By Tim Haggerty & Jeffrey Sanzel
Summer means beaches and vacations. But diversions also include an entire roster of summer movie releases. Here is an overview of some of the more exciting films coming to the big screen.
Materialists
Dakota Johnson is a professional matchmaker who, ironically, struggles with her own romantic woes. Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans co-star as her potential suitors. Celine Song, Oscar-nominated for Past Lives (2023), helms the film.
Rated R · Release date June 13
How to Train Your Dragon
DreamWorks joins the live-action bandwagon with Mason Thomas (The Black Phone) playing Hiccup, the brainy teen who tames the titular beast. Credit goes to the digital FX team, who replicated the animated version of Toothless, the winged creature that bonds with the hero in a big way.
Rated PG · Release date June 13
Elio
Pixar’s newest animated adventure focuses on eleven-year-old Elio, whose belief in intelligent life forms in the galaxy proves true. The real twist comes when the aliens decide that Elio is Earth’s one true leader. Coco veteran Madeline Sharafian and Domee Shi co-direct.
Rated PG · Release date June 20
28 Years Later
The third in the dystopian series (28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later) picks up nearly three decades later. The violent, virus-ridden zombies still live among us, making things difficult for dad Aaron Taylor-Johnson and his son Alfie Williams. Jodie Comer and Ralph Fiennes are among the non-infected fighting off the walking not-quite-dead.
Rated R · Release date June 20
F1 The Movie
Brad Pitt is front and center as a former hotshot driver who left the circuit after an accident left him shaken. For this Formula One drama, Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick) directs a cast that includes Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, and Javier Bardem.
Rated PG-13 · Release date June 27
Sorry Baby
The big discovery of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, writer-director-star Eva Victor’s film follows a woman returning to her former alma mater as a professor — the same university that was the site of a trauma with which she has never come to terms. Harrowing, hilarious, and not a little fractured, Victor’s debut makes her an exciting new multi-hyphenate.
Rated R · Release date June 27
M3GAN 2.0
She’s back and more homicidal than ever! The sequel to the 2022 horror flick marks the return of the genre’s reigning killer doll (with apologies to Chucky). Amie Donald is back as the title character, and Allison Williams and Violet McGraw reprise their roles as the objects of both M3GAN’s love and wrath.
Rated PG-13 · Release date June 27
Jurassic World Rebirth
Because you can’t keep a lucrative franchise—or a carnivorous dinosaur—down! Scarlett Johansson leads an operation designed to track down the few remaining dinosaurs left after Jurassic World: Dominion.
Rated PG-13 · Release date July 2
40 Acres
The mighty Danielle Deadwyler (Till, Woman in the Yard, The Piano Lesson) steers a community of postapocalyptic survivors who have managed to turn a patch of farmland into a sanctuary — the kind that one must vigilantly defend from various other parties trying to survive in a scorched-earth world.
Rated R · Release date July 4
Superman
Clearly, Superman is the most anticipated movie of the summer. David Corenswet dons the red cape to play the Man of Steel and his alter ego, Clark Kent; Rachel Brosnahan is Lois Lane; Nicholas Hoult is arch enemy master villain Lex Luthor. James Gunn’s first big project in the DC Cinematic Universe 2.0 even includes Krypto the Dog.
Rated PG-13 · Release date July 11
I Know What You Did Last Summer
The popular fisherman-with-a-hook 1997 slasher gets a “requel”: meaning a “reboot” and “sequel.” Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. return along with a host of new faces (Sarah Pidgeon, Chase Sui Wonders, Madelyn Cline, Jonah Hauer-King, Tyriq Winters).
Rated R · Release date July 18
Eddington
The town is Eddington, New Mexico, and the battle is between the Southwestern hamlet’s “law-and-order” sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix) and its mayor (Pedro Pascal). The man behind the camera is writer-director Ari Aster (Hereditary, Midsommar, Beau Is Afraid), so things are likely to get good and weird.
Rated R · Release date July 18
Fantastic Four: First Steps
Once again (or in this case third time’s a charm), Marvel is attempting to turn the popular comic into a top-tier superhero movie. Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach are the famous and fabulous quartet.
Rated PG-13 · Release date July 25
Oh, Hi
A Sundance sleeper hit, this old-fashioned boy (Logan Lerman) meets girl (Molly Gordon), boy and girl go away for a weekend, and boy and girl fall apart, has built major rom-com buzz before Sony Picture Classics picked it up.
Rated PG-13 · Release date July 25
Together
Michael Shanks directs real-life spouses Dave Franco and Alison Brie who become much closer in this body-horror film that takes lending a hand to a whole new level.
Rated R · Release date July 30
The Naked Gun 4: Rhythm of Evil
Lonely Island director Akiva Schaffer directs Liam Neeson (yes, Oskar Schindler) as Frank Drebin, the role indelibly created by Leslie Nielsen in this fourth entry to the ridiculous Police Squad world.
Not Yet Rated · Release date August 1
Freakier Friday
Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan reunite after twenty years for the sequel to the 2003 remake of Mary Rodgers’ Freaky Friday. The body-switching comedy promises comedy, if not nostalgia.
Not Yet Rated · Release date August 8
Honey Don’t!
Filmmaker Ethan Coen and co-writer/editor/life-partner-in-crime Tricia Cooke offer the second of their proposed “lesbian B-movie trilogy,” with Margaret Qualley (Drive-Away Dolls) playing hardboiled detective Honey O’Donoghue, a throwback gumshoe with both moxie and verve.
Rated R · Release date August 22
Americana
A highly prized Native American artifact leads a host of intriguing characters down a dangerous path in this wildly entertaining present-day western.
Rated R · Release date August 22
Lurker
Another standout from Sundance, writer-director Alex Russell’s debut takes a well-worn subject — the disparity of power between the famous and the famous-adjacent — and manifesting danger and cringeworthy comedy.
Rated R · Release date August 22
Caught Stealing
Darren Aronofsky directs this NYC crime thriller, in which several Lower East Side characters —a former baseball star (Austin Butler), his EMT girlfriend (Zoë Kravitz), his punk-rocker neighbor (Matt Smith), and a variety of gangsters and thugs circa 1998 — find themselves involved in missing Mob money.
Rated R · Release date August 29
The Roses
Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman star in a remake of the 1989 dark comedy, which starred Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. One of the most bitter battles of marital strife, the new outing promises to be as bleak and venomous as the original.
Rated R · Release date August 29
This article originally appeared in TBR News Media’s Summer Times supplement on June 19, 2025.
