If you listen to the people in the know, they will tell you how bad things are in the movie business. Movies are doomed. Streaming has won. The weird thing is, 2025 felt like a very busy year at the movies. And the 2026 film calendar is already jam packed with big-ticket titles.

To be fair, it is dominated by franchises, sequels and safe bets. A little bit of tension in the economy, and everyone gets risk-averse. But if you thought the movie biz was now all about Netflix and its made-for-television library, then you might be surprised how often you’re going to be down at your local cinema this year.

And we’re back in the room … Stanley Tucci with Meryl Streep, on the set of The Devil Wears Prada 2.Credit: James Devaney/GC Images

The brand extensions are in full bloom: Disney’s live-action Moana (July 9), Nicole Kidman, Sandra Bullock, Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest in Practical Magic 2 (September 17), an eighth Resident Evil (September 17) and The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping (November 19).

There is also a fourth Meet The Parents film, Focker In-Law (November 25), and Denis Villeneuve’s third chapter of a book-to-film conversion that, I swear, we were told would just be two: Dune: Part Three (December 17). But before we get to that tranche of sequels in the second half of the year, we have a long list of must-see movies to look forward to.

WUTHERING HEIGHTS, WARNER BROS

Margot Robbie in Wuthering Heights.

Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw. Jacob Elordi as the broody and brutal Heathcliff. Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Emily Brontë’s iconic novel Wuthering Heights is so Australian you could be forgiven for wondering if it qualifies for Screen Australia funding. Robbie is producing the film; she previously produced Promising Young Woman (2020) and Saltburn (2023) with Fennell. All the buzz is positive for this, and the gift-with-purchase is Shazad Latif as Edgar Linton.
Opens February 12

PILLION, RIALTO

Off the back of its premiere at Cannes and in the UK, Harry Lighton’s dom-com, based on the 2020 novel by Adam Mars-Jones, comes with an avalanche of pre-press, and rave reviews. Colin (Harry Melling) is a classically meek and mild gay man who meets a handsome biker named Ray (Alexander Skarsgård) and, at Ray’s urging, the pair embark on a dominant/submissive relationship.