The summer badly needs a hero at the box office, preferably before Deadpool & Wolverine arrives. While we’re certain that the only real Marvel movie of 2024 can have a big opening weekend, it’s not hitting theaters until July 26. That won’t leave much time left for the summer season to rebound if nothing else resonates with audiences.
Bad Boys: Ride or Die‘s tracking numbers suggest that it will have a $40 million opening this weekend. That would have been great in March or April. In summer, that’s a mediocre number. And as we’ve seen in the last few weeks, even Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga opened below its projections. If Bad Boys: Ride or Die meets the same fate, there’s going to be more doom and gloom predictions about the future of movies.
There are still a lot of promising films on the horizon, which is why this post is putting a spotlight on the best new movies coming to theaters. Every week, we update the selections and add more upcoming films. We can’t promise a happy ending for the movie business, but you will find some fun summer flicks on this list.
Need more recommendations? Try the best new movies to stream on Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, Max (HBO), and more and the best new shows to stream on Netflix, Hulu, (HBO) Max, and more.
June 2024
Bad Boys: Ride or Die
Release date: June 7
Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) have been putting criminals behind bars for three decades. But in Bad Boys: Ride or Die, Mike and Marcus find themselves on the wrong side of the law after being framed by a master criminal. They’re going to have to watch their backs and protect their families while trying to clear their names.
The Watchers
Release date: June 07
M. Night Shyamalan‘s daughter, Ishana Night Shyamalan, is making her directorial debut with The Watchers. Here’s hoping that she didn’t inherit her father’s bad habit of relying on twist endings. Dakota Fanning stars in the film as Mina, a young woman who comes across a seemingly idyllic forest in Ireland.
Unfortunately for Mina, once she arrives, she can’t easily leave because enigmatic creatures surround the area at night. Three strangers, played by Georgina Campbell, Oliver Finnegan, and Olwen Fouéré, are stuck alongside Mina. Now, Mina has to wonder whether she can trust her new companions.
Inside Out 2
Release date: June 14
Disney would very much like to print money. And maybe it will with Inside Out 2, the sequel to one of Pixar’s best, most successful original movies. Although as a sequel, it’s now just regular IP. As before, a good deal of the movie takes place inside the mind of Riley Andersen (Kensington Tallman), a teenager who has no idea that her emotions are anthropomorphized beings that control her responses.
Now that she’s older, Riley is experiencing even more complex emotions, as embodied by Anxiety (Stranger Things season 5 star Maya Hawke), Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Boredom (Passages star Adèle Exarchopoulos), and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser). Joy (Amy Poehler) is probably already freaking out.
The Bikeriders
Release date: June 21
Jodie Comer’s new drama, The Bikeriders, may be a surprise sleeper hit at the box office this summer. Comer’s character, Kathy, provides the perspective as she witnesses a motorcycle club called The Vandals slowly transform over the course of the 1960s from a social group of bikers into a feared group of outlaws played by Austin Butler (Dune: Part Two), Tom Hardy, Michael Shannon, Mike Faist (Challengers), Norman Reedus, and Boyd Holbrook.
Fancy Dance
Release date: June 21
Killers of the Flower Moon‘s Lily Gladstone is back this summer in Fancy Dance, an original movie produced by Apple Studios that will get a theatrical release. Gladstone will portray Jax, a woman who is taking care of her niece, Roki (Isabel Deroy-Olson), because her sister is missing. Jax and Roki want to stay together, while Roki’s grandfather, Frank (Shea Wigham), wants sole custody of his granddaughter. The only solution that Jax and Roki see is to find Roki’s mother, if they can.
Kinds of Kindness
Release date: June 21
Yorgos Lanthimos, stop being weird. The director of Poor Things has a follow-up film that has a confusing premise. As far as we can tell, almost every member of the cast is playing three different characters from separate anthology stories. At the very least, Lanthimos didn’t have any trouble attracting A-list talent, including Poor Things stars Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe, as well as Jesse Plemons, Margaret Qualley, and Hong Chau.
A Quiet Place: Day One
Release date: June 27
Now this is more like it: A summer release that’s both a sci-fi film and a horror story. A Quiet Place: Day One acts as a prequel to the first two films by showing what happened when the aliens invaded New York City. In just a short period of time, a city of millions is cut down to just a handful of survivors, including Sam (Lupita Nyong’o) and Eric (Joseph Quinn).
They’ve both smart enough to realize that the aliens can only hear them. Yet that knowledge may not be enough to save them when New York City is sealed off from the rest of the state.
Horizon: An American Saga
Release date: June 28
Kevin Costner really loves Westerns. So much so that he put up his own money to write, direct, and star in Horizon: An American Saga, which will hopefully play out over the course of four movies. Only two of the films have already been shot, and both are coming out this year.
Story details are still a bit hard to come by, but Costner is playing a man who is leading a group of settlers west so they can build new lives for themselves after the Civil War.
July 2024
Despicable Me 4
Release date: July 5
It’s been seven years since the last Despicable Me movie, and the Minions have since launched a film franchise of their own. But everybody is back together this summer for Despicable Me 4.
This time, Gru (Steve Carell) and his family have new adversaries: Maxine Le Mal (Will Ferrell) and Valentina (Sofia Vergara). Unfortunately for Gru, he badly underestimated his foes, and the family will have to stay one step ahead of these latest villains.
MaXXXine
Release date: July 5
Mia Goth returns as Maxine Minx in MaXXXine, the sequel to X and Pearl. This time, the film is set in Los Angeles in 1985, as Maxine finally takes a real shot at achieving her dreams of stardom. However, Maxine hasn’t lost her talent for attracting big trouble, and she will have to contend with the Night Stalker.
Director Ti West has put together an impressive cast that includes Giancarlo Esposito, Bobby Cannavale, Michelle Monaghan, and Elizabeth Debicki to close out his trilogy of terror.
Fly Me To The Moon
Release date: July 12
Fly Me To the Moon gets points for originality if nothing else. How many other romantic comedies get to play off the race to put a man on the moon in the ’60s? Channing Tatum plays Cole Davis, the man in charge of NASA’s moon landing project, while Scarlett Johansson portrays Kelly Jones, a marketing specialist who crafts NASA’s public image. Somewhere along the way, they fall in love.
Twisters
Release date: July 19
Twister was not really a film that needed a sequel 28 years later, but when has that ever stopped Hollywood before? Twisters has cast the new Superman, David Corenswet, to star alongside Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, and Anthony Ramos as the latest generation of storm chasers. Together, they go looking for trouble – and they’re gonna find it.
Deadpool & Wolverine
Release date: July 26
If anything is going to break Marvel’s box office slump, it’s Deadpool & Wolverine. Getting Hugh Jackman to reprise his role as Wolverine after two decades of X-Men movies was just the boost that the film formerly known as Deadpool 3 needed. Ryan Reynolds practically willed this movie to happen, and it’s Marvel’s best defense against superhero fatigue.
As for the plot, who cares?! It’s got Deadpool and Wolverine beating each other up before teaming up to fight the villain. That’s good enough for us.
August 2024
Harold and the Purple Crayon
Release date: August 2
There have been plenty of children’s’ books that have been turned into movies, but Harold and the Purple Crayon may be the first that’s actually a sequel to the book that inspired it. Zachary Levi (Shazam! Power of the Gods) plays Harold, a guy who lived his entire life in a book making his dreams come true with his magical purple crayon. Now, Harold has used the crayon to enter the real world, and he became a real man in the process. Harold has a lot to learn about being an adult, but his magic crayon still works in this world.
Trap
Release date: August 9
M. Night Shyamalan is back with a new movie this summer called Trap. Oppenheimer‘s Josh Hartnett plays Cooper, a man who brings his daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue), to see Lady Raven in concert. Think of Lady Raven as Taylor Swift on a much smaller scale. But after arriving with his daughter in tow, Cooper realizes that the entire concert is a trap to lure a serial killer called The Butcher into police custody.
And since Cooper is The Butcher, the real question is how far he’s willing to go to escape now that he’s sealed in with his daughter and thousands of unsuspecting music fans.
Borderlands
Release date: August 9
August is usually where the summer movies wind down a month early. Director Eli Roth (Thanksgiving) is looking to buck that trend with his adaptation of the Borderlands video games. Cate Blanchett leads the cast as Lilith, the leader of an intergalactic group of mercenaries that includes Roland (Kevin Hart), Kreig (Florian Munteanu), Tiny Tina (Barbie‘s Ariana Greenblatt), Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis), and Claptrap (Jack Black). If this reminds you of Guardians of the Galaxy, it’s not a coincidence.
It Ends With Us
Release date: August 9
Not every romance is a fairy tale. That’s a lesson that Lily Bloom (Blake Lively) learns the hard way in this adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling novel. Lily thought she found the man of her dreams in Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni). Ryle’s a surgeon, he’s handsome, and he’s fabulously rich. Unfortunately for Lily, Ryle is also abusive toward her. Now, Lily will have to summon the strength to leave Ryle behind, if she can.
Alien: Romulus
Release date: August 16
We’ll all be screaming in space when the Alien franchise revisits its horror roots in Alien: Romulus. All we’ve seen so far is a teaser trailer that even makes the face huggers scary. We can only imagine what director Fede Álvarez is going to do with the xenomorphs themselves as he unleashes the lethal aliens on a young cast that includes Cailee Spaeny, Isabela Merced, Archie Renaux, and David Jonsson.
The Crow
Release date: August 23
James O’Barr’s The Crow was a popular indie comic book before the 1994 film adaptation starring Brandon Lee. That character has since been overshadowed by Lee’s tragic death on the set of what turned out to be his final film. Three decades later, director Rupert Sanders is reimagining the franchise with Boy Kills World star Bill Skarsgård taking over the lead role from Lee.
Eric (Skarsgård) and his fiancée, Shelly (British singer FKA Twigs), are young lovers who are cut down in the prime of their lives by heartless murderers. However, Eric is given the opportunity and the power to rise from his grave and avenge their deaths as The Crow. And he’s coming to get his revenge on their killers.
Blink Twice
Release date: August 23
Zoë Kravitz (The Batman 2) is making her directorial debut with Blink Twice, but she resisted the urge to cast herself in a leading role. Instead, Naomi Ackie plays the main character, Frida, a waitress who becomes enamored with Slater King, and not just because he’s played by Channing Tatum. King is also an incredibly wealthy man who wants Frida to come to his own private island for a party that she’ll never forget.
However, Frida may soon wish that she could forget the experience, as she finds herself feeling out of place among the rich and powerful. More alarming, Frida’s sense of reality is starting to break down as she is forced to wonder if the strange things that start happening around her are real.
September 2024
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Release date: September 6
We can thank Netflix’s Wednesday series for getting the Beetlejuice sequel out of development hell a mere 36 years after the original movie. Wednesday director Tim Burton cast the leading actress of the show, Jenna Ortega, as Astrid Deetz, the teenage daughter of Winona Ryder’s Lydia Deetz from the first film. Wednesday showrunners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar also co-wrote the script.
Michael Keaton is reprising his role as Beetlejuice, and we don’t know what he’s been up to for the last few decades. But we do know that Astrid will accidentally let Beetlejuice back into the land of the living. And once the juice is loose, it may not be possible to keep him from causing all kinds of trouble.
Transformers One
Release date: September 13
The last few Transformers movies haven’t exactly been blockbusters, so there is a real risk that audiences won’t show up for Transformers One, an animated film that is neither a musical nor aimed at young children. Instead, it seems to be aimed at older teens who may not have much idea why the Transformers live on a planet called Cybertron.
Transformers One is also taking the odd path of presenting the primary hero and villain of the franchise – Optimus Prime (Chris Hemsworth) and Megatron (Brian Tyree Henry) – and essentially turning them into buddy action heroes. The thing is, we know their friendship doesn’t last and they go on to lead warring factions against each other. So presumably, we’ll see some touch of tragedy that shatters their bond. Paramount also lined up a stellar voice cast for this flick, including Scarlett Johansson, Keegan-Michael Key, Steve Buscemi, Laurence Fishburne, and Jon Hamm. If this movie fails to connect movie fans, it won’t be from lack of trying.
Speak No Evil
Release date: September 13
Don’t you just hate when you make vacation friends who invite you to their remote English estate and then they turn out to be complete psychos who try to kill you? No? Then perhaps Speak No Evil is a little bit too specific about the issue at hand.
Scoot McNairy and Mackenzie Davis play the hapless American couple, Ben and Louise Dalton, with Alix West Lefler as their daughter, Agnes. At first, the Daltons are completely charmed by Paddy (James McAvoy) and his wife, Ciara (Aisling Franciosi), as well as their mute son, Ant (Dan Hough).
But the more time that the Daltons spend with the family, the more they notice unsettling things about them. Young Ant even seems to imply that his parents cut his vocal cords to keep him from speaking ever again. If they’ll do that to their own kid, then what will they do with the innocent family they’ve lured into their trap?
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