be Coppola’s curtain call. —A.B.

10. Lee

Two decades ago, Kate Winslet and Ellen Kuras met and bonded on the set of Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind—the former serving as the movie’s colead actor, the latter as its cinematographer. While wandering past a bookstore in New York one day during production, Kuras came across a book about Lee Miller, the groundbreaking fashion model turned wartime photographer. “I was like, Oh my God, Kate looks just like Lee Miller,’” Kuras told VF last year. “So I bought two copies of the book. I gave Kate one and I kept the other.” Years later, Winslet had a thought, Kuras recalled: “She said, ‘Why was there never a film made about this incredible person?’” Lee is the pair’s response to that question, a passion project focused on an undersung photojournalism pioneer. —H.B.

11. The Wild Robot

The latest from DreamWorks Animation is a starry adaptation of Peter Brown’s best-selling illustrated books, helmed by Chris Sanders of How to Train Your Dragon and The Croods fame. Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o voices Roz, an intelligent robot who must learn to survive in the wilderness after a shipwreck leaves her stranded. But said island is far from deserted: Nyong’o leads a stacked voice cast, which includes Pedro Pascal, Heartstopper’s Kit Connor, Everything Everywhere All at Once’s Stephanie Hsu, What We Do in the Shadows’ Matt Berry, as well as Mark Hamill, Bill Nighy, Ving Rhames, and Catherine O’Hara. —S.W.

12. Joker: Folie à Deux

Joaquin Phoenix reprises the homicidal jester Arthur Fleck, which won him a best-actor Oscar for the 2019 original. But he’s not so alone anymore in this musical-themed sequel. Lady Gaga joins Phoenix as the first lady of remorseless laughter, Harley Quinn, who in this version of the DC Comics story is a disturbed young woman among the vast cult of admirers who found dark inspiration from the spree of violence that made the Joker infamous. The title translates literally as “the madness of two,” and it refers to the condition, first described by French psychiatrists in 1877, for a delusion shared by two separate people, sometimes amplifying the distorted sense of reality. —A.B.

13. White Bird

A companion film to the box-office hit Wonder, this period drama helmed by the reliable Marc Forster (Monster’s Ball, Finding Neverland) has been a long time coming. Shot in 2021 and originally scheduled for a September 2022 drop, the movie was pushed back several times before (hopefully) landing on a wide release this fall. Whatever the reason for the delay, the story of a young Jewish girl’s harrowing tale of survival in Nazi-occupied France boasts some major star wattage, with Helen Mirren and Gillian Anderson among the cast. —D.C.

14. The Outrun

Based on Amy Liptrot’s bestselling memoir, The Outrun features a captivating performance from Saoirse Ronan as an alcoholic who leaves London for the Orkney islands, hoping her quiet windswept hometown will bring her some peace in her newfound sobriety. Mysticism and fables are embedded in this poetic story about one woman’s journey from darkness to light that, as Richard Lawson wrote in his review of the film out of Sundance, is “a stirring reminder of the human capacity to regroup, to accept a bitter past and anticipate a better future.” —R.F.

15. Brothers

Josh Brolin and Peter Dinklage star as criminal brothers in this action comedy from Palm Springs director Max Barbakow. Inspired by 1988’s Twins, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny Devito, Brothers finds Brolin and Dinklage embroiled in legal battles, family strife, and even gunfire. As one brother attempts to reform his checkered past, he hits a roadblock as he embarks on a dangerous heist road trip with his no-good sibling. The cast is rounded out by The Whale’s Brendan Fraser, Zola’s Taylour Paige, and Oscar nominee Glenn Close. Brothers will play in select theaters on October 11 before streaming on Amazon Prime Video on October 17. —C.M.

16. Piece by Piece

Morgan Neville’s documentaries have brilliantly peered into the lives and legacies of such icons as Steve Martin, Fred Rogers, and Anthony Bourdain. But even for a filmmaker who likes to push boundaries, that résumé couldn’t prepare us for his approach to Piece by Piece, in which Nevill turns his attention to the career of Pharrell Williams—and tells his story through the lens of Lego animation. Early snippets of the film indicate the movie will take a winking approach to the formula. Coupled with Williams’s catalog of hits playing in the background, that should make for an unusually involving doc. —D.C.

17. Saturday Night

This recreation of Saturday Night Live’s first broadcast on October 11, 1975, sets some strict parameters. It begins at 10 p.m., and doesn’t stop until the famous catchphrase that has kicked off every episode of the show since. We know the show will make it to air—and we know it’s been there for nearly 49 years—but the whirlwind that surrounded its launch is the source of the dramatic tension. The Fabelmans’ Gabriel LaBelle leads a vast cast as longtime SNL ringleader Lorne Michaels. Reitman and cowriter Gil Kenan pull in a handful of key creative collisions from the show’s early formation and bundle them into opening night. But otherwise, what plays out is based on the eyewitness testimony of more than 30 people who were there, including all surviving members of the cast. “This is a movie where the villain is time,” Reitman recently told Vanity Fair.“You feel its presence at all times.” —A.B.

18. We Live in Time

A tissue box or two may be required when A24’s romantic drama, led by Oscar nominees Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh, hits theaters after premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival. The first trailer for the film introduces Pugh’s Almut and Garfield’s Tobias, a couple who falls in love after she accidentally hits him with her car—as one does. But their picturesque romance hits another speed bump when Almut receives a devastating diagnosis. “I’m not interested in a treatment that accidentally wastes our time,” she says via voiceover as Tobias shaves her head. If that isn’t foreboding enough, consider the creative team. Screenwriter Nick Payne is best known for breaking hearts with 2021’s The Last Letter From Your Lover, while two-time BAFTA winner John Crowley directed the Oscar-nominated Brooklyn. —S.W.

19. Exhibiting Forgiveness

Acclaimed painter Titus Kaphar makes his feature-film directorial debut with this drama about, wait for it, an acclaimed painter. André Holland stars as the artist whose life is upended by a visit from his estranged father in this thoughtful film that’s inspired by Kaphar’s recorded conversations with his own father, from whom he was estranged for 15 years. “Not every single moment in this film comes from life, but every single moment in this film is filled with truth,” Kaphar told Vanity Fair in January. “Fiction really gave me the freedom to tell a lot of truth.” —R.F.

20. Anora

Sean Baker has made another kinetic tear through the margins of American life, this one about sex workers and Russian gangsters scrambling around the coastal edges of Brooklyn. As is also a hallmark of Baker’s work, Anora manages a surprising poignancy to offset its loud, blue-streak humor. Mikey Madison, from TV’s Better Things, gives a true star turn as the titular exotic dancer, while relative newcomer Mark Eydelshteyn both charms and revolts as a boyishly eager john. Anora was something of a surprise Palme d’Or winner at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, though one certainly can’t deny its thoroughly realized milieu, nor the rambling naturalism of its energetic performances. Plus there’s its knockout of an ending, mysterious and moving at once. —Richard Lawson

21. Flight Risk

Few recent film trailers have inspired as much immediate glee as the first preview for this thriller, which looks like an even campier Snakes on a Plane multiplied by White House Down. Mark Wahlberg stars as a pilot hired to fly an FBI informant (Topher Grace) and his handler (Michelle Dockery) to court. But as Grace and Dockery gradually realize, Wahlberg is actually a hitman—one who’s been hired to neutralize the informant. With this project, director Gibson seems to be having real fun for the first time in years—enough that maybe even the Hollywood insiders still smarting from his nearly 20-year-old antisemitic outburst will find themselves wanting to bite their tongues and see the movie. —H.B.

22. Woman of the Hour

Actors making a go of it behind the camera doesn’t always work out, but Oscar-nominated performer Anna Kendrick proved herself as a natural with this smartly constructed slice of true crime. The true story of a young woman (played by Kendrick) on the late ’70s game show The Dating Game matching with an actual serial killer is realized with both hair-raising suspense and a razor-sharp understanding of the toxic gender dynamics underlying this dangerous scenario. Kendrick keeps you on your toes until the movie’s final moments. —D.C.

23. Nickel Boys

Lauded documentarian RaMell Ross (Hale County This Morning, This Evening) ventures into scripted fare for this hotly anticipated adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel about an abusive reform school in Florida. As the Amazon adaptation of Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad showed, the author’s work is dense, expansive, and rippling with ideas ripe for realizing in film form. Ross, a sober and compassionate observer of Black life in America, seems a natural fit for the material. We have high hopes that he and his cast—Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Daveed Diggs, up-and-comer Ethan Herisse—have made something stirring out of a modern classic of literature. —R.L.

24. Conclave

Edward Berger’s last movie turned into the most unexpected awards phenomenon of its season, when All Quiet on the Western Front went from an, er, quiet premiere in Toronto to an Oscar-winning behemoth. So expectations are certainly higher for his next one, a dramatic thriller adapted from Robert Harris’s best-selling 2016 novel that imagines the chaotic aftermath of a fictional pope’s sudden death. Who will take his spot? The twisty ride to that answer should be made all the more delicious with the likes of Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, Isabella Rossellini, and John Lithgow on board. —D.C.

25. Blitz

Steve McQueen’s first narrative feature since 2018’s Widows is a World War II drama set in London, when the city was the target of mass air attacks by the Nazis. The drama, which McQueen also wrote, centers on a woman (played by Saoirse Ronan) whose son (Elliott Heffernan, in his film debut) goes missing after he’s sent to the countryside for safety. We can expect McQueen’s artistry and dedication to craft shine through in this period piece that will open the BFI London Film Festival. —R.F.

26. A Real Pain

Actor-director Jesse Eisenberg, who previously helmed 2022’s When You Finish Saving the World, centers his latest work on a pair of cousins (played by Eisenberg and Succession’s Kieran Culkin) who travel to their ancestral home of Poland to visit their late grandmother’s childhood home. They spend time on a group sightseeing tour, while also dancing around talking about the deeper issues between them. The film, which debuted at Sundance, features two standout performances from Eisenberg and Culkin, but it’s the dynamic between the pair of them that makes this film soar. —R.F.

27. Emilia Pérez

There is bold, and then there is the audacious daring of venerated French auteur Jacques Audiard’s latest film, a Spanish-language, telenovela-inspired crime musical about a Mexican drug cartel’s gender transition and the triumphs and tragedies that ensue. The leading actors in the film—Karla Sofía Gascón (as the kingpin), Zoe Saldaña (as her loyal fixer-lawyer), Selena Gomez (as the mobster’s wife), and Adriana Paz (as a new love interest)—all shared the best-actress prize at Cannes, a testament to their wild commitment to this strange and risky project. Emilia Pérez is an invigorating, nervy melodrama that surprises in its bulldozer approach to tricky material and in its old-fashioned pleas to love and loyalty. —R.L.

28. Here

The Back to the Future director is telling another time-travel story, but Here is not science fiction. Instead, it’s the story of more than a century, skipping backward and forward through the years but never moving from its single fixed spot. The audience sees one perspective, which is mostly the corner of a home’s living room, although sometimes Here explores what was there before the house existed. Tom Hanks and Robin Wright rejoin with their Forrest Gump filmmaker to fill out the core of the story as a couple from the early ’60s who also remain rooted to one spot. This leads to increasing tensions as their marriage strains for new horizons. “What passes by this view of the universe?” Zemeckis said recently. “I think it’s an interesting way to do a meditation on mortality. It taps into the universal theme that everything passes.” —A.B.

29. Heretic

Thanks to films like X, Midsommar, and Hereditary, A24 has earned plenty of goodwill when it comes to the horror space—making its next hair-raising release one to watch. Directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who helped write every installment of the A Quiet Place trilogy, Heretic follows two young missionaries who are forced to prove their faith when confronted by a sinister man named Mr. Reed. Hugh Grant brings the shadowy figure to life opposite Sophie Thatcher, best known for playing a younger Juliette Lewis on Yellowjackets, and Chloe East, who demonstrated just how terrifying religion can get as a Jesus-obsessed teen in Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans. —S.W.

30. Gladiator II

Are you not still entertained? A quarter century after the first film, Ridley Scott returns to the realm of the decadent decline of the Roman Empire, with Paul Mescal playing the grown-up version of the young boy from the original movie who watched Russell Crowe’s heroic brawler with awe. Crowe’s Maximus died in that best-picture winner, but his legacy haunts the sequel. Mescal’s character was the son of Connie Nielsen’s imperial noblewoman, who survived the first film and returns here to confront the son who angrily seeks to learn why he was exiled in his youth. “There’s a lot of Sophie’s Choice going on here, where these are impossible situations that we are being forced to reckon with,” Nielsen told Vanity Fair recently. Whatever her motivations, her son returns to the heart of the empire to discover she is now entangled with his sworn enemy, a general played by Pedro Pascal, who devastated his far-off homeland. Needless to say, they settle the family dispute not with words but swords. “He got so strong,” Pascal said of the costar he nicknamed “Brick Wall Paul.” “I would rather be thrown from a building than have to fight him again.” —A.B.

31. Wicked

What is this feeling, so sudden and new? It’s the long-gestating film adaptation of the beloved broadway musical Wicked. Directed by Crazy Rich Asians helmer Jon M. Chu, the Wizard of Oz prequel movie-musical tells the tale of what went down in Oz before Dorothy and her ruby slippers dropped out of the sky. Chu and producer Marc Platt tapped two bona fide superstars in Emmy-Grammy and Tony winner Cynthia Erivo and international pop star Ariana Grande to play Elphaba and Glinda. The rest of the cast is similarly glitzy with Jurassic Park’s Jeff Goldblum, Bridgerton’s Jonathan Bailey, SNL’s Bowen Yang, and Everything Everywhere All at Once Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh all taking the trip to the Emerald City. In a move straight out of the Barbenheimer playbook, Universal bumped Wicked’s premiere date up a week to November 22, having it bow on the same day as Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II. Prepare to Defy Gladity. —C.M.

32. Spellbound

There are a lot of intriguing names involved with Netflix’s next attempt at launching a big, animated hit, from star Rachel Zegler to the music team of Alan Menken and Glenn Slater to director Vicky Jenson, best known for codirecting the original Shrek. But the biggest question mark among them is producer John Lasseter, who presided over Pixar for much of the studio’s golden age before being ousted from Disney in 2018 amid complaints of unwanted touching. (After the allegations went public, Lasseter apologized “to anyone who has ever been on the receiving end of an unwanted hug or any other gesture they felt crossed the line in any way, shape, or form.” In 2019, after he was hired to head Skydance Animation, and said in another statement that he had reflected on “how my actions unintentionally made many colleagues uncomfortable, which I deeply regret and apologize for.”) Lasseter has largely laid low in the years since, producing just a few tepidly received projects. Can this splashy musical, about a princess on a quest to save her parents, break through the streaming noise and restore his tarnished reputation? —H.B.

33. Moana 2

It’s time to see just how far Moana will go. The sequel to the animated Disney musical starring Dwayne Johnson and Auliʻi Cravalho, originally conceived as a television series, finds Cravahlo’s titular character journeying back into the far seas of Oceania in search of a hidden island that could break a curse. Cravahlo and Johnson are joined by Pussycat Doll lead singer Nicole Scherzinger and Firefly’s Alan Tudyk, who reprise their roles from the original film, as well as newcomers like Starstruck’s Rose Matafeo. There’s also a new team composing the music, Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear—the songwriting duo behind viral TikTok sensation The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical—who replace the original film’s composer, Lin-Manuel Miranda. —C.M.

34. Nightbitch

Amy Adams is an avowed dog person. In Nightbitch, she’s also a dog-person. The new Marielle Heller film, set to premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, follows Adams’s unnamed suburban housewife—Heller’s screenplay, like the 2021 Rachel Yoder novel on which it’s based, refers to the character only as “Mother”—as her tedious, toddler-centered life goes in mysterious new directions. She starts sprouting hair in strange places; she develops a weirdly heightened sense of smell. It’s a metaphor for the transformative aspects of motherhood and perimenopause—but also, Mother seems quite literally to be turning into an animal. “Sometimes, when people ask me what the movie is about, I’m like, ‘It’s about motherhood and rage,’” Heller told VF for our exclusive first look at the film. “And you either get that or you don’t.” —H.B.

35. Y2K

A24 titles like Talk to Me and Bodies Bodies Bodies have proven that the indie film studio can appeal to Gen Z. But its next horror-comedy travels back in time—to the final night of 1999, to be exact—as a group of high school outsiders decide to crash a New Year’s Eve party before the new millennium. Written by first-time screenwriter Evan Winter, the film also marks the directorial debut of Saturday Night Live alum Kyle Mooney, who ended his nine-season stint with the series in 2022. Rachel Zegler of West Side Story and soon-to-be Snow White fame leads the cast alongside Jaeden Martell (Knives Out) and Julian Dennison (Deadpool 2). —S.W.

36. Kraven the Hunter

“You can’t step into this role, you can’t step into what this franchise is, with a fucking half-assed, ‘let’s see how it goes’ attitude,” Aaron Taylor-Johnson has said about stepping into the titular role of Sony’s first R-rated movie in the Spider-Verse. “You have to be mentally prepared for what could come with that.” The film, which earns its R-rating for “strong bloody violence and language,” is set to arrive in theaters after multiple delays. Taylor-Johnson stars as one of Spidey’s sworn enemies alongside Russell Crowe, Ariana DeBose, and Christopher Abbott for director J.C. Chandor’s most mainstream project to date after awards season dramas like A Most Violent Year and Margin Call. —S.W.

37. Mufasa: The Lion King

Like it or hate it—VF, for the record, fell closer to the latter camp—Disney’s so-called live-action 2019 Lion King reboot was immensely successful. The film earned more than $1.6 billion worldwide (billion! With a b!), making it one of the top 20 grossing films of all time, and making some sort of follow-up an inevitability. But rather unexpectedly, the studio elected to produce a prequel to the film rather than a sequel—and it tapped Moonlight’s Barry Jenkins to helm the project. Can the Oscar winner succeed where other auteurs have failed, by bringing real personality to a naked exercise in corporate brand extension? We’ll see when the movie, starring Aaron Pierre as the lion who would be king, debuts just in time for prime family-filmgoing season. —H.B.

38. Babygirl

Much remains unknown about this intriguing A24 drama helmed by Halina Reijn, who broke out in 2022 with Bodies Bodies Bodies. What we do know is we’re getting an erotic drama centered on an affair between a powerful CEO (Nicole Kidman) and an intern at her company (Harris Dickinson), and that it’s premiering in competition at the Venice International Film Festival—implying a certain level of excitement from its distributor. Antonio Banderas and Sophie Wilde also feature in the cast. —D.C.

39. Nosferatu

Robert Eggers has done witches (in The Witch), crazed lighthouse operators (in The Lighthouse), and a sort of ur-Hamlet (in The Northman). So why shouldn’t he tackle vampires next? Nosferatu is a remake of the 1922 classic, about a much uglier and scarier bloodsucker than suave old Count Dracula. (Though Nosferatu is also based on Bram Stoker’s novel.) The first teaser trailer suggests a film—starring Willem Dafoe, Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, and Bill Skarsgård trading the Pennywise makeup for vampire fangs—that is intense and ornately gothic. Which would be quite in keeping with Eggers’s now well-established house style. It may be strange timing to release a dark horror extravaganza at Christmastime, or it could be perfect counterprogramming for those less sold on holiday cheer. —R.L.

40. The Fire Inside

With a script by Oscar winner Barry Jenkins and helmed by the Oscar-nominated cinematographer Rachel Morrison in her feature-film directorial debut, The Fire Inside arrives with lots of potential. The sports drama, based on the 2015 doc T-Rex, follows professional boxer Claressa “T-Rex” Shields as she trains for the 2012 Summer Olympics. Ryan Destiny, who co-led the series Star, plays Shields, while Brian Tyree Henry plays her coach. Morrison’s acclaim as a cinematographer (she lensed Black Panther, Mudbound, and Fruitvale Station, among others) makes us optimistic to see what she can do in the director’s chair. We’ll find out what the film premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. —R.F.

41. Better Man

Better Man puts the bio in biopic. The Greatest Showman director Michael Gracey’s musical film about British singer Robbie Williams stars Williams as himself, with Hunters’s Jonno Davies playing the young version of the “Angels” singer. The film will feature classic songs from the singer-songwriter, as well as original music. Better Man is set to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival with a limited theatrical release beginning on Christmas Day. —C.M.

42. A Complete Unknown

Timothée Chalamet takes on the iconic Bob Dylan in this biopic that centers on his early years as a 19-year-old Minnesota musician breaking into the New York music scene. Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro, and Boyd Holbrook also star in the film from James Mangold, who has had previous success in this genre with Walk the Line. The first trailer teased Chalamet’s transformation and revealed the actor singing some of Dylan’s iconic songs. Mangold promises that Chalamet does the musician justice, adding that there’s much more to come: “It’s going to be impossible for people in trailers or teasers or photos to see, but the way he grows this character is a real act of acting brilliance in my opinion,” he told Rolling Stone. —R.F.

43. Hard Truths

Beloved British director Mike Leigh reunites with the star of Secrets & Lies, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, to tell the story of Pansy—a working-class Londoner struggling with emotional and physical health problems that have left her miserable and debilitatingly angry. Michele Austin, another past Leigh collaborator, stars as Pansy’s softer sister, who does her best to bring Pansy back to the world of the living. The small, London-set film will make its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, where Leigh is receiving the tribute award, and follow that with a run at New York Film Festival. Hard Truths, which is already earning Oscar buzz for Jean-Baptiste’s fearless performance, is expected to make a qualifying run in December. —C.M.

44. The Room Next Door

Spain’s premier film director has only made two short films in the English language, most recently 2023’s gay-cowboy short, Strange Way of Life. We’re dying to see what he does at feature length, especially when the cast includes Tilda Swinton as a war correspondent and Julianne Moore as her partner. On paper, this sounds distinctly more Almodóvarian than the Old West. We’ll know a whole lot more about the film once it premieres in Venice over Labor Day weekend. —R.L.

45. Bird

Andrea Arnold’s big-hearted, soundtrack-heavy approach to stories of people living on society’s edges makes for another deeply affecting film in Bird, which earned strong reviews out of its Cannes Film Festival bow. Starring Barry Keoghan as a single father struggling to hold everything together, and Franz Rogowski as a mysterious figure that enters his daughter’s life, the movie builds to a striking emotional twist that lands, as Richard Lawson writes in his review, as “something odd and affecting.” Emphasis on both of those adjectives. —D.C.

46. Unstoppable

Based on the true story of Anthony Robles, Unstoppable traces one young man’s tireless efforts to become a champion wrestler, despite being born without his right leg. Jharrel Jerome, who won an Emmy for Netflix’s miniseries When They See Us, stars as Robles, and spent months preparing his body to play the role after he met Robles in person. “Before you even meet him, you can see the confidence and the fight that he has in him—just on YouTube looking at his wrestling videos, just watching his interviews,” he told Vanity Fair. “And then when you meet him, you see that light and you have no choice but to go, ‘I want to tell your story.’” Produced by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, Unstoppable also stars Jennifer Lopez as Robles’ mom, and reveals Robles’ difficult family life, along with his challenges on the mat. —R.F.

47. The Piano Lesson

Adapted from the Pulitzer Prize–winning August Wilson play, The Piano Lesson marks the feature directorial debut of Malcolm Washington, Denzel Washington’s youngest son. It’s a family affair, as The Piano Lesson also stars Malcolm’s elder brother, John David Washington, as Boy Willie—a sharecropper who travels to Pittsburgh, planning to sell his family’s piano in order to secure land. In the Netflix film, Washington reprises the role he played in the 2022 Broadway revival of The Piano Lesson alongside former casemates including Michael Potts, Ray Fisher, and Samuel L. Jackson, with Till’s Danielle Deadwyler joining the ensemble as Boy Willie’s headstrong sister Berniece. The Piano Lesson will play at the Toronto International Film Festival before going wide later this year. —C.M.