This new year at Universal Pictures is a celebration of filmmaking and of filmmakers. In the wake of our stellar 2025 with the success of the live-action How to Train Your Dragon, the launch of a new Jurassic World era, a new chapter in the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise and the conclusion of the Wicked phenomenon, Universal is pulling out all the stops on 2026, with fresh new titles from the most beloved blockbuster franchises to thrilling new original stories from the most exciting and legendary filmmakers working in cinema today.

We welcomed in spring two weeks ago with the launch of Nintendo and Illumination’s The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and a delicious new romantic comedy from Will Packer: You, Me & Tuscany. Now, we are about to blow the doors off of summer, starting, appropriately, with the filmmaker who created the modern summer blockbuster.

Steven Spielberg’s new original thriller, Disclosure Day, arrives June 12, shrouded in electrifying secrecy, magnified by the film’s vivid imagery and mysterious iconography. The innovative campaign on this film harkens back to a time when audiences walked into a theater on opening weekend knowing almost nothing about what they were about to experience. Based on a story by Spielberg, the film is about ordinary people caught in extraordinary circumstances, as they discover a world-changing secret that has been concealed for decades.

One July 1, the biggest global animated franchise in history, Illumination’s Minions, will rule the July 4 weekend again with a joyful, riotous new chapter featuring all-new characters. Directed by Pierre Coffin and produced by Chris Meledandri and Bill Ryan, Minions & Monsters is the rambunctious, ridiculous and totally true story of how the Minions conquered Hollywood, became movie stars, lost everything, unleashed monsters onto the world and then banded together to try and save the planet from the chaos they created. 

Following his Academy Award^® winning Best Picture Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan returns to Universal with his game-changing new film, The Odyssey, a mythic action epic shot across the world using brand new IMAX^® film technology. The film brings Homer’s foundational saga to IMAX^® film screens for the first time and opens in theaters July 17. Written and directed by Nolan and produced by Emma Thomas and Nolan, the film stars Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson and Lupita Nyong’o, with Zendaya and Charlize Theron.

Then, on August 7, Will Gluck, the writer-director of Anyone But You and Friends with Benefits, celebrates romantic comedy on the big screen with a fresh, funny, swoony new original film about searching for love on the least romantic night of the year. One Night Only stars Academy Award^® nominee Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner as two love-starved strangers who crash into each other in an ever-so-slightly fictionalized New York City on the one night of the year when single people are allowed to have sex.

DreamWorks Animation inaugurates our fall slate on September 25 with Forgotten Island, a dazzling and emotional new original film about friendship, mythology and memory, created by the writing-directing team of Academy Award^® nominee Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado and produced by Academy Award^® nominee Mark Swift.

Academy Award^® winner Jessica Chastain slips into terror on October 9 with Other Mommy. From James Wan, one of the most influential architects of modern horror, and bold genre director Rob Savage, comes a terrifying, supernatural trip into the darkening world of a young girl as her family, and their home, are haunted by a sinister entity that is determined to take up residence inside her. But first, it needs to persuade her to let it in …

Then, on Thanksgiving weekend, audiences will get to enter the Circle of Trust for the first time in 16 years with the side-splitting new chapter in the blockbuster Meet the Parents comedy series, Focker-In-Law. Written and directed by John Hamburg, the screenwriter of Meet the Fockers and Little Fockers, the film stars Ben Stiller, Academy Award^® winner Robert DeNiro and Academy Award^® nominee Ariana Grande.

Finally, the holidays go dark again as blockbuster 87North producers Kelly McCormick and David Leitch unleash a new round of yuletide mayhem on audiences everywhere as a brawling, bare-knuckle St. Nick (David Harbour) returns to theaters on December 4 with Violent Night 2.

At Universal, we champion the creative power and daring vision of the industry’s most groundbreaking filmmakers, both the titans who have shaped cinema for decades and the electrifying new generation who will shape cinema for decades to come. Our 2026 slate stands as evidence of our commitment to storytelling that blows you back in your seat in awe and makes you lean forward in wonder.

Thank you for your enduring commitment to providing audiences with the ideal theatrical environment to experience the apex of modern cinema, for your dedication to this industry, and for your unwavering passion for this art form.