In A24’s Highest 2 Lowest — a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low — Denzel Washington plays a music mogul (rather than a show company exec) whose son (Aubrey Joseph) is being held for ransom. The movie’s new trailer doesn’t spoil much of the plot, but it does make it seem like Highest 2 is going to be a tense watch when it hits theaters on August 5th and Apple TV Plus on September 5th.
Film
Cinema isn’t just about the latest Disney/Pixar project or Star Wars spin-off. Memorable storytelling is happening all over the film industry, from Hollywood’s box-office-busting superhero smashes to small, innovative indie experiments. The Verge’s film section is here to help you sort through the latest Hollywood news and reviews, from favorite genres like sci-fi, fantasy, and horror to the independent movies that matter.
Paramount and Skydance are set to finalize their merger on August 7th, and Deadline reports that the new corporate entity will be headed up by CEO David Ellison (Skydance’s founder) and president Jeff Shell (the former CEO of NBCUniversal.
A Quiet Place is about to become a trilogy, as John Krasinski has confirmed he’s returning to write and direct a third entry that’s expected to hit theaters on July 9th, 2027.
2027 will mark the 50th anniversary of Star Wars: A New Hope’s debut, and to celebrate the occasion, Lucasfilm is putting the movie back in theaters beginning May 4th of that year — just a couple of weeks before Star Wars: Starfighter’s premiere.
The next Spider-Man movie from Sony Pictures is currently scheduled for release a year from now, on July 31st, 2026, to kick off a new trilogy of Holland-led movies in the MCU five years after the last entry, Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Now, Sony has posted the briefest teaser trailer possible for Spider-Man Day, celebrating textiles.
Amazon announced its Q2 earnings results today, and at the same time said that Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders, See, Dirty Pretty Things) will be the writer of its first 007 movie, which Denis Villeneuve is already set to direct.
According to Deadline’s inside sources, even with those roles locked down, it could be a while until we hear about who will carry on the starring role, as Knight works on the script and Villeneuve is finishing up Dune: Part Three.
In director Uta Briesewitz’s upcoming thriller American Sweatshop, a social media content moderator (Lili Reinhart) can’t move on from a gruesome murder she’s forced to watch as part of her job. The movie’s trailer makes it look like a smart way to focus on the real horrors people have to endure to keep the internet running, which might make it a surprise hit when it hits theaters on September 19th.
Larry (Miles Teller) needs a few beats to figure out that he’s dead in the new trailer for director David Freyne’s metaphysical romcom Eternity. But once he does, Larry realizes that he has to figure out a way to convince his recently-deceased wife Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) to spend the afterlife with him rather than her first husband Luke (Callum Turner). No firm release date just yet, but the film’s out this November.




We knew the Looney Tunes flick was launching in 2026, but it won’t be until August 28th. The date was announced at San Diego Comic-Con, where a trailer was shown too, but it’s not online yet.
Distributor Ketchup Entertainment will bring Coyote vs. Acme to theaters, having bought the rights after Warner Bros. canned the film in 2023 for a tax write-off. John Cena and Will Forte star alongside Wile E. Coyote.

At one point, production designer Beth Mickle contemplated just building the Kryptonian stronghold out of ice.
Train Dreams, which was one of my favorite films at the festival this year, is streaming on November 21st, and will also be coming to select theaters this fall. It’s an understated and heartbreaking movie about coping with loss and change, telling a story that spans a single lifetime and is buoyed by some incredible performances from Joel Edgerton and Felicity Jones. You can get a feel for it in the new trailer below.
Oh, I had such high hopes for the Piaggio G1T4-M1N1 (“Gita Mini”). An officially licensed Star Wars bot that follows you around, dodging pedestrians while carrying 20 pounds of cargo and playing The Imperial March on its party speaker? Heck yes. But a single walk to the park showed me that this $2,875 bot doesn’t have enough smarts. (I couldn’t fit all its fails into one video!)
Good Fortune seems familiar on the surface — Keanu Reeves is an angel who tries to show the destitute Aziz Ansari that money isn’t everything — but the formulaic plan also appears to backfire when it turns out money does fix a lot of problems. You can check out the new trailer here, while the movie hits theaters on October 17th.

The new Fantastic Four movie is a little formulaic, but it features some of Marvel’s most impressive set pieces yet.
Well, at least “this weekend,” according to a post on X. You can see the trailer before showings of The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
We knew Predator: Badlands was going to tell the story of an outcast Yautja forced to prove its worth by surviving on a planet full of monsters. But the movie’s latest trailer reveals that the Predator’s human-seeming companion Thia (Elle Fanning) is actually a Weyland-Yutani android, and the pair are going to find themselves fighting what appears to be... alien dinosaurs.
Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse was slated to his theaters on June 4th 2027, but The Wrap reports that Sony has pushed the film’s debut back by a few weeks to June 25th.
Wes Anderson’s latest, The Phoenician Scheme, is still in select theaters, but it’ll also be streaming very soon. Peacock just announced that it’ll air the movie starting on July 25th. The news comes just a day after the streamer announced a sizable price hike.
The first trailer for Mortal Kombat II — yes, there was a first one — is heavy on meta humor and, as you’d expect, on action. And it doesn’t look like it’s skimping on the gore. The good news is that the new movie will focus on the titular tournament when it hits theaters in October. Even better: Karl Urban is shaping up to be an excellent Johnny Cage.
Disney Plus is continuing to take steps into the world of live streaming, this time to promote The Fantastic Four: First Steps. Subscribers will be able to watch the red blue carpet event on July 21st, live from the film’s premiere at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. For the rest of us, the movie hits theaters on July 25th.

Eddington hilariously and diligently evokes 2020 but has learned nothing from it.
We’re All Gonna Die director Freddie Wong uploaded the movie to torrent networks with an exclusive intro message, on the same day it was released for digital download. Wong hopes viewers will support future filmmaking efforts by buying a lousy JPEG that proudly proclaims their pirate nature. Yarrr.
That certainly seems like the premise of Pixar’s next feature, Hoppers, where people can inhabit 3D-printed versions of animals and live amongst the real ones in the wild. It also has a bit of a Wild Robot vibe, which isn’t a bad thing. Hoppers hits theaters on March 6th, 2026.
A sequel to Warner Bros.’ 2021 Mortal Kombat movie (which you definitely remember) is hitting theaters on October 24th. And when the movie’s first trailer drops tomorrow, we’ll be able to see whether Karl Urban’s Johnny Cage and Tati Gabrielle’s Jade are something to get excited about.
Next year’s Supergirl movie promises to be a little more rough and ready than Superman, so this first official look at the film suits it well.
Milly Alcock plays the Kryptonian cousin, following a cameo in Superman, in a story adapting the comics’ Woman of Tomorrow arc. It’s DC’s next movie, followed by Clayface, a body horror take on the Batman villain.




Director James Gunn’s DCU reboot scored $122 million in the US this weekend, the best launch ever for a Superman solo pick, and the biggest comic opening since Deadpool & Wolverine.
That’s a strong start, but $95 million in the rest of the world is less impressive, suggesting the Man of Steel hasn’t entirely shed the patriotic sheen that Trump tried to take advantage of. That probably hurts its hopes of joining the billion dollar club.
Luma, the AI startup whose video generation tool almost immediately started churning out IP-infringing slop when it launched last year, is opening up a “combined meeting, coworking and educational” space in Los Angeles, per The Hollywood Reporter. The venue’s meant to give filmmakers a place where they can experiment with this technology, which has produced pretty lackluster output so far.
[hollywoodreporter.com]
After years of working as NASA’s film liaison, Bert Ulrich is reportedly heading to Space 11 Corp — a studio focused on making cinematic projects about and sometimes set in outer space — where he will serve as executive vice president of production development and communications.
The record-breaking animated film is going to be hitting theaters in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand on August 22nd, this time with dialogue in English. CMC Pictures has partnered with A24 for the new release, and the cast will include Michelle Yeoh, who described the movie in a statement as “a landmark in Chinese animation and a powerful reminder of how universal our stories can be.”

DC Studios’ new Superman movie feels like a wild comic book that’s been brought to life.










