The road to Dunesday: Euronews Culture’s massive Fall movie preview

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By Nancy Martin - usagevpn.com
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Autumn 2026’s Film Slate: What to Watch Between September and December

Usagevpn.com – The summer curtain has fallen on a season that delivered everything from the horror thrills of Obsession and Backrooms to the box-office earthquake of Spider-Man: Brand New Day. With eight months of cinema already behind us, the question now shifts forward: what fills the remaining four months of 2026? The answer is a densely packed calendar of premieres, festival debuts, and wide releases stretching from September through December — a stretch that culminates in a single December day when two of the year’s most anticipated blockbusters arrive in theaters simultaneously.

Navigating that congestion is the purpose of this guide. Release dates differ across European markets, so the titles below are arranged in roughly chronological order of their earliest European screenings. Two notable absences deserve explanation: Fjord, this year’s Palme d’Or recipient, and Fatherland, have already reached certain European territories and received separate coverage. They are not omitted by oversight but by editorial timing.

The Oasis Documentary: A Reunion Captured on Film

While fans of the Madferit lot wait for new tour dates slated for 2027, a documentary chronicling the Oasis Live ’25 reunion tour arrives to fill the gap. The film premiered at this year’s Venice Film Festival and carries a promotional description that frames it as

“an unapologetically uplifting account of the biggest musical event of 2025, capturing the experience and emotions of the band and their fans across the world.”

Cinemas receive the film this month, with an exclusive streaming window on Disney+ planned later in the year. For a band whose reunion tour dominated cultural conversation throughout 2025, the documentary functions both as archival record and as a bridge to whatever comes next in their touring schedule.

The Witches Sequel: Bullock and Kidman Return to the Coven

Nearly three decades have passed since Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman portrayed the witchy siblings Sally and Gillian in the original The Witches. Now the two lead actresses reunite for a sequel that also brings back Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing, while introducing Joey King, Lee Pace, and Maisie Williams into the ensemble. The plot centers on a multi-generational curse threading through the family line.

Behind the camera sits Susanne Bier, whose prior credits include Open Hearts, In A Better World, and The Night Manager. Her involvement raises expectations considerably for a project that blends family saga with supernatural menace.

Resident Evil Gets a Directorial Reset

Seven Resident Evil films have shipped since 2002, and the collective reception of that run spans the full spectrum from mediocre to genuinely poor. The franchise’s next entry, however, marks a significant creative pivot: Zach Cregger — the writer-director behind Barbarian and last year’s Weapons — co-writes and directs. The project is positioned as a fresh interpretation of the source material, and the central question is whether Cregger’s transition from independent horror to franchise-scale fright can finally break what fans have long called the console-to-theatre curse.

Robert Pattinson’s Year of Extremes

Few actors have accumulated as much narrative momentum in a single calendar year as Pattinson. He played a hapless groom-to-be in The Drama, a sniveling suitor in The Odyssey, and will close out 2026 as a power-hungry schemer in Dune: Part Three. Sandwiched between those roles is a turn as Chris Hansen, host of the morally dubious reality show To Catch a Predator, directed by Lance Oppenheim — a documentarian making his narrative-feature debut after Some Kind of Heaven and Spermworld. Early trailer material carries strong Nightcrawler energy, and the question of whether an Oscar nomination is within reach has entered the conversation.

Anne Hathaway’s Fifth Feature: Verity

Following Mother Mary, The Devil Wears Prada 2, The Odyssey, and The End Of Oak Street, Hathaway steps into her fifth feature of 2026 with Verity, an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s novel. She portrays a celebrated author whose unfinished book series draws a struggling writer — played by Dakota Johnson — into her household and, gradually, into the orbit of her husband, Josh Hartnett. The source material has been characterized as

“a gothic, psychosexual thriller in the vein of Rebecca and Gone Girl.”

The comparison to Rebecca and Gone Girl lands with particular force given the novel’s origins in the same authorial universe as It Ends With Us, whose 2024 film adaptation was widely panned. Whether Verity can salvage critical goodwill for its leading lady remains to be seen.

Will Digger: Cruise’s Most Radical Role Since Tropic Thunder

The first trailer for Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Will Digger has offered audiences a glimpse of Tom Cruise in what appears to be his most physically and psychologically transformative performance since Tropic Thunder. He embodies Digger Rockwell, a powerful Texas oil magnate who

“embarks on a frantic mission to prove that he is humanity’s saviour before the disaster he’s un…”

The truncated promotional language hints at a character arc built around self-mythology and impending catastrophe. For an actor of Cruise’s stature, the question of whether this role finally secures an Academy nomination has become the defining Oscar-season narrative of late 2026.

What the Fall Slate Signals

Taken together, these titles illustrate a broader pattern: 2026’s second half is defined by franchise reinvention (Resident Evil, Dune), legacy-actor reunions (Bullock, Kidman, Cruise), and auteur-driven reinterpretations of existing IP. The simultaneous December arrival of two tentpole releases compresses the year’s commercial climax into a single weekend, making the preceding months a kind of runway. For viewers across Europe, the practical implication is simple — the next four months will demand careful scheduling, and the calendar above is designed to help with exactly that.

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