The festival mania is on the cusp, fall pivots hard into discovery and delivery: studios roll out franchise fare and awards hopefuls while streamers counter with auteur projects and buzzy originals. Across September to December, the calendar swings from franchise codas like “The Conjuring: Last Rites” to prestige swings from Paul Thomas Anderson (“One Battle After Another”) and Noah Baumbach (“Jay Kelly”), with Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein” threading the needle—limited theatrical, then a global streamer bow. Elsewhere, Daniel Day-Lewis returns to the screen in “Anemone,” Luca Guadagnino courts campus intrigue with “After the Hunt,” and Richard Linklater tunes a mid-century backstage chamber piece in “Blue Moon.”
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That range is the headline: high-concept studio plays sit beside intimate character studies, and the pipeline’s as global as it is cross-platform. Arthouse dramas (“Die, My Love,” “Eleanor the Great,” “The History of Sound”) share space with neon-noir and survival thrillers (“Ballad of a Small Player,” “Predator: Badlands”), while animation and family titles (“The Twits,” “Zootopia 2”) claim their own corridors of the multiplex. Horror and midnight energy remain a fall constant—“The Black Phone 2,” early October’s “The Smashing Machine” as a bruising character piece rather than pure spectacle—plus Raoul Peck’s doc “Orwell: 2+2=5,” sharpens the nonfiction edge amid fiction’s roar.
By November and December, release strategies splinter—platforming runs, week-to-week expansions, streamer drops—and so do ambitions: mega-tentpoles (“Avatar: Fire and Ash”), music-world portraits (“Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere,” “Song Sung Blue”), glossy puzzle boxes (“Wake Up Dead Man”), and sleek IP revivals (“TRON: Ares,” “Mortal Kombat II”). The result is a genuinely wide fall slate: new voices beside returning giants, international perspectives beside domestic crowd-pleasers, and formats that bounce from 35mm to day-and-date. However you queue it—art house, IMAX, living room—there’s a lane here built for it.
SEPTEMBER
“The Conjuring: Last Rites”
Director Michael Chaves closes the mainline saga with Ed and Lorraine Warren confronting a final, allegedly Smurl-haunting–inspired case; James Wan and Peter Safran produce, and the script comes from Ian Goldberg, Richard Naing, and David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick. Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson reprise, joined by Ben Hardy and Mia Tomlinson, as the Warrens push into their darkest chapter.
Release Date: September 5 via Warner Bros./New Line.
“The Threesome”
Chad Hartigan directs Ethan Ogilby’s debut screenplay about a couple (Zoey Deutch, Jonah Hauer-King) whose impulsive night with a stranger (Ruby Cruz) upends their lives when both women become pregnant; the ensemble also features Jaboukie Young-White, Josh Segarra, Arden Myrin, Julia Sweeney, Robert Longstreet, Kristin Slaysman, and Allan McLeod.
Release Date: September 5 via Vertical.
“The Baltimorons”
Jay Duplass’ solo feature follows a newly sober improv comic (Michael Strassner) whose cracked tooth on Christmas Eve lands him with an older, no-nonsense dentist (Liz Larsen); what begins as emergency care turns into an all-night Baltimore odyssey with Olivia Luccardi in support and Duplass & Strassner co-writing.
Release Date: September 5 (NY/limited) via IFC Films.
“The Long Walk”
Francis Lawrence adapts Stephen King’s dystopia about a state-sanctioned endurance contest where teenage boys must keep moving or die; JT Mollner scripts, and an ensemble led by Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson anchors the survival drama’s brutality and camaraderie. Charlie Plummer, Josh Hamilton, Judy Greer, and Mark Hamill also appear.
Release Date: September 12 via Lionsgate.
“Spinal Tap II: The End Continues”
Rob Reiner returns to chronicle the dim-witted metal gods as Nigel Tufnel, David St. Hubbins, and Derek Smalls (Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer) reunite for one more disastrous bid at glory; the trailer teases music-royalty cameos, including Elton John and Paul McCartney.
Release Date: September 12 via Bleecker Street.
“The History of Sound”
Oliver Hermanus adapts Ben Shattuck’s story of Lionel (Paul Mescal) and David (Josh O’Connor), music students who reunite after WWI to travel rural Maine recording folk songs; as their fieldwork deepens, so does their bond. Chris Cooper co-stars; MUBI handles U.S. distribution.
Release Date: September 12 via MUBI.
“A Big Bold Beautiful Journey”
Kogonada’s romantic fantasy pairs Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell in a reality-skewing road tale about chance and connection, written by Seth Reiss, with Kevin Kline, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Jodie Turner-Smith, and Billy Magnussen among the key players; expect meticulous design and intimate scale on a studio rollout.
Release Date: September 19 via Sony Pictures Releasing.
“The Lost Bus”
Paul Greengrass and co-writer Brad Ingelsby (“Mare Of Easttown” creator) dramatize the 2018 Camp Fire escape chronicled in Lizzie Johnson’s “Paradise,” with Matthew McConaughey as school-bus driver Kevin McKay and America Ferrera as teacher Mary Ludwig guiding children through an inferno; Apple positions a limited theatrical bow before streaming.
Release Date: September 19 (limited) via Apple TV+.
“Megadoc”
Mike Figgis’ raw, fly-on-the-wall chronicle of Francis Ford Coppola’s decades-long quest to make his self-financed passion project “Megalopolis,” weaving archival footage, on-set access, and unfiltered interviews into a creative memoir unfolding in real time rather than a disaster diary. The portrait threads Roman history, political allegory, and stubborn vision, featuring Coppola and collaborators across eras — Eleanor Coppola, Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel, Giancarlo Esposito, Aubrey Plaza, Dustin Hoffman, Shia LaBeouf, Laurence Fishburne, Jon Voight, and George Lucas among them — as a legendary filmmaker wills a world into being. Release Date: September 19 via Utopia.
“One Battle After Another”
Paul Thomas Anderson mounts a paranoia-streaked action thriller about ex-revolutionaries forced to reunite when an old nemesis resurfaces; Leonardo DiCaprio leads an ensemble with Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Wood Harris, and newcomer Chase Infiniti, with a score by Jonny Greenwood.
Release Date: September 26 via Warner Bros.
