56 Summer Movies We Can't Wait To See

The Great Gatsby (May 10)

Moulin Rouge! helmer Baz Luhrmann adapts Gatsby into a visually sumptuous big-screen drama. Leonardo DiCaprio plays the enigmatic Jay Gatsby, a self-made millionaire who throws lavish parties at his Long Island estate while keeping his humble origins shrouded in mystery; Carey Mulligan costars as the shallow, emotionally fragile Daisy Buchanan, with whom Gatsby has a doomed affair. Luhrmann blows the cobwebs off the literary classic by bringing all of his famed visual flair — and a reported budget north of $120 million — to Fitzgerald's slim but thematically rich novel. In a post-Great Recession world, he says, the book's indictment of the empty pursuit of wealth and status is as relevant as it was in the Roaring '20s. ''You can see the bond scam in it, you can see the subprime scam,'' he says. ''We're not putting that on top of it — it's there.'' —Josh Rottenberg

Peeples (May 10)

Wade (Craig Robinson) is the perfect boyfriend. He's sweet. He's loyal. Kids love him. But he hasn't found his way professionally just yet. ''Wade is a good dude who wants to marry his girlfriend, Grace [Kerry Washington],'' says Robinson. ''And he's on a mission to show her family that she's got a winner here.'' So in true comedic-hero form, Wade crashes Grace's weekend with her family at their lavish Sag Harbor, N.Y., estate to meet her folks and ask for her hand. But Grace hasn't even told her family she has a boyfriend. ''Grace loves Wade very much, but fears that they won't accept him,'' says Washington. ''Her family is ambitious and upper-crust. She's nervous about these worlds colliding.'' Adds director Tina Gordon Chism: ''[Wade is] a very honest person and he loves to share in an honest way, which is sort of in opposition to how the Peeples operate.''

The result? Wade's presence unleashes all manner of Meet the Parents-style shenanigans. And soon all the Peeples' dirty little secrets start coming out: drugs, plastic surgery, you name it. ''For a family so invested in appearances, they have a lot going on beneath the surface,'' says Washington. Even Grace's serious, scholarly, Moby-Dick-obsessed father (David Alan Grier) has a hidden wild side. See? No family is perfect. —Lindsey Bahr

Star Trek Into Darkness (May 17)

As the title suggests, Star Trek Into Darkness brings the crew of the USS Enterprise into some grim space. ''They are tested, and the tests are cruel ones,'' says Chris Pine, who returns as James T. Kirk, the newly minted captain of the Enterprise. A mysterious foe (Sherlock's Benedict Cumberbatch) is the one challenging Kirk with acts of mass terrorism. Zachary Quinto, who reprises his role as the frosty, logical Mr. Spock, says Kirk and Spock ''grow closer as things get worse.'' —Geoff Boucher

Frances Ha (May 17)

After directing 2010's Greenberg, Noah Baumbach asked his star Greta Gerwig (now 29) about what people her age were going through. The long email response she sent back marked the beginning of their collaboration on the script for Frances Ha. Gerwig's Frances is an aspiring modern dancer who finds herself adrift and trying to figure out how to live separately from her closest friend (Mickey Sumner, daughter of Sting and Trudie Styler) and take control of her life. As for why he chose to shoot the New York-set film in gleaming black and white, Baumbach (Gerwig's real-life romantic partner) cites Woody Allen's Manhattan, among others, as an influence. ''It's something old and new at the same time.'' And what could be more New York than that? —Sara Vilkomerson

Black Rock (May 17)

The thriller Black Rock starts out with three gal pals headed to a remote Maine island for a weekend of camping and bonding. But then a group of hunters arrives to prey on more than small game. After an attempted sexual assault, all-out warfare breaks out. ''The girls start to turn primal,'' says Katie Aselton (FX's The League), who directed the film even as she was on screen plunging into chilly water, being stripped naked, and clawing through the dirt for weapons. ''It's 43 degrees, you have to take those wet clothes off if you're going to survive, and you're vulnerable,'' she says. ''That is true animal instinct.'' Girl power has never been so chilling. —Anthony Breznican

The Hangover Part III (May 24)

The third Hangover breaks from the waking-up-from-a-blackout-night formula that some found redundant in the second installment. ''Part of us was like, 'F--- everyone — we have to do it again,''' director Todd Phillips says. ''But we had this other story in mind that ties everything together.'' That story finds Zach Galifianakis' man-child, Alan, going off the rails following the death of his father, while he and his fellow Wolfpack-ers get mixed up with Ken Jeong's gangster, Mr. Chow, and a new villain played by John Goodman. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. For instance, the film's trailer shows a giraffe meeting a grisly fate due to a freeway overpass. States star Ed Helms, ''I'll go on record as saying that decapitating giraffes is reprehensible — but pretending to decapitate a computer-generated giraffe in the right context is totally hilarious.'' —Josh Rottenberg

Fast & Furious 6 (May 24)

After directing four Fast & Furious movies, Justin Lin has become the premier car-chase filmmaker of his generation. Building on the franchise-best gross of 2011's Fast Five, the new film takes the series even further from its street-racing roots, as Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) leads his crew into vehicular battle with ex-special-ops rogue Owen Shaw (The Hobbit's Luke Evans). Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson, and the rest of the expanding ensemble are all back, as is Michelle Rodriguez, whose Letty supposedly died two movies ago. She mysteriously returns — and she's working for Shaw. For Diesel, the Letty-Dom relationship gives this film an added emotional hook. ''You're able to watch them reconnect and fall in love again,'' he says. ''The stakes are different. It's not just about beating up the biggest guy.'' —Darren Franich

Before Midnight (May 24)

Eighteen years after they first fatefully flirted in Vienna (Before Sunrise), and nine after they reunited in Paris (Before Sunset), transcontinental art-house couple Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delpy) are together again in Before Midnight. And we mean together. The two are now married with kids and vacationing in Greece, where they try to rekindle the spark that drew them to each other over long aimless walks and impossibly sexy Nina Simone ballads. ''The first two films were about connecting and romance,'' says Delpy. ''This one is about how do you sustain a loving, romantic relationship in the long run with kids and problems.'' Spoiler alert: not easily. —Chris Nashawaty

Epic (May 24)

It's best to read the title of Blue Sky's new animated film, about a group of tiny Leaf Men and the human girl (voiced by Amanda Seyfried) who is shrunk down to their size, with a wink. ''I mean, we type it out in lowercase letters,'' says director Chris Wedge. Nonetheless, he envisions the film as larger-than-life, with action sequences ''as big as Braveheart, but [they're] happening on a lily pad.'' Josh Hutcherson, who voices rebellious Leaf guy Nod, agrees. ''The whole idea is to spark kids' imaginations so that if you look close enough in your backyard, maybe you can see these little guys working together.'' —Adam Carlson

Now You See Me (May 31)

Jesse Eisenberg, Isla Fisher, Woody Harrelson, and Dave Franco play a group of magicians who pull off elaborate Robin Hood-esque bank heists while being chased by an FBI agent (Mark Ruffalo). The thriller (from Clash of the Titans director Louis Leterrier) marked a chance for Eisenberg to work with real-life illusionists like the ones he grew up with in suburban New Jersey. ''My mother was a birthday-party clown when I was younger,'' says the actor, ''and for my birthdays she bartered with the local birthday-party magician so that he would do my birthdays and she would do his kids'.'' —Samantha Highfill

The East (May 31)

Inspired by their summer spent squatting with various anarchist collectives, indie-film collaborators Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling (Sound of My Voice) head back to the margins of society for their first studio-financed movie. Marling plays an elite private operative who infiltrates a radical fringe group hell-bent on exposing the sins of various corporations, then finds her loyalty shifting. Citing the films of the late director Alan J. Pakula (The Parallax View) as an influence, Batmanglij says the aim is to couch ''subversive ideas in that strain of [a great] '70s paranoid thriller.'' —Karen Valby

Much Ado About Nothing (June 7)

Most people would want to take a break after directing an epic $220 million superhero flick. But all Joss Whedon had in mind once he wrapped The Avengers was to make another movie, albeit a much smaller one. The director gathered a group of actor friends, including Castle's Nathan Fillion and The Avengers' Clark Gregg, in his own L.A. house and helmed a black-and-white modern-day adaptation of Shakespeare's classic rom-com. ''Honestly, best vacation I ever took,'' says Whedon. ''I was never more relaxed. It's like a 12-day party, and then there's art. The sense of achievement as well as relaxation is way better than 'I got a tan' — which, by the way, I wouldn't have gotten anyway.'' —Tim Stack

The Internship (June 7)

The Internship, starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson (who haven't shared the screen since their smash 2005 comedy Wedding Crashers), explores the workplace challenges facing both the fortysomething protagonists and the millennials who dominate the tech giant's intern pool. ''I wanted there to be something aspirational at the intersection of those two generations, both of whom feel slightly disenfranchised,'' says director Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum). The film's biggest casting coup: persuading Google to come on board. ''From the beginning, I said, 'If we don't get Google and suddenly we're talking about a fictionalized tech company, I'm probably not going to want to direct this movie,''' says Levy. ''Going into the belly of the beast was one of the cool aspects of the project — and that would have been compromised by going to something like 'Shmoogle.''' —Josh Rottenberg

After Earth (June 7)

In their first onscreen team-up since 2006's The Pursuit of Happyness, Will and Jaden Smith star in a sci-fi epic about an interplanetary ranger (Smith the elder) who has to rely on his ranger-in-training son (Smith the younger) when their vessel crashes on a savage, inhospitable planet...called Earth. After coming up with the original idea for the movie, Will Smith hired Gary Whitta (The Book of Eli) to pen a script, and comics gurus Peter David, Michael Jan Friedman, and Robert Greenberger to write a 350-page ''history'' chronicling what might happen if our planet became a human-free wildland full of fearsome animals. (Smith hopes to develop After Earth into a cross-platform brand with a TV show and books.)

Finding a director, though, required a stroke of luck. ''I was calling [M. Night Shyamalan] to wish him a happy birthday, and he said, 'Man, I don't want your birthday wishes — I want to make a movie with you,''' says Smith. ''I sent him the screenplay, and he sent back ideas that were absolutely genius.'' But a signature Shyamalan surprise ending wasn't one of them. ''There's a dramatic center to this movie that doesn't rely on gimmicks,'' says Smith. ''It relies on the power of the love between a father and son.'' Of course, a Shyamalan movie without a twist could be the biggest twist of all. —Adam Markovitz

This Is the End (June 12)

This is the End is not 2013's first apocalypse comedy, but this tale of a disastrous event, whose exact nature we won't spoil, has a unique selling point. Nearly all the main actors in the star-studded cast — including James Franco, Craig Robinson, codirector Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Danny McBride, Jay Baruchel, Emma Watson, Michael Cera, Jason Segel, and Rihanna — play versions of themselves attending a party at Franco's L.A. home. Much of the film's fun derives from the jokes made at the expense of the actors' professional and private lives. Many of the stars have known one another for years — Rogen, Franco, and Segel all starred on Judd Apatow's now-14-year-old NBC show Freaks and Geeks — which helped lend both bite and a sense of authenticity to the lampooning. ''You have to be friends with people to make those jokes,'' says Rogen. ''There's a lot of real s--- in the movie.'' One aspect of the film that doesn't jibe with reality? Cera's portrayal of ''Michael Cera'' as a sexually degenerate cokehead. ''When people are playing themselves, they either play into the idea you have of them or they really play against the idea you have of them,'' says Rogen. ''Michael Cera is just literally nothing like that character.'' —Clark Collis

Man of Steel (June 14)

In the past few years, Warner Bros. was faced with a string of Marvel hits (Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, and The Avengers) and began to feel the pressure to rejuvenate its DC brands. Seeing Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy revive Batman, they enlisted the auteur and his Gotham team — screenwriter David S. Goyer and producer Charles Roven among them — to resurrect Superman as a grittier, more damaged hero. Goyer and Nolan devised a hunted, fearful Superman — one who didn't even identify himself with that grandiose moniker but just wanted to blend in on his new home planet. Introspection, loneliness, and doubt are risky ingredients for an action-packed summer tentpole, but as the project came together, Warner Bros. executives knew they had to make the franchise ''feel fresh and different,'' says Jeff Robinov, president of Warner Bros. Pictures Group (which, like Entertainment Weekly, is a division of Time Warner).

Enter Henry Cavill, the 29-year-old dark-haired, blue-eyed Brit selected to don the red cape this time. In this iteration, Clark Kent's heroic tendencies would rise to the surface only when the threat was great enough. It would have to be a global menace — one that might also trigger an internal conflict about whether he belongs on Earth even as he yearns to be among his own kind. That's what pits him against General Zod (Boardwalk Empire's Michael Shannon), a Kryptonian tyrant who wants Clark to join him back on Krypton, which would mean abandoning his post as defender of the weaklings of Earth.

One such weakling: Lois Lane (Amy Adams), who is as much a threat as a love interest in Man of Steel. The intrepid Daily Planet journalist — her boss, Perry White, is played by Laurence Fishburne — is chasing down reports of a wandering stranger who is capable of superhuman feats of strength. ''She's very transient. She's ready to pick up and go at a moment's notice,'' Adams says, noting that the trait is shared by Lois and Clark. It's not much of a spoiler to say that gradually Lois starts to see something more in him than a good front-page story. ''She ends up rescuing him, I always say,'' Deborah Snyder says.

And Man of Steel may end up rescuing the DC movie universe. With a revamped Superman, Warner Bros. hopes to lay the groundwork for a planned Justice League film that would team up many DC characters and possibly launch several new franchises. ''It's setting the tone for what the movies are going to be like going forward. In that, Man of Steel is definitely a first step,'' says Robinov. —Anthony Breznican

The Bling Ring (June 14)

Harry Potter star Emma Watson trashes out in hair extensions and ''stolen'' Herve Leger for her based-on-a-true-story new role: one member of a gaggle of celebrity-crazed, brand-obsessed, reality-TV-bred L.A. teenagers busted in 2009 for lifting nearly $3 million worth of goods from the homes of starlets such as Lindsay Lohan and Rachel Bilson. ''They were kids who just assumed they were going to be famous and have a fashion line because they thought they were fabulous,'' says director Sofia Coppola, who looked to 1970s teenage-rebellion films like Over the Edge for inspiration. ''I don't want to say they're gross, but they are products of our reality TV culture.'' Naturally, Paris Hilton makes a cameo in the film as herself. —Karen Valby

Twenty Feet From Stardom (June 14)

When Morgan Neville signed on to direct a documentary that puts backup singers front and center, he anticipated a challenge. ''I'm making a film about people who are by definition not stars,'' he says. But Neville's subjects — including soul singers Merry Clayton, Darlene Love, Lisa Fischer, and The Voice contestant Judith Hill — clearly enjoy the spotlight, whether they're recalling bitter memories of their flirtations with headline stardom or showing off their incredible vocals. ''Being a backup singer means being able to sing on a dime,'' says Neville. ''Music is oozing out of their every pore.'' He gathered Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger, and Sting to pay tribute to their vocal supporters. In this movie, though, the rock stars fade into the background. —Stephan Lee

World War Z (June 21)

A six-year odyssey, Brad Pitt's $170 million World War Z runs in a different direction from AMC's The Walking Dead. It's closer to Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later in its viral rhythms, and even dovetails with Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. The movie follows Pitt's character, a former U.N. ''hot zone'' specialist, as he circles the globe looking for the origins of a virus that kills its victims and then reanimates their cadavers as rasping vessels of infection. Instead of lurching, these zombies move with savage predatory crispness and eerie unison; they pile atop one another like ants in a tower. ''We looked to nature,'' director Marc Forster says, ''to find something new, something we haven't seen in a zombie movie.'' The result: a more lively undead. —Geoff Boucher

Monsters University (June 21)

When it comes to animated high jinks in college, you usually think of keg stands and panty raids. With the prequel Monsters University, though, Pixar is matriculating two of its most beloved creations. Blue fur ball Sulley (voiced by John Goodman) and walking martini olive Mike (Billy Crystal) weren't always the best of buddies, especially when they were first learning how to frighten youngsters. ''Mike goes about scaring from an academic standpoint,'' says Goodman, ''and Sulley's more of a natural.''

Goodman was glad to return to the recording booth with Crystal. ''I just try to hang on and follow Billy. It usually winds up with me trying to hold in my laughter,'' he says. And just because they're off camera doesn't mean things don't get physical. ''I put my whole body into it. There's a lot of what I call 'grunt work,' which is literally grunting and falling down.'' The story — which features familiar college tropes like fraternity pranks and a hard-nosed dean (Helen Mirren) — draws on numerous cinematic college romps, including one that Goodman starred in nearly 30 years ago. ''I'd say it's more Revenge of the Nerds than anything,'' he says. —Keith Staskiewicz

The Heat (June 28)

The Heat initially appealed to everyone involved — a.k.a. stars Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy, director Paul Feig, and writer Katie Dippold (Parks and Recreation) — because it turns a traditional genre on its head. Dippold was initially inspired by the buddy-cop comedy Running Scared, which includes a montage of hot babes riding on the back of Billy Crystal's and Gregory Hines' scooters. ''[Dippold said to me,] 'Why can't the women be in the front?''' says Feig. ''I just like the idea of the problems of two professional women who love their careers,'' he adds, ''and aren't looking for a man or looking to be married or looking to be saved.'' Says Bullock, ''At the end of the day, we made what I feel is the greatest love story I've ever done. We've either sacrificed any credibility we've built up and are never going to work again or we're going to be doing a bunch of sequels. Either way, we're willing to lose the rest of our careers for this.'' —Karen Valby

White House Down (June 28)

When America's first home is attacked by mercenaries, a wannabe Secret Service agent (Channing Tatum) becomes an ad hoc bodyguard for the president (Jamie Foxx) while trying to keep his own daughter (Joey King) out of harm's way. The premise sounds as over-the-top as past Roland Emmerich disaster blockbusters, such as Independence Day and 2012 — and that's just how Tatum likes it. ''People can scoff at it and say Roland only makes big popcorn movies,'' says Tatum, who did many of his own action-hero stunts for the film, including falling nine feet onto a glass roof. ''But I think the world is begging for stuff like this. I want to eat popcorn on the Fourth of July.'' —Adam Markovitz

I'm So Excited! (June 28)

After delving into horror (The Skin I Live In) and melodrama (Broken Embraces), art-house icon Pedro Almodóvar gets back to his screwball roots in a comedy about airplane passengers stuck in an endless holding pattern after a mechanical malfunction. ''The plane is a metaphor for the uncertainty in Spanish society right now,'' says the director. ''Spain is circling around and doesn't know where it's going to land, but it's an emergency.'' The prolonged trip becomes an excuse for off-the-wall hedonism, including a drug-fueled orgy and an impromptu cabaret performance of the Pointer Sisters' ''I'm So Excited.'' None of which, by the way, is based on personal experience. ''I'm a very dull passenger,'' Almodóvar says, laughing. ''I try to read.'' —Adam Markovitz

The Lone Ranger (July 3)

For Gore Verbinski's Disney reboot of The Lone Ranger, star Johnny Depp wanted to ''set the record straight'' about his edgy, buff, bird-hat-wearing Native American character from the '50s TV series. ''Tonto is nobody's sidekick. Tonto is a proud warrior.'' Armie Hammer (Mirror Mirror) costars as the titular masked vigilante in what he describes as ''a big-ass comedy-Western rock opera.'' Sans musical numbers, obviously. Hammer's Ranger is John Reid, a country-born, city-educated lawyer who arrives in a small town in 1869 Texas hoping to civilize it with his highfalutin ideals. An ambush by the villainous Cavendish gang changes everything: John's ranger brother (James Badge Dale) is killed, while John is rescued by Tonto, who becomes his partner in seeking revenge. And unlike previous Ranger iterations, the whole tale is told from the perspective of Tonto — a character as idiosyncratic as any on Depp's résumé — who may not be the most reliable narrator. ''Tonto is something of a lost soul. Ostracized from his tribe, most likely by his own design, out of guilt,'' Depp explains. ''But yeah, he's damaged. He's just looking to get back on track. His own particular brand of eccentricity stems from all that. He's searching for a resolution, in his own, warrior way.'' —Adam Markovitz

Despicable Me 2 (July 3)

What's a professional supervillain to do after stealing the moon? Settle down and raise three adopted daughters, of course. When we catch up with Gru (voiced by Steve Carell), he's facing the perils of fatherhood. But then he's tapped by an ultrasecret agency called the Anti-Villain League to track down an even more dastardly foe. Carell's own parenting experience (he has two kids with wife Nancy Walls) helped inform the way he voiced Gru. ''He had some specific input about the evolution of his character toward the girls [in the film],'' says Pierre Coffin, who's directing with Chris Renaud. ''He was much sweeter, actually, and less harsh towards them.'' What a softy. —Grady Smith

The Way, Way Back (July 5)

After charming the snow pants off Sundance audiences, Oscar-winning Descendants co-writers Jim Rash and Nat Faxon's homage to 1980s coming-of-age comedies could be a Little Miss Sunshine-style summer sleeper. Liam James plays Duncan, an awkward and sensitive teen dragged along to his mom's boyfriend's beach house for the summer. Bullied by his potential stepdad (Steve Carell), Duncan finds refuge at a nearby water park where laid-back Owen (Sam Rockwell) is lord of the local misfits. According to Rockwell, ''The guys were really channeling Ordinary People meets Meatballs.'' —Jeff Labrecque

Pacific Rim (July 12)

Pacific Rim is about big things: big robots, big monsters, big earthshaking battles. So it seems fitting that the film — the first major summer tentpole from fanboy favorite Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy, Pan's Labyrinth) — comes out of the ruins of his biggest disappointment. Del Toro initially planned only to co-write and produce this sci-fi adventure about humankind's last stand against rampaging alien creatures because he'd be directing his dream project, an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's novella At the Mountains of Madness. But Universal pulled the plug on that film, and only days later del Toro took the helm of Pacific Rim. ''I jokingly say that I was a widower on Saturday and on Monday I was cruising the Pacific Coast Highway with a blonde in my convertible,'' he says.

Pacific Rim features epic clashes between enormous, human-piloted robots called Jaegers and massive creatures called kaiju (Japanese for ''giant monsters''), but don't be fooled by the Transformers-meets-Godzilla trappings. At its heart, del Toro insists, the film has all the quirks and eccentricities his fans would want: ''We do crazy s--- nobody has ever done.... I always feared that with big budgets came big constraints, and this has been the opposite. I've kind of been ruined for life.'' In a good way, we trust. —Josh Rottenberg

Grown Ups 2 (July 12)

Three years after Grown Ups, Adam Sandler is back as the eternally adolescent Lenny, who's moved with his family from the big city to his childhood hometown. Set on a single summer day, the sequel — Sandler's first ever — once again follows the escapades of Lenny and his band of arrested-development pals (played by Chris Rock, Kevin James, and David Spade). One such adventure involves returning to a quarry the guys frequented as kids, where they run into a frat boy played by...Twilight's Taylor Lautner. ''As adults they go back there, but these frat guys have taken over,'' says director Dennis Dugan. ''There's a big confrontation.'' And a big, nude leap off a cliff. —Lindsey Bahr

Turbo (July 17)

Ryan Reynolds voices a snail named Turbo, who, after a freak accident gives him superspeed, tries to fulfill his dream of entering the Indianapolis 500. So how exactly do you get the famously chiseled Reynolds to play one of the animal kingdom's squirmier critters? ''I pitched him the idea just after he became PEOPLE's sexiest man of the year,'' says director and co-writer David Soren. ''I was very nervous, but the very first thing out of his mouth was 'I can't wait to be a snail!'''

Other actors keen to get their shell on include Maya Rudolph, Snoop Lion, and Samuel L. Jackson, who play a group of gung ho racing snails. The film also features human characters like racing champ Guy Gagné (Bill Hader) and a Turbo-assisting taco salesman voiced by Michael Pe¨a. Soren's original pitch for the movie? ''The Fast and the Furious with snails.'' —Clark Collis

R.I.P.D. (July 19)

R.I.P.D. is based on a graphic novel, but the plot sounds like a lost dream sequence from stoner classic The Big Lebowski — particularly when summarized by ''the Dude'' himself, Jeff Bridges. ''The Rest in Peace Department is made up of a lot of dead policemen and sheriffs,'' explains the actor. ''All these lawmen from the past are working to protect the unsuspecting people of Earth from all sorts of disgusting creatures. I play a marshal from the 1800s named Roy Pulsipher, and Ryan Reynolds plays a modern-day cop I'm kind of training.'' Adding to the weirdness? When the still-living look at Bridges' character, they don't see a marshal at all but a woman, played by Victoria's Secret model Marissa Miller. Mary-Louise Parker, who starred in director Robert Schwentke's RED, plays the dead duo's boss, while Kevin Bacon is Reynolds' pre-death partner. ''It's a very bizarre plot,'' Bridges says. —Clark Collis

Girl Most Likely (July 19)

When it comes to dysfunction, Kristen Wiig's character in Bridesmaids has nothing on the woman she plays in Girl Most Likely. Wiig's Imogene is a playwright who tries to win back her ex-boyfriend (Brian Petsos) by staging a suicide attempt, and ends up in the care of her estranged mother (Annette Bening). Since she left home, though, her childhood room has been rented out to a young man named Lee, played by Darren Criss putting his Glee skills to good use. ''He's making whatever money he can doing a casino act as a fake Backstreet Boy,'' says Criss. ''I'm pretty sure that's why they cast me.'' It's always helpful to have choreographed cover songs on your résumé. —Keith Staskiewicz

The Conjuring (July 19)

Patrick Wilson (reteaming with Insidious director James Wan) stars with Vera Farmiga as real-life supernatural investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, who came to the aid of an exorcism-needing family (led by Ron Livingston and Lili Taylor) in 1970s Rhode Island. Wilson was ''a little bit trepidatious'' about appearing in another franchise-ready horror film (Insidious: Chapter 2 is due in September) but wanted to play Warren, a legend in paranormal circles. ''He strongly believed,'' says the actor. ''But he spent more time convincing people the creak in their house was not a ghost.'' Wilson says he'd even play Warren again — should the power of the box office compel him. —Clark Collis

RED 2 (July 19)

In this sequel to 2010's action-comedy, former black-ops agent Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) reassembles his team of gun-toting retirees to hunt for a weapon of mass destruction. The search leads them to an imprisoned physicist played by series newcomer Anthony Hopkins. ''When they find him in the asylum, they think he's a strange man, but harmless,'' Hopkins teases about his character. ''Underneath all that is a different personality. I don't want to elaborate on that, because it's a bit of a surprise.'' However, the actor notes that RED 2 features a pairing guaranteed to delight movie buffs: ''I have a scene with Brian Cox, who's the other Hannibal Lecter!'' —Darren Franich

Julian, Only God Forgives

We've very little evidence that Julian, the son of a Mafiosa played by Kristin Scott Thomas, even talks that much. But we have a lot of evidence that he spends most of his time fighting criminals to death. All that danger is bound to up his adrenaline, which is bound to up his lust for any non-deadly activities. Bonus: He's played by Ryan Gosling. —Adam Carlson

The Wolverine (July 26)

The Wolverine finds the clawed X-Man battling ninjas and the yakuza in Japan. After Darren Aronofsky dropped out, James Mangold (3:10 to Yuma) came on board to refine the script — and perfect the film's aesthetic. ''I wanted more night scenes, more rain scenes. I wanted everyone a little sweatier, the air a little heavier, the light a little darker,'' says the director, who drew inspiration from classic Japanese cinema and even Clint Eastwood's The Outlaw Josey Wales. ''I wanted it to be very visceral, physical.'' As such, Hugh Jackman's two-a-day workouts came into play. ''One of the looks we wanted was this sense of what Hugh's trainer calls 'vein-iture,' like feeling his veins bulging,'' Mangold says. ''There's a kind of rawness and almost animalistic quality to his physicality, and he worked very hard to make that happen. It's not Photoshopped.'' —Tim Stack

Fruitvale Station (July 26)

On New Year's Day 2009, an Oakland transit cop responded to an alleged fracas on the platform of a BART train station and shot 22-year-old Oscar Grant in the back. The next day, Grant died in the hospital. Grainy cell-phone footage of the tragedy quickly went viral, and among the millions of people who watched in horror was filmmaker Ryan Coogler. ''So many people have died in similar circumstances,'' he says. ''The thing that made Oscar's death different was that people recorded it.'' Sensing the story could make a compelling movie, he pitched it to Forest Whitaker, who agreed to produce what went on to win two prizes at Sundance this year, along with heaps of critical praise. The film focuses on the last day of Grant's life, and Coogler filmed in many of the real Oakland locations that Grant visited in his final hours — including the Fruitvale train station where the shooting took place. ''We shot above the actual brick [wall] where the bullet hole still is,'' says Jordan. ''They never fixed it. It was such a heavy moment.'' —Jeff Labrecque

The To Do List (July 26)

Writer-director Maggie Carey, wife of SNL vet Bill Hader, sets her raunchy coming-of-age comedy in the 1990s, a more innocent time of cassette tapes and Zubaz pants. She also switches up the gender roles. ''There's so many movies about guys trying to lose their virginity that we're used to that,'' says Parks and Recreation's Aubrey Plaza, who plays an inexperienced valedictorian on a quest to learn the basics (and intermediates) of intercourse. ''When I was in high school, I learned a lot of things from this Swedish exchange student,'' she says. ''[My character's] more systematic about it.'' —Keith Staskiewicz

Blue Jasmine (July 26)

After recent excursions to London, Paris, and Rome, Woody Allen shifts his focus back to American shores, following Cate Blanchett's New York housewife through a personal crisis that takes her to San Francisco. Alec Baldwin plays Blanchett's husband, whom the actor describes as ''a go-getter, hard-charging corporate type who wants to buy her everything and keep her happy. Then he turns around and trades her in for a younger woman.'' Baldwin, who starred in Allen's 2012 comedy To Rome With Love, says the director is no different at home or abroad. ''Wherever Woody goes, it's the same thing,'' he says. ''No characters are more exquisitely cynical and hopeful in the same 90 minutes as Woody's characters are.'' —Darren Franich

The Smurfs 2 (July 31)

When the evil Gargamel (Hank Azaria) captures Smurfette (voiced by Katy Perry) in the sequel to the 2011 film, it's up to the little blue guys and their human friends Patrick and Grace Winslow (Neil Patrick Harris and Jayma Mays) to travel to Paris to save her. But first, Smurfette has to figure out whether she actually might enjoy being part of Gargamel's clan. ''The Smurfs 2 has an overall message about families not necessarily being the one you were created by, but the one you were raised by,'' says Harris. ''It's kind of adult, but it's still a very Smurfy movie.'' After all, Patrick's stepfather (Brendan Gleeson) does turn into a duck. —Lindsey Bahr

The Spectacular Now (Aug. 2)

''I'm the coolest dude in school,'' says Miles Teller (21 and Over) of his character in the coming-of-age romance that premiered to great acclaim at Sundance earlier this year. ''He's that guy you want at the party. High school is his world.'' When he falls for a quiet, seemingly lonely classmate, played by The Descendants' Shailene Woodley, he thinks he's opening up that world for her. ''She's not a wallflower. She's extremely intelligent and chooses not to have a lot of friends,'' says Woodley. So who's saving whom? Like the best love stories, both sides come out ahead. —Anthony Breznican

2 Guns (Aug. 2)

The plot of 2 Guns isn't quite as simple as its title might suggest — and no, it's not a reference to Mark Wahlberg's biceps. In the film, directed by Icelandic filmmaker Baltasar Kormákur (Contraband), Wahlberg is a Naval Intelligence officer who teams up with a DEA agent (Denzel Washington) to take out a drug cartel by robbing the bank where the bad guys are supposedly keeping $43 million. The operation doesn't exactly go as planned. ''There's a much bigger play going on,'' says Wahlberg. ''[Soon] everybody's after us: the Navy SEALs, the DEA, the cartel, the CIA.'' Naturally, our two heroes are less than ideal partners at first. ''I'm trying to get him to be my buddy,'' says Wahlberg. ''We're running together, but he has a lot of trust issues and I'm pretty out-there.'' —Grady Smith

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (Aug. 7)

In this sequel to 2010's $88 million-grossing Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, Logan Lerman returns as Percy — the half-human son of sea god Poseidon — and leads his myth-based pals into the Sea of Monsters in search of the Golden Fleece. Thor Freudenthal (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) took over directing duties from continuing producer Chris Columbus, but the essential elements are true to the second book in Rick Riordan's young-adult series. Given the movie's sea-soaked title, you'd expect that the star would have been completely shriveled by the end of the four-month shoot in Vancouver and New Orleans. ''I didn't spend too much time in the water, to be honest,'' says Lerman. ''Lot of greenscreen on this one.'' —Sara Vilkomerson

Elysium (Aug. 9)

Matt Damon's socially conscious sci-fi action yarn takes place in 2159, when the world has been divided into two classes: The rich elite live aboard the titular high-tech orbital space station, and everyone else suffers down below on a withering Earth. To depict our planet's unpromising future, writer-director Neill Blomkamp (District 9) took a trip to the outskirts of Mexico City to film at one of the world's largest garbage dumps. ''The first day we drove in there, the smell came into the car and I was questioning if this was even possible,'' says Blomkamp. ''I was like, 'What have I done?''' Add Damon, ''From a hygienic standpoint, it was a DEFCON 1 couple of weeks.'' —Keith Staskiewicz

We're The Millers (Aug. 9)

Family road-trip movie! Well, not quite. Jason Sudeikis plays a small-fry dope dealer who gets in over his head and suddenly must transport 1,500 kilos of marijuana across the Mexican border. To elude border patrol, he enlists virtual strangers to pose as his family: His stripper neighbor (Jennifer Aniston) plays his wife, the sad latchkey kid (Will Poulter) from his apartment building impersonates his son, and the homeless young woman on his block (Emma Roberts) morphs into his sullen teenage daughter.

Off they go in an RV, making memories over a long July 4 weekend. (Sample bonding moment: Taking pity on her inexperienced ''brother,'' Roberts' character gives Poulter some mouth-to-mouth with Mom and Pop coaching in the background.) ''It's sort of sweet,'' says Aniston, ''though it's kind of hard to put the word sweet on this movie because it's about a group of people trying to smuggle weed across the border. But somehow in all of that they become a family.'' Ed Helms, who leaves his glasses at home for this one, has a quick turn as a criminal mastermind. Asked to describe the actor's new look, director Rawson Marshall Thurber says, ''Picture if Scarface f---ed an accountant.'' —Karen Valby

Planes (Aug. 9)

Disney says its new animated adventure comes ''from above the world of Cars.'' The windshields have eyes and the vehicles talk, but this time the focus is on Dusty Crophopper (voiced by Dane Cook), a small-town flyer who competes against sleeker jets in an air race around the world. The project was originally developed as a direct-to-video release, but the studio deemed it flightworthy enough to soar into theaters. How did first-time feature director Klay Hall feel about the upgrade? ''You mean after I woke up off the floor and the blood rushed back into my head?'' he asks. Sounds like he was up in the clouds. —Grady Smith

Prince Avalanche (Aug. 9)

Two guys spend the summer of 1988 in near isolation, wandering a burned-out road together, ostensibly repairing it but more or less trying to find their own way home. Paul Rudd is tightly wound, while Emile Hirsch is shabbier and less reliable. The inspiration is as much Waiting for Godot as The Odd Couple, says director David Gordon Green. ''Theater of the absurd influences the tone,'' he says. ''There is a strange surreal quality, and even a ghost story in the movie.'' You never know what you'll find on a desolate road. —Anthony Breznican

Lovelace (Aug. 9)

Linda Lovelace's name has become a punchline. After all, she starred in the infamous 1972 porn film Deep Throat. But as this gritty biopic shows, there was nothing to laugh about behind the scenes. Lovelace (Amanda Seyfried) was regularly abused and forced to stay in the porn industry by her husband (Peter Sarsgaard). ''I keep telling myself that I'm not going to play people who I wouldn't bring home to dinner,'' says Sarsgaard with a laugh. ''People always ask me about the sex scenes, but the violence is way more intense.'' Watch for cameos by Sharon Stone, Chris Noth, and James Franco — as Hugh Hefner, of course. —Sara Vilkomerson

Austenland (Aug. 16)

There's not much sense, and dubious sensibility, in looking for true love at a fantasy camp for fiction fans. But that doesn't hold anyone back in Austenland, a comedy (based on Shannon Hale's novel) about women hunting for soul mates at a Jane Austen reenactment event. ''They are trading in all low-slung jeans and eyeliner for petticoats and corsets and bad bun hairstyles to be fake-romanced by the accented Austen heroes,'' says Keri Russell, who plays the leader of the lonelyhearts. ''They know it's all a lie but still fall in love with these guys.'' One of the film's producers is Twilight author Stephenie Meyer, who could easily have her own vampire-themed literary retreat someday. —Anthony Breznican

Ain't Them Bodies Saints (Aug. 17)

An escaped convict (Casey Affleck) tears across Texas to reunite with his wife and former accomplice (Rooney Mara), whose Bonnie-and-Clyde days seem far behind her. Despite some shoot-'em-up scenes, director David Lowery's Sundance darling mostly showcases the subtle performances of its stars. ''Rooney smiled three times during the entire production — never in my direction, but I caught the afterglow on some other people's faces,'' Affleck says with a chuckle. But that's not a criticism; there's little need for smiles in a Western this gritty anyway. —Stephan Lee

Kick-Ass 2 (Aug. 16)

A dark hard-R comedy about DIY superheroes, 2010's Kick-Ass made less than $50 million domestically. But strong DVD and download sales paved the way for a sequel, in which Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) joins a team of bargain-bin heroes led by Colonel Stars and Stripes (Jim Carrey). Meanwhile, Hit-Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) tries to live a post-costume life in high school. ''Her main realization is that there are bad people, whether you're in high school or whether you're fighting coke dealers on the street,'' says Moretz. The 16-year-old actress says much has changed since she first played the foulmouthed character. ''It's a lot easier for me to say the bad words in the movie now,'' she says, laughing, ''just because I know what they are!'' —Darren Franich

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones (Aug. 23)

In the adaptation of Cassandra Clare's best-selling young-adult fantasy series, Lily Collins plays Clary, a New York City teen who discovers her role in a supernatural world after her mother is abducted by a demon. And it isn't always easy. ''The poor f---er has so many emotional things to go through in every scene,'' says costar Jamie Campbell Bower (of Twilight fame), who plays the mysterious and otherworldly heartthrob Jace Wayland. With its healthy sprinkling of magic (good and bad), love triangles, and thrilling action, Mortal Instruments has built up a devoted following, but there's a downside to managing fan expectations, as Campbell Bower discovered when news of his casting met with online outrage. The actor admits his feelings were hurt. ''I had to sit back and assess why I was doing this [role],'' he says, ''and it's because I love it.'' As for Collins, Mortal Instruments devotees are never far from her mind. ''I really hope I did Clary justice, because I'm a fan too,'' says the actress. ''I have high expectations of my literary heroines.'' Don't we all? —Sara Vilkomerson

The World's End (Aug. 23)

Edgar Wright's previous comedies Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz both featured numerous scenes set in pubs. ''I remember saying on Hot Fuzz, 'I never want to shoot in a f---ing pub ever again!''' recalls the filmmaker. That was before Wright got the idea for the sci-fi comedy The World's End. We know that the film involves five old friends (including co-writer Simon Pegg and The Hobbit's Martin Freeman) re-creating an epic pub crawl from their youth. But the director is coy about the sci-fi elements other than to say, ''Things get weirder and weirder.'' Cheers! —Clark Collis

You're Next (Aug. 23)

What links 2010's dancefest Step Up 3D to the upcoming scarefest You're Next? That would be Australian actress Sharni Vinson, who claims the training she did for SU3D was excellent preparation for her very physical performance in director Adam Wingard's horror-comedy about a family reunion violently interrupted by masked psychos. Despite her dance experience, one of her eyes accidentally connected with the stiletto heel of costar Amy Seimetz during one challenging scene. ''So there were no close-ups for the rest of that night,'' says Vinson. —Clark Collis

Iron Man 3 (opened May 3)

The latest installment of the Iron Man franchise pits billionaire playboy Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) against a terrorist mastermind who calls himself the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley). Though the Mandarin in the original Iron Man comics wielded 10 rings endowed with alien superpowers, director Shane Black was intent on making his movie villain more grounded. ''This guy doesn't fly, he's not from space, and his rings aren't magic. The idea I kept in mind was Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now,'' says Black. ''I could have done space aliens, but I didn't particularly want to — and to Marvel's credit, they didn't say, 'The Avengers made a boatload of money — let's just revive that template.' They said, 'Let's do something different.''' —Josh Rottenberg

Love Is All You Need (opened May 3)

Danish director Susanne Bier's brutal 2010 drama In a Better World won the foreign-film Oscar. Her latest — a sun-soaked rom-com — couldn't be more different. A widower (Pierce Brosnan) and an unhappily married cancer survivor (Trine Dyrholm) travel to the southern coast of Italy for the wedding of their twentysomething kids, only to fall for each other. The Mediterranean vistas and nuptial madness might remind you of another Brosnan film. ''It's like Mamma Mia! without the singing,'' the actor jokes. ''The world is safe from my dulcet tones booming forward.'' —Stephan Lee

Greetings from Tim Buckley (opened May 3)

Though it's bursting with stellar music and centers on the 1991 tribute show that brought cultishly adored singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley into the NYC music scene, Greetings is not a traditional rock biopic. The film jumps between father Tim's (Ben Rosenfield) quest for fame and son Jeff's (Penn Badgley) attempts to reconcile with his late dad's memory while chasing his own dreams. ''[When] Jeff comes to New York, he's trapped,'' director/co-writer Daniel Algrant says. ''He wanted to show the world he could sing, but he also wanted to say, 'Hey, I'm my own person.''' —Kyle Anderson