While there’s plenty of interesting stuff in theaters all year round, the fall is typically the best season for going to the movies. Many of the year’s best movies are released during this time as part of Oscar campaigning, and there are also numerous blockbusters to enjoy.
Ahead of the 2025 fall season, we’ve ranked the 10 movies we’re looking forward to most this fall. From critical darlings to big-budget fare, here are 10 movies worth looking forward to.
10. The Running Man (November 14)
Edgar Wright and Glen Powell have united in a shared belief that there simply has to be a way to make a good version of The Running Man for the big screen. The movie, which is set in the near future, follows a contestant competing in a reality TV show in which he has to survive 30 days of being hunted by an assassin.
As his defiance increasingly makes him a fan favorite, he becomes a threat to the entire system. Wright has been hit or miss in more recent years, but we’re all hoping that this can be a return to form for the director.
9. Jay Kelly (November 14 in theaters, December 5 on Netflix)
George Clooney is one of the last movie stars, and Jay Kelly appears to be giving him a chance to show how much he has left in the tank. The film follows Clooney as he plays the titular character, a movie star who embarks on a surprisingly profound journey through Europe.
Directed by Noah Baumbach, who wrote and directed Marriage Story and co-wrote Barbie, Jay Kelly co-stars Adam Sandler as Kelly’s manager. Seeing Clooney and Sandler work together is enough reason to buy your ticket, but Jay Kelly also has pedigree to spare.
8. Predator: Badlands (November 7)
There are a few big blockbusters coming in the months ahead, but Predator: Badlands is one of the few to make its way onto this list. Directed by Dan Trachtenberg, whose film Prey reinvigorated this franchise, Badlands shifts the focus of these stories to the predators themselves.
In this case, we’re following a young predator who has been cast out from his clan. As he works to prove his worth, he teams up with an android and travels to a dangerous, distant planet. While we don’t know much more about the plot, the trailer certainly suggests this movie will be beautiful, if nothing else.
7. Bugonia (October 24)
Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos are the most powerful actor-director combo in Hollywood right now, and Bugonia is their latest travail into strangeness. The film tells the story of two men who become convinced that a high-powered CEO is secretly an alien who was sent to Earth to conquer the planet and kidnap her to prove their conspiracy is true.
Also starring Jesse Plemons, Bugonia seems like a great vehicle for plenty of strangeness but also like the kind of movie that might speak to the deeply conspiratorial times we’re living through.
6. Wicked: For Good (November 21)
Wicked was a remarkable success last year, and to Universal’s immense credit, the sequel is here just a year later. Picking up where the first installment left off, For Good will follow Elphaba as she is now in open rebellion against the Wizard of Oz, and as a young girl named Dorothy enters the picture.
For Good might have made it even higher on this list, but the musical’s second act is not quite as powerful as its first. Still, there’s some reason to suspect that Jon M. Chu can reimagine it in smart, creative ways for the screen and give us a satisfying conclusion to Elphaba and Glinda’s story.
5. The Smashing Machine (October 3)
Over the course of his acting career to date, it’s fair to say that Dwayne Johnson has prioritized his success as a star over his desire to prove that he’s a serious actor. That seems to be changing with The Smashing Machine, which stars Johnson as MMA fighter Mark Kerr, who achieved great personal success in the ring but faced both physical and mental hardships outside it.
Directed by Benny Safdie, The Smashing Machine might be more than just the inspirational story of one fighter, and it would seem to be the ideal vehicle for Johnson to show us what he’s really made of as an actor.
4. Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (December 12 on Netflix)
The latest film in the Knives Out franchise, we have every reason to suspect that Wake Up Dead Man will be just as good as the first two installments. We know remarkably little about what the film is even about, but Johnson has assembled a cast that includes Josh O’Connor, Josh Brolin, Jeremy Renner, Mila Kunis, Glenn Close, and Cailee Spaeny.
For this one, all we really need to know is that Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc is back on the case. Few things have been more reliable over the past half-decade than this franchise.
3. Frankenstein (October 17 in theaters, November 7 on Netflix)
There has rarely been a match of director and material more perfect than Guillermo Del Toro and Frankenstein. This adaptation of the famous work stars Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi as the monster itself, and given Del Toro’s affinity for strange creatures, there should be plenty to dig into.
The movie was made at a fairly extravagant budget, and given that it has plenty of horror elements to rely on, there’s reason to suspect this could be a sizable success for both Del Toro and Netflix.
2. One Battle After Another (September 26)
Paul Thomas Anderson has made a new movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio. That’s really all you need to know about One Battle After Another, but if you want to know more, you should know that this appears to be PTA operating in a more comedic mode.
The film stars DiCaprio as a former revolutionary who seeks the help of his former comrades to find his missing daughter. Also starring Benicio Del Toro, Sean Penn, and Regina Hall, One Battle After Another seems likely to be one of the year’s most interesting movies, whether it becomes one of the most acclaimed or not.
1. Hamnet (November 27)
Chloe Zhao’s trajectory from micro-budget indie queen to Oscar winner to Marvel darling was really something, but Hamnet seems like an ideal project for the director. Adapted from a novel of the same name, the film tells the story of William Shakespeare’s family life and, specifically, how the death of his son Hamnet inspired the creation of Hamlet.
Starring Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley, this movie is already looking like an Oscar frontrunner, but even more importantly, early reviews suggest that it just might be the best movie of the year.
