The Most Anticipated Movies of 2027
Hollywood has spent the last three years in various states of production chaos — strikes, post-pandemic recalibration, the streaming wars eating theatrical windows whole. 2027 looks like the exhale. The films converging on that year represent some of the longest-gestating projects in blockbuster history, alongside a couple of surprises that have no right to be as interesting as they are. Here’s what’s worth marking on your calendar.
Avengers: Secret Wars
Studio: Marvel Studios
Expected: May 2027
Director: TBD (confirmed production)
The MCU has been building to this since the multiverse cracks first appeared in Loki. Secret Wars — adapting one of Marvel Comics’ most sprawling crossover events — is positioned as the conclusion of the Multiverse Saga, the phase arc that began with Endgame’s aftermath and has spent six years threading alternate timelines, variant characters, and slowly escalating stakes across dozens of films and Disney+ series.
The scope is genuinely unprecedented. Secret Wars in the comics brought together characters from across the multiverse on a single Battleworld — a planet assembled from the fragments of dying realities — and forced them to fight for survival. The film adaptation, if Marvel executes it, would be the most ambitious logistical undertaking in blockbuster history: multiple versions of the same characters, actors who’ve played heroes and villains in competing franchises now appearing in the same frame.
The honest caveat: everything depends on casting and direction announcements that were still pending as of early 2026. Marvel’s track record post-Endgame has been inconsistent. But the ceiling on Secret Wars — if the pieces fall into place — is higher than any superhero film attempted before it.
Why it matters: This is the Endgame of the multiverse era. Everything since 2021 has been setup. 2027 is the payoff — or the disappointment that redefines the franchise.
Dune: Messiah (Part Three)
Studio: Legendary / Warner Bros.
Expected: Late 2027
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Denis Villeneuve has said he always intended to make three films. Dune: Part One (2021) and Part Two (2024) were, in hindsight, acts one and two of a single tragedy. Messiah is act three — and it is darker than anything that came before it.
In Frank Herbert’s novel, Paul Atreides is no longer a hero. He’s been a god-emperor for twelve years, presiding over a holy war that has killed billions across the galaxy in his name. Messiah is the story of his reckoning with what his prescience and ambition built. It’s a film about the costs of messianism, told from the perspective of the messiah who knows exactly what he’s done and cannot stop it.
Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atreides transforming from reluctant hero to something more complicated and morally ambiguous is the kind of performance arc that defines careers. Zendaya’s Chani — whose rejection of Paul’s mythology was Part Two’s emotional backbone — will have a role that Messiah’s source material suggests will be both smaller and more important than her first two appearances.
Villeneuve’s Dune films have been the most visually stunning blockbusters of their era. Messiah is reportedly shooting in Jordan, Iceland, and Tunisia, continuing a practical-effects-first approach that has aged both films beautifully.
Why it matters: Villeneuve is attempting something rare — a blockbuster trilogy with a genuinely tragic arc, no reset button, no happy ending built in. Whether audiences follow him to that place is the most interesting question in cinema right now.
The Batman Part II
Studio: Warner Bros. / DC Studios
Expected: October 2027
Director: Matt Reeves | Starring: Robert Pattinson
Matt Reeves’ The Batman (2022) was, by consensus, the best DC film in a decade — a three-hour neo-noir that reimagined Bruce Wayne as a detective first and a symbol second, with Pattinson playing him as a traumatized obsessive who’s better at catching criminals than he is at preventing the conditions that create them.
Part II picks up in a Gotham left permanently altered by Riddler’s flooding — a city literally rebuilding, politically destabilized, and fertile ground for the organized crime successor vacuum that the first film’s ending made inevitable. Early production notes suggest the film will introduce a villain whose power is systemic rather than theatrical: someone who operates through influence and money rather than elaborate traps.
Reeves has described Part II as exploring “what it means to be a symbol” — the gap between what Batman represents to Gotham’s citizens and what Bruce Wayne actually is capable of delivering. That’s rich thematic territory, and Reeves earned enough goodwill with the first film to be trusted with where he’s taking it.
Why it matters: This is the rare superhero sequel where the director has explicitly said he’s interested in complicating his protagonist rather than simply escalating his enemies. That alone makes it worth watching.
Toy Story 5
Studio: Pixar / Disney
Expected: Summer 2027
Director: Andrew Stanton (rumored)
Every time Pixar announces another Toy Story sequel, the internet collectively sighs. And every time, the film turns out to be something unexpected. Toy Story 3 was a film about letting go. Toy Story 4 was a film about identity. The question for Part 5 is what there’s still left to say — and the early indication is that Pixar has an answer.
Production details are tightly held, but the film is understood to take place in a world where Woody and Buzz exist alongside a generation of toys competing with screens for children’s attention — a meta-premise that has obvious relevance and obvious risk. Pixar at its best (see: Inside Out 2) can take an allegorical concept and make it gut-punchingly emotional. At its average, it’s still better than most of what’s in theaters.
The original voice cast — Tom Hanks, Tim Allen — is expected to return, which makes this feel like a genuine closing chapter rather than a cash-grab extension.
Why it matters: If Pixar gets this right, it completes one of the most sustained emotional arcs in animation history. If they don’t — well, the first three films will always exist.
Shrek 5
Studio: DreamWorks Animation / Universal
Expected: Mid-2027
Director: Walt Dohrn
Hear the groaning. Then consider: Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, and Cameron Diaz are all confirmed to return. Walt Dohrn, who directed Shrek Forever After and produced the Trolls films, is steering it. And the script, by the accounts of those who’ve seen early cuts, leans into what made the original two films work — the fairy tale deconstruction and the Murphy-Myers chemistry — rather than the diminishing-returns escalation of three and four.
The original Shrek (2001) is 26 years old. There’s an entire generation of adults who grew up with it, and a generation of children who’ve discovered it on streaming and immediately made it their personality. The cultural appetite for a genuine continuation — not a reboot, not a reimagining, but a proper next chapter — is real.
This is the most uncertain pick on this list. It could be the film that justifies the franchise’s revival. It could confirm every fear about legacy sequel fatigue. The gap between those outcomes is large.
Why it matters: Because if Shrek 5 is good, it will be the biggest surprise at the cinema in years. And if it’s bad, it will be the most anticipated disappointment since Ghostbusters 2016.
The Bottom Line
2027’s theatrical calendar is carrying the weight of several delayed promises at once. The MCU’s multiverse resolution, Villeneuve’s trilogy conclusion, Reeves’ Batman arc, and two animated franchises attempting to prove they still have things to say. They won’t all succeed. But the ambition alone makes 2027 the year worth paying for a cinema ticket again.
Release dates are subject to change. Hollywood remains Hollywood.