Remember back in spring 2024, when we learned that major movie studios were shifting a lot of their would-be blockbuster releases to 2025, because financial projections said this would be the year theatrical releases really took off again? Well, we made it to 2025, and now we’re seeing what the studios have been holding onto.
But while the movie-watching team at Polygon is intrigued at the thought of a new Wicked movie, a new Predator movie, and a new Zootopia movie, the real appeal of this fall is all the promising non-franchise, non-sequel movies coming up. That includes a duet of Stephen King adaptations (The Long Walk and The Running Man), a batch of new original horror movies, and Aziz Ansari’s infinitely odd-looking fantasy-comedy genre experiment Good Fortune, starring Keanu Reeves as a kinda sloppy angel.
The studios promised us a really big blockbuster year in 2025, but we’re perfectly happy just to get a really weird year, full of unpredictable, idiosyncratic stories. From the brand extensions to the book adaptations to the, um, live-action spin on a 20-year-old anime series from always-unpredictable director Yorgos Lanthimos, here are the movies we’re most looking forward to between Sept. 1 and Nov. 30.
The Conjuring: Last Rites (Sept. 5)
When James Wan’s haunted-house movie The Conjuring hit big with audiences in 2013, the folks at The Safran Company immediately knew they had a franchise on their hands: “the real-life supernatural investigations of Ed and Lorraine Warren” spawned two sequels and multiple subseries, with three movies centering on haunted doll Annabelle, and two centering on the Demon Nun from The Conjuring 2.
This fourth Conjuring movie — directed by Michael Chaves, who took over from Wan for 2021’s The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It — brings back Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson as the Warrens, married supernatural investigators trying to help the victims of hauntings and possessions. This installment was inspired by the Smurls, a Pennsylviania family who claimed to have been physically and sexually assaulted by a demonic presence from the mid-’70s to the mid-’80s. The movie’s official description bills this as “one last case” for the Warrens, but expect more spin-offs anyway if this one scares up a decent box-office response. —Tasha Robinson
The Legend of Hei 2 (Sept. 5)
China’s utterly charming 2019 animated feature film The Legend of Hei is technically a prequel to MTJJ’s popular webtoon and comics series about shapeshifting cat-spirit Luo Xiaohei. But it tells what feels like a complete story: Hei is a child-spirit with little exposure to the world, until humans destroy his forest home. Seeking food and shelter, he inadvertently becomes a focal point in a war between spirit factions with very different ideas about how to respond to humanity’s rapid industrialization and destruction of the world’s wild, green spaces.
The first movie resolves the most immediate conflict via an explosive, city-shaking battle, but leaves Hei’s future wide open. This sequel, directed by MTJJ and Jie Gu, and released in China in July, continues Hei’s story in an era where he’s a little older and ready to take on missions for his spirit faction, including getting to the bottom of a conspiracy that threatens both the spirit world and the mundane physical realm. —TR
The Long Walk (Sept. 12)
Stephen King’s 1979 novel The Long Walk, written under his Richard Bachman pseudonym, is one of his simplest books, and one of his most brutal. (Not to be confused with his all-time scariest novels.) In a dystopian future where most of the societal details are left for readers to guess at, an annual contest puts 100 teenage boys on a road together, with simple instructions: “Walk until only one of you is left.” Anyone who tries to leave the road or falls below a certain speed is shot, turning the Walk into a grueling, eventually gruesome survival contest. The winner gets The Prize, a vaguely described “whatever you want” promise that has the contestants fantasizing about the possibilities.
Director Francis Lawrence helmed all the Hunger Games movies after the series kickoff, including 2026’s The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping. That makes him a pretty logical choice to tackle this story about a horrifying, bloody teen death match. Philip Seymour Hoffman’s son Cooper (Licorice Pizza) stars as the novel’s point-of-view character, with Judy Greer as his mother, and Mark Hamill as The General, the fierce tyrant behind the Long Walk. —TR
Traumatika (Sept. 12)
Pierre Tsigaridis’ horror film Traumatika first premiered in 2024 at London’s FrightFest, and will make its way to a U.S. audience this September. Tsigaridis is known for enjoying the darker side of things: Most of his work is horror, such as Two Witches and I Who Have No One.
Described as “violent, angry, and unafraid,” Traumatika follows Ranen Navat as Mikey, a young child whose night terrors turn real after he witnesses his mother Abigail (Rebekah Kennedy) become possessed by a demon. He’s not allowed to make a sound, or be seen, or bad things will start to happen. —Aimee Hart
HIM (Sept. 19)
Director Justin Tipping (Kicks) and producer Jordan Peele (Get Out) are behind one of fall’s most startling-looking movies: HIM, a deliciously bloody sports-horror film which asks “How much would you sacrifice for fame and the love of the game?”
HIM follows a rising-star quarterback, Cameron (Tyriq Withers) who has devoted his entire life to football. His career is cut cruelly short when an unhinged fan attacks him. Cameron suffers a life-changing brain injury, but his favorite football star, nearly retired legendary quarterback Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans) reaches out to offer his help in mentoring Cameron and pushing him toward stardom. All Isaiah asks is… everything. —AH
One Battle After Another (Sept. 26)
While Paul Thomas Anderson devotees pegged One Battle After Another as a return to Thomas Pynchon after adapting Inherent Vice, the famed arthouse director swears it’s only loosely inspired by the vibes of the author’s 1990 postmodern novel Vineland. In an interview with Esquire, star Leonardo DiCaprio says PTA didn’t even discuss Vineland with him during the shoot, and that the story, about an ex-revolutionary character whose enemies catch up to him 16 years later, in his laid-back dad years, has more in common with Star Wars and Terminator 2.
Regardless of who is right — fans who read way too much into PTA’s inspirations, or a creative duo who just wanted to make a wacky action movie with a thought-provoking spine — anyone who wondered what the director of There Will Be Blood and Phantom Thread might do with a stunt crew will win either way. —Matt Patches
The Smashing Machine (Oct. 3)
It hasn’t been a great year so far for brother director duos who split up to make their own movies, but maybe The Smashing Machine can break that streak. From Bennie Safdie (half of the brotherly team behind Uncut Gems and Good Time), The Smashing Machine tells the story of UFC champion Mark Kerr and his struggles with substance abuse.
The Smashing Machine stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who’s notably deviating from his usual kid-friendly action-adventure fare to make a quote-unquote “serious” film. Emma Blunt plays his wife, Dawn Staples, replicating a combo last seen in the slightly more family-friendly Disney film Jungle Cruise. Whether all this adds up to a great film or a fascinating train wreck remains to be seen, but we’ll be seated either way. —Jake Kleinman
Shelby Oaks (Oct. 3)
I’ve followed Chris Stuckmann on YouTube for more than a decade, so seeing him make his directorial debut with a Neon-backed horror film feels especially cathartic. The story follows a documentarian whose desperate search for her long-lost sister spirals into obsession after she uncovers a disturbing lead, and begins to believe the imaginary demon from their childhood may have been real all along. The film stars Camille Sullivan, Brendan Sexton III, Michael Beach, Robin Bartlett, and the legendary Keith David. If the trailer indicates anything, it’s that we’re in for a horror-soaked first act that’s got a lot to live up to on the back end. —Isaac Rouse
Good Boy (Oct. 3)
Man’s best friend becomes man’s only hope in this clever spin on the Paranormal Activity formula. Director Ben Leonberg cast his own dog, middle-aged retriever Indy, as the protagonist of Good Boy, a horror film told entirely from the perspective of a pup.
When Indy’s on-screen human Todd moves into a creepy old house and starts succumbing to ghastly invisible forces, it’s up to the dog to sniff out and squash the ghost in any way he can. Earning raves out of the SXSW fest earlier this year, Good Boy scores immediate points for its unique inversions and adorable lead actor. It looks as polished as a typical jump-scare-fueled horror movie, which seems like a feat. —MP
Bone Lake (Oct. 3)
Bleecker Street and director Mercedes Bryce Morgan are set to release a new erotic horror thriller centered around a lakeside estate with an extremely sleazy alluring name. What begins as a romantic getaway for one couple takes a sinister turn when they’re forced to share the retreat with a seductive, mysterious pair. Desire soon curdles into a nightmare of sex, lies, and manipulation.
Starring Maddie Hasson, Marco Pigossi, Alex Roe, and Andra Nechita, the film leans into its sultry marketing and dangerous dynamics, coming across as a tongue-in-cheek, date-night-focused twist on James McAvoy’s See No Evil (a remake of the 2022 Danish film). —IR