By Movieguide® Staff
The Dolby Colosseum at Caesars Palace is not a subtle room. With seats for thousands and a sound system that reverberates through your core, our Movieguide® team joined with the masses to watch Warner Bros. present their upcoming slate of movies. With actor Patton Oswald on the mic, studio heads Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy launched into a full rundown of what’s to come while largely ignoring the elephant in the room, the looming merger with Skydance that was protested by over 1,000 actors, filmmakers, and creatives, including Don Cheadle, J.J. Abrams.
The studio is set to release 14 movies this year, with another potential 18 on the calendar for 2027.
Here’s a brief look at what’s to come:
DIGGER – October 2026
The room went electric when Tom Cruise took the stage alongside director Alejandro G. Iñárritu for their new movie, DIGGER. Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, a reclusive Southern energy tycoon, donning old age make-up and a fake pot belly who ignores a key warning about one of his pipelines, causing a global catastrophe — and is then ordered by John Goodman’s U.S. president to fix what he broke. Based on the teaser, this looks like a heavy-handed political statement wrapped in a prestige satire, and parents should wait for the full Movieguide® review before taking their older teens.
SUPERGIRL – June 2026
DC Studios head Peter Safran took the stage, noting that James Gunn is busy filming the Superman sequel, Man of Tomorrow, with cameras set to roll the following week. But the night belonged to Kara Zor-El.
Milly Alcock, star of HOUSE OF THE DRAGON, entered to the thudding beats of Blondie’s “Call Me” as streamers fired from the edges of the stage. Then Jason Momoa pulled up — literally — riding in on an intergalactic motorcycle to portray bounty hunter Lobo, a character he said he’d wanted to play since he was 12 years old. The extended clip showed Kara’s ship boarded by space pirates — and her response was hand-to-hand combat described as more reminiscent of John Wick than Christopher Reeve’s Superman.
MOVIEGUIDE® Family Note: The comic storyline it’s based on is darker than the classic Supergirl mythos — this isn’t Helen Slater territory. Expect significant action violence. Our audience will want to pay attention to the content rating when it drops.
Clayface: DC Goes to Horror
In October, Clayface takes the DC universe in a decidedly darker direction. Taking a page from Todd Phillips’s original Joker, director James Watkins — who previously directed multiple Black Mirror episodes — appears to be pursuing a Cronenberg-esque horror approach for DC’s first genuine horror film since Wes Craven’s Swamp Thing in 1982.
MOVIEGUIDE® Family Note: Families, consider this a red flag on the calendar. A DC horror film channeling both Black Mirror and body-horror director David Cronenberg is not family fare. This movie looked like a dark no for families and adults alike but wait for the review.
The Return of the Occult
The most disappointing moment for those of us who value a biblical worldview was the announcement of Practical Magic 2. Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman returned to the stage to celebrate their characters—characters rooted in the practice of witchcraft.
MOVIEGUIDE® Family Note: The original Practical Magic was a spiritually dangerous film that glamorized spells and paganism. This sequel appears to be more of the same.
J.J. Abrams Returns — And Goes Big
J.J. Abrams stepped to the podium for The Great Beyond, his first film since Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in 2019 and his first original feature since Super 8 in 2011. Starring Glen Powell, Jenna Ortega, Emma Mackey, and Samuel L. Jackson, the film takes place in a world on the verge of a close encounter, opening with an H.G. Wells quote and a hint of alien mystery. MOVIEGUIDE® Family Note: A sci-fi mystery from Abrams could go in many directions. The cast skews toward adult audiences. We’ll track content details as more footage releases.
The Moment the Room Held Its Breath: Dune: Part Three
Nothing — nothing — in the evening hit harder than this.
An army of Fremen marched to the CinemaCon stage as footage from Dune: Part Three played on the screen behind them. Two of those Fremen were then elevated by wires into the Colosseum rafters as Denis Villeneuve entered to massive applause, joking, “I always travel with my army with me.” It was one of the most spectacular theatrical entrances I’ve ever witnessed at an industry event. The crowd — a room full of hardened exhibitors who’ve seen everything — went genuinely electric.
Villeneuve confirmed a 17-year time jump between the second and third films.
“The first two movies are like B-movies split in two,” he said. “This one is a thriller — it’s more action-packed, intense, and definitely emotional.”
Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, and Jason Momoa joined Villeneuve onstage. Chalamet said of Paul Atreides, “He’s become his worst vision. He’s struggling to retain the parts of himself he sees the most.” Zendaya added that Chani has been hardened: “That youthful outlook is completely gone.”
Then Villeneuve screened seven minutes of footage exclusively for the room — opening on Javier Bardem’s Stilgar leading an assault on a water-soaked world, before the sequence pivoted sharply into something described as channeling Saving Private Ryan as the Arrakis forces are overwhelmed by heavy firepower. The room was silent. Then it erupted.
The 2027 Preview: Reasons to Smile
Jack Black composed and performed an original song celebrating the 2027 slate, which includes A MINECRAFT MOVIE 2 — now featuring Kirsten Dunst — M. Night Shyamalan’s REMAIN (a ghost story), a Margot Robbie-led OCEAN’S ELEVEN prequel, Keanu Reeves in a shark thriller called SHIVER from DEADPOOL director Tim Miller, and Andy Serkis slipping back into his Gollum voice to tease THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE HUNT FOR GOLLUM.
Families — our 82 million families — deserve to know: This is a slate heavy on darkness, moral complexity, violence, and occult themes. There are reasons to be excited about what’s coming. There are also reasons to be discerning. That’s always been our job. And the movies Warner Bros. just unveiled give us plenty to talk about. Stay with MOVIEGUIDE® as we review each film upon release. We’ll tell you exactly what’s in it — so you can decide.
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