Here’s something you don’t see every day: A diverse upcoming theatrical slate. Summer 2025 is shaping up to have something for everyone, including cape-heads (Fantastic Four), rom-com diehards (Materialists), and terminally online doomscrollers (Eddington). This summer film season is bringing the “multi” back to the multiplex as Mike Flanagan tries his hand at the lighter side of Stephen King, Brad Pitt races F1, and Pixar heads to space. Meanwhile, new movies from Danny Boyle, Spike Lee, and Darren Aronofsky should keep the discourse churning well into August. Most importantly, M3GAN‘s second coming is a chance for audiences everywhere to recognize how cheugy they’ve been acting. It’s summertime, the weather is fine, and the theaters have air conditioning. Here are our most anticipated movies of the summer.
Alex Ross Perry’s slanted and enchanted experimental rock-docPavements harnesses its hopes on expansiveness. The filmmaker’s exploration of Pavement, one of the ’90s most enigmatic, unpredictable, and beloved indie rock bands, is a documentary, a concert film, a biopic starring Joe Keery as singer Stephen Malkmus, a Broadway musical, and a museum exhibit. Except it’s also none of those things, which aligns with the group’s aversion to explaining themselves or taking stardom seriously.
For his third Stephen King adaptation and first excursion away from horror, director Mike Flanagan swerves into The Green Mile lane of the King highway. The Life Of Chuck is a twinkly dramedy with Tom Hiddleston at its center, exploring the titular life of Chuck across three ages, and the lives he has touched along the way. Chuck contains multitudes that do not fit easily into a trailer. However, the title card, “from the heart and soul Mike Flanagan,” is enough to understand the earnest tone of the film.
Materialists (June 13)
With Materialists, Past Lives director Celine Song delivers a legitimate rom-com free of spycraft, zombies, or action set pieces, which is like water in a desert. Successful matchmaker and terminal bachelorette Dakota Johnson meets her match in the uber-rich Pedro Pascal. That wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t for Chris Evans, a nice guy from her past, who is also single and up for a mingle. It’s a classic love triangle, armed with a trailer that promises light conflict and a deeply pleasant experience.
28 Years Later (June 20)
28 Years Later arrives 23 years after director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland infected the culture with running zombie syndrome and rejuvenated the genre. (“28 seasons of The Walking Dead later” almost worked as a title, too.) Here, Boyle and Garland enlist Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the latest tour guide through their land of the dead. In addition to emaciated flesh-eaters, Taylor-Johnson squares off against a feral Ralph Fiennes, a doctor supposedly obsessed with a bone temple, in the first of two movies about this osteo-based synagogue.
Elio (June 20)
With Lightyear, Inside Out 2, and Elemental, it’s been a shaky couple of years for Pixar, but hopes are high for Elio, a long-in-development sci-fi about a boy desperate for aliens to abduct him. Elio gets his wish when a UFO plucks him off Earth Last Starfighter-style. Despite the villain looking too much like Emperor Zurg and the trailer’s use of “Don’t Stop Me Now,” Elio could be a breath of fresh air for the once-dominant animation house.
F1 (June 27)
Two words: Vroom, vroom. Following a brief detour to Netflix, Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski again feels the need for big-screen speed. This time, Brad Pitt fills the Tom Cruise role, as the 60-year-old Oscar winner proves he can drive up a production’s insurance premiums by performing his own stunts. Trading fighter jets for Formula One, Pitt plays an over-the-hill speed demon with a chip on his shoulder and a cocky upstart to train. Like the Top Gun legacy sequel, Kosinski and his star aim for authenticity, strapping Pitt and a litany of cameras to the car.
M3GAN 2.0 (June 27)
M3GAN returns for more campy fun in M3GAN 2.0, which, because of the massive meme-driven success of the first movie, can fully embrace M3GAN‘s silly slays. But this time, M3GAN is taking a page out of the Terminator 2 playbook and using her powers for good. When a more advanced doll with an even stronger aura begins killing, M3GAN vows to give up murder and protect her bestie, Cady (Violet McGraw), and Cady’s aunt (Allison Williams).
The Old Guard 2 (July 2)
Netflix’s entrant into the superhero movie continuum, The Old Guard was among the more pleasant surprises of the pivot-to-streaming era. Director Gina Prince-Bythewood and star Charlize Theron were the perfect pair to adapt this comic series about a crew of bored, baklava-loving immortals, generating genuine curiosity around its premise. The sequel, directed by Victoria Mahoney, picks up where the last left off, with Andy (Theron) given the curse of mortality and a host of enemies, including the first immortal (played by Uma Thurman) on her tail.
Superman (July 11)
Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s a new DCU. James Gunn’s rebooted DC universe dawns with Superman, a cheerier take on the Man Of Steel than Man Of Steel. Relative newcomer David Corenswet is the Big Blue Boy Scout (complimentary), wrestling his outsiderness as a spaceman, a god, and a bumbling reporter while hoping Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) and Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) don’t discover his secret identity. It’s arguably the most important movie in recent Warner Bros. history, a sky-high-priced gamble on a trend that might be coming to an end.
Eddington (July 18)
Re-teaming after the overheated and underrated Beau Is Afraid, director Ari Aster and star Joaquin Phoenix align for another expansive satire. This time, instead of surreal expressions of one introvert’s mind, Eddington blows out the paranoid doomscrolls of 2020 that society has yet to escape. Phoenix plays the sheriff of Eddington, New Mexico, a town consumed by culture wars during the COVID lockdowns, setting the stage for an aggressive, satirical Western we’re sure will elicit the most normal reactions.
I Know What You Did Last Summer (July 18)
I Know What You Did Last Summer benefits from low expectations. The original was never much more than a fun, low-rent teen slasher released at the right time with the right stars. Those who survived the original series, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr., return for the legacy sequel, leading a new young cast of scream queens and kings through another round of manslaughter comeuppance. The plot remains the same: A year after killing a man with their car, a clique of college-age youngsters square off against a hook-wielding killer fishing for revenge.
The directorial debut from triple threat Eva Victor, who wrote and stars in Sorry, Baby, follows Agnes (Victor), a young academic recovering from a sexual assault three years earlier. As she attempts to reset her life in an idyllic New England town, Agnes’ trauma brings her closer to her friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie), a stranger (John Carroll Lynch), and a potential love interest (Lucas Hedges).
Fantastic Four: First Steps (July 25)
Terrible subtitle aside, Fantastic Four: First Steps seems like a step in the right direction for the MCU. Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn), and Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) drag Disney’s mega-franchise to the Silver Age ’60s, separating it from the wider MCU. Additionally, now that the characters are free from their Fox contract, Marvel’s First Family is allowed to star in a (hopefully) good movie that welcomes a non-cloudy Galactus (Ralph Ineson) and his herald, Silver Surfer (Julia Garner), to the MCU fold.
The Naked Gun (August 1)
When it comes to the dismal state of studio comedies, all eyes are on The Naked Gun. Help us, Frank Drebin, you’re our only hope. Thankfully, Naked Gun has all the makings of something special. In the casting coup of the year, Liam Neeson stars as Frank Drebin Jr., proving that director and Lonely Islander Akiva Schaffer understands what made the original so funny. Like a pre-Airplane! Leslie Nielsen, Neeson isn’t exactly known for comedy—though he is pretty good at it. Let’s hope the jokes are good enough to justify 2 1/2 to 33 1/3 more sequels.
Weapons (August 8)
Zach Cregger’s star-studded follow-up to Barbarian, Weapons follows erstwhile Silver Surfer Julia Garner, who plays a schoolteacher whose entire class Naruto runs away one night. The disappearance of a whole class leaves no one to blame but Garner, who becomes the target of a furious parent (Josh Brolin) and a concerned administrator (Benedict Wong). But if Barbarian taught us anything, Cregger will easily start in one nightmare and swerve headfirst into another.
Honey Don’t! (August 22)
As the only person who enjoyed Drive Away Dolls, I’m celebrating Ethan Coen and Tricia Cook’s follow-up, Honey Don’t!, the second part of their so-called “lesbian B-movie trilogy.” Bringing their chaotic and gleefully silly sense of humor to the world of neo-noir, Coen and Cook follow detective Margaret Qualley, investigating a cult leader (Chris Evans), and a mysterious Aubrey Plaza in their second movie sans Joel Coen.
In Highest 2 Lowest, Spike Lee and Denzel Washington re-team for an updated take on Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece High And Low. Thankfully, the trailer alleviated any concern that Lee wouldn’t make this his own or that there wouldn’t be a big, meaty monologue for Washington. Taking over for Toshiro Mifune, Washington plays David King, a music mogul mired in the morally complex, mistaken-identity kidnapping of his chauffeur’s (Jeffrey Wright) son (Elijah Wright).
Caught Stealing (August 29)
Caught Stealing shows director Darren Aronofsky as you’ve never seen him before: having fun. Austin Butler plays ballplayer-turned-bartender Hank Thompson, proving his maturity to his girlfriend (Zoë Kravitz) via catsitting while running from New York City’s melting-pot criminal underground with, oi, mohawked Matt Smith’s million-dollar MacGuffin in tow. The movie co-stars Regina King, Bad Bunny, Griffin Dunne, Liev Schreiber, and Carol Kane, serving up matzah balls in a small Yiddish-speaking role direct from Hester Street.
Toxie lives! After two years on the shelf, Macon Blair’s reboot of The Toxic Avenger finally mops its way into theaters. Peter Dinklage plays the titular janitor transformed by toxic waste into a mutant vigilante. As Toxie, he must protect his son (Jacob Tremblay) from New Jersey’s most villainous creeps, including Kevin Bacon and Elijah Wood.
