Films to look forward to in 2027: six releases and what they need to earn

Netflix's current announcement identifies Greta Gerwig as writer and director, with a wide theatrical opening on 12 February, IMAX previews from 10 February and streaming from 2 April 2027. Older references to a 2026 opening no longer describe that plan.

The attraction is the choice of book. The Magician's Nephew does not simply supply more adventures after the wardrobe. It asks us to encounter the making of a world and the arrival of destructive desire within it.

That gives an adaptation a demanding visual and emotional problem. Creation has to feel like an event rather than a montage explaining where familiar objects came from. Wonder needs time in which the audience is not merely waiting for the next threat.

Gerwig's stated interest in a world brought into being through music gives a specific reason to pay attention. It is an approach announced by the filmmaker, not proof that the result will achieve it.

Digory's wish to help his mother gives the book's temptation a more difficult object than simple greed. Something can be desperately wanted for a loving reason and still require a choice about the terms on which it is obtained. That is the part I most want an adaptation to preserve. A beautiful forbidden object should not merely introduce the next rule of the fantasy world. It should expose a child to an argument persuasive enough that doing the right thing costs him something he already loves.

The obvious risk is that the film becomes a delivery system for attractive fantasy imagery and recognisable Narnia associations. The source offers something stranger and more foundational than that.

I am interested in the attempt, not awarding fidelity or greatness in advance. A strong adaptation would need to make its own scenes live while retaining the sense that the world is valuable beyond its usefulness to the protagonists.

The official film page dates Starfighter for 28 May 2027 and names Shawn Levy as director, Jonathan Tropper as writer and Ryan Gosling as lead. Lucasfilm has presented it as a standalone adventure set after The Rise of Skywalker.

The opportunity is independence. A large fictional galaxy should be capable of producing a consequential story without making every new person a hidden connection to a familiar family.

Gosling's screen presence supplies a reason for interest because reserve, comic discomfort and sudden action can coexist within it. That range could be useful to a character who has a life before the plot arrives. It is a possibility, not a description of a performance we have already seen.

The escape from the Death Star in the original Star Wars is a useful test for any new flying adventure. Different jobs remain readable: somebody pilots, somebody aims, somebody has to keep the immediate threat in view. The audience can be excited without possessing a technical manual. For Starfighter, I want that clarity to create a new relationship. A manoeuvre becomes dramatic when it asks one person to trust another's timing, not simply when a ship crosses the frame faster than before.

I also want the adventure to create attachments within the new group. A cameo can produce a burst of pleasure; it cannot do all the work of making us care who survives the current scene.

Levy's experience with large popular entertainments makes the project plausible at that scale. It does not settle the tonal question. A film can be accessible without treating every moment of sincerity as something requiring an immediate joke.

This is on the list because a bounded new adventure could restore an elementary pleasure: entering Star Wars without first calculating how many other stories must be recalled. The film will have to earn that freedom through its own people.

Sony Pictures Animation currently lists 18 June 2027 and credits directors Bob Persichetti and Justin K. Thompson. Its announced premise continues Miles's struggle to get home while his family is endangered.

Across the Spider-Verse ends with a powerful challenge to authority. Miguel presents suffering as a necessary pattern; Miles refuses to accept that a person he loves must be sacrificed because someone else has explained the rules.

That is an excellent place to stop an argument temporarily. It is not yet an answer. The next film needs to test what follows when refusal meets consequences beyond the person refusing.

The difficult version of Miles's argument would make protecting his father and taking wider consequences seriously belong to the same decision. Miguel's authority cannot settle what must happen merely by naming a pattern, but Miles's love cannot make every other life irrelevant either. That is the unfinished work I want the sequel to attempt. I would be disappointed by a solution that turns the problem into a bookkeeping error nobody sufficiently hopeful had noticed. The resistance deserves a world in which it still has to become responsible action.

The visual ambition is another reason for anticipation. The earlier films let style express different worlds and emotional states. A continuation can develop that language rather than simply increase the number of competing images.

Gwen's changed position also matters. Rebuilding trust requires more than arriving as part of a rescue team. The relationships have acquired injuries the story should remember after the immediate danger is over.

The risk is familiar to a concluding chapter: a large cast, an unresolved cliffhanger and a formal spectacle can compete with the time needed for a personal decision.

This earns a place because the question left open is worth answering. I want a conclusion that takes Miles's resistance seriously enough to make it difficult, rather than turning the earlier complexity into a long route towards automatic vindication.

DC's announcement names Man of Tomorrow as the follow-up to James Gunn's Superman and sets 9 July 2027. It records the participation of Gunn, David Corenswet and Nicholas Hoult in the announcement. That source's artwork should not be inflated into a complete plot synopsis.

The reason for interest is not simply another opportunity to make Superman darker. A good-hearted protagonist can produce conflict through the difficulty of acting well when obligations collide.

The existing contrast with Lex Luthor offers material beyond a contest of powers. Superman's willingness to help can offend a person who understands exceptional capacity through ownership, hierarchy or personal supremacy. The conflict becomes richer when both men have coherent accounts of what their power means.

The 2025 film has already let Superman's care become something Lex can regard as a weakness to exploit. A continuation has to find another consequence of that disagreement. Compassion may create obligations that collide; exceptional power may make a mistaken promise harder to withdraw. Those are possibilities I want the story to explore, not announced plot details. They would give Corenswet something more exact to play than remaining the agreeable centre of a larger effects display.

Lois and the wider human world also need room to affect the outcome. A supporting cast becomes valuable when its knowledge and judgement alter the story, not simply when everyone receives another entrance.

The larger universe can be an asset or a distraction. Additional heroes do not automatically make a Superman film more substantial. The central moral and emotional problem still needs an identifiable owner.

I am looking forward to the opportunity for an optimistic hero to become more specific under pressure. Hope is dramatically useful when it requires a choice and has a cost. Merely declaring the character hopeful would not be enough.

The Disney film page gives 24 November 2027. Disney's 2026 entertainment showcase identifies Jennifer Lee and Trent Correy as directors. The date is a schedule, not a guarantee that every territory will open that day.

My interest rests on what the earlier films have already complicated. Anna and Elsa do not need another story that simply discovers they love one another. Their separate responsibilities and desires offer a more useful starting point.

The difficulty is musical. A strong song should change the scene: a person makes a decision, persuades herself, reaches towards someone or discovers that the language she has been using no longer works.

The ending of Frozen II makes that test concrete: Anna and Elsa can remain attached while occupying different places and duties. Another crisis does not need to prove that the separation was a mistake in order to bring them together. A song might let one sister speak across that distance, revise an assumption about the other or admit something ordinary conversation has kept respectable. I am interested in whether the musical form can develop the relationship they now have, rather than restore the emotional position that once produced a hit.

Frozen II also widened the story's concern with family inheritance and the past. A continuation should not need to reset that discovery merely to give the sisters something to learn again.

The comic characters matter most when their presence changes the rhythm without neutralising every difficult feeling. A joke can provide relief; it can also close a moment that needed another second.

I am curious because this world still has a productive difference at its centre: loving another person does not mean sharing the same vocation or future. If the songs can make that difference active, another chapter has a reason to exist. If the film merely enlarges the mythology, it may have more information and less emotional movement.

The currently announced date is 17 December 2027, as listed by Movies Anywhere and in reporting on Disney’s schedule change. It remains a project to follow, not a fixed appointment immune to further changes.

Avengers: Doomsday is still ahead at this article's October 2026 check. Its outcome cannot responsibly be described here as though the audience has already seen it. The reasons for anticipating Secret Wars therefore concern the opportunity and the scale of the task, rather than a verdict on that unreleased predecessor.

A multiverse conclusion can bring different histories into contact. The dramatic value would lie in what the encounter asks of the people involved. Recognising an actor is an event for the audience; it is not automatically a relationship between characters.

The argument before the time heist in Endgame is a useful model of scale held inside a personal choice. Tony's present family changes what restoring other lives can mean to him. The larger mission cannot simply demand that he return to the person another film needed. I want a crossover to give its returning figures conflicts with that kind of weight. A familiar face should arrive carrying a life that can complicate the current task, rather than a pause in which the audience is invited to applaud recognition.

It will also need restraint about reversal. If another universe can supply an equivalent person or undo an apparent loss, the film has to explain why this history and this version of the relationship still matter.

That is a creative problem, not a reason to dismiss the premise before seeing it. The distinctions in our MCU canon guide help describe the terrain, but continuity knowledge cannot substitute for a scene that earns feeling.

I am interested because the project could turn years of accumulated stories into a consequential meeting. I remain cautious because accumulation can also become inventory. The finished film will have to decide what to leave out in order to let something matter.