If part one of your favorite article of the year—The Playlist’s 150 Most Anticipated Films of 2026— was where we dutifully tipped our hats to the four-quadrant gods — the franchises, the iffy skill issue movies, the IP leviathans and a few pieces of sh*te we don’t really care about but mildly pretend to, for the sake of encapsulating the whole year — then Part Two is where we actually start to cook.
READ MORE: The 150 Most Anticipated Films Of 2026
This is the half of the list that smells like real cinema: the auteurs sprinting through their imperial phases, the foreign films that will quietly rearrange your brain at 10 a.m. in Cannes, the microbudget indies held together with dental floss, recycled nipple pasties and trauma, the passion projects that may never see the inside of a proper release window. These are the movies so indie that they might not actually come out, or might not even exist; maybe we just dreamed them into being during a festival comedown fever spike.
So, yes, the big machines are still grinding away in 2026 — but here’s the other story the year is telling: the strange, the personal, the ambitious, the untested. Welcome to Part Two of the 150 Most Anticipated Films of 2026: the deep cuts, the wild cards, and the films we’re already half in love with, sight unseen.
75. “Wife & Dog”
Working at a pace few filmmakers can match—he’s shot six features since 2022, and at least half a dozen TV eps too—Guy Ritchie continues his rapid-fire run of films and series with “Wife & Dog,” a black comedy set in the ruthless world of British aristocracy. Written and directed by Ritchie, the film stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Rosamund Pike, Anthony Hopkins, Cosmo Jarvis, James Norton, Paddy Considine, and Pip Torrens. Produced by Black Bear Pictures, the project leans once again into power games, status anxiety, and venomous wit.
Release Date: TBD.
74. “Over Your Dead Body”
“Over Your Dead Body” is an English-language remake of the Norwegian thriller “The Trip,” directed by Lonely Island member Jorma Taccone (“Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping” from a script by Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney. The film stars Samara Weaving and Jason Segel as a married couple heading to a remote cabin to fix their relationship, each secretly planning to kill the other. Things get worse when unexpected visitors and shifting alliances turn their murderous getaway into an action thriller of double-crosses and survival. The supporting cast includes Timothy Olyphant, Juliette Lewis, Paul Guilfoyle, Keith Jardine, Kayla Jenee Radomski, and Nikolai Kinski.
Release Date: TBD 2026, via IFC Films.
73. “Klara And The Sun”
Based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, “Klara and the Sun” is directed by Taika Waititi and stars Jenna Ortega, Amy Adams, Mia Tharia, Simon Baker, Natasha Lyonne, and Steve Buscemi. Written by Dahvi Waller, the film follows an artificial companion designed to love a human child as she observes the fragility of human emotion. Produced by Sony Pictures and 3000 Pictures, it adapts Ishiguro’s blend of science fiction and melancholy introspection.
Release Date: TBD via Sony Pictures, but perhaps TIFF is in the cards.
72. “The Basics of Philosophy”
At 79 years old, in reported poor health, but still going strong, Paul Schrader continues his late-career run of stripped-down moral studies with “The Basics of Philosophy,” a drama that centers on a repressed philosophy professor (Jack Huston) whose father’s death sends him careening into the past. Grappling with lingering guilt over a decision from his past, the victim suddenly returns into his life. The supporting cast includes Sofia Boutella, Dana Delany, Bill Pullman, Karl Glusman, Shiloh Fernandez, and Daniel Zovatto, circling the professor as colleagues, former lovers, and emotional counterweights. In keeping with Schrader’s recent work, the film reportedly leans into interior conflict, spiritual malaise, and the slow erosion of certainty, favoring confrontation and introspection over plot mechanics. It marks another chapter in the writer-director’s ongoing fascination with men at the end of their rope, searching for meaning after the structures that defined them begin to fail.
Release Date: TBD, but it wrapped production in September, and surely a festival bow will follow.
71. “The Wrong Girls”
Kristen Stewart, Seth Rogen, Alia Shawkat, and LaKeith Stanfield lead “The Wrong Girls,” a stoner-sci-fi comedy about two drifting friends who gain telepathic powers after trying an experimental drug—instantly putting them on the radar of people who want those abilities for themselves. Written by Stewart and Dylan Meyer and directed by Meyer, the film also features Zack Fox, Tony Hale, Kumail Nanjiani, Thomas Nicholson, Thor Knai, and Thomas La Barbera Christensen. Tonally scrappy, chaotic, and weed-laced, it’s one of Neon’s strangest and most star-stacked swings of 2026.
Release Date: TBA via Neon
