A Week of Exciting Movie News
This week has seen some pretty major movie announcements come down the pipeline. Much of that’s due to CinemaCon, a convention that’s primarily for movie theater owners but is also used by movie studios to drop news concerning their release schedule — and that’s definitely the case this year.
Spider-Man Swings Again
First up, Sony Pictures announced a release date for the long-awaited and highly anticipated Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse. The third and final Spider-Verse film will swing into theaters on June 4, 2027 after a long and much-delayed production; the previous film, Across the Spider-Verse, was released back in 2023. Sony screened a brief teaser for the film — which has yet to be released publicly — and released some new imagery.
Sony also announced the fourth Tom Holland Spider-Man film: Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which will be released on July 31, 2026. Filming begins this summer. No plot details have been released but it’s safe to assume that the film will focus on Peter Parker trying to figure out how to be Spider-Man in a world that no longer remembers him, following the events of 2021’s No Way Home.
I’m Thinking He’s Back
Meanwhile, Lionsgate dropped some big news about the John Wick franchise. Although it seemed like 2023’s John Wick: Chapter Four brought the iconic assassin’s story to a close, Keanu Reeves is returning for a fifth John Wick film along with director Chad Stahelski.
And if a fifth John Wick film wasn’t enough, the studio also announced several more Wick-related titles. These include an animated prequel to the first John Wick movie that focuses on Wick’s “impossible task,” which allowed him to leave the High Table and get married as well as a film about Wick’s contemporary Caine, a blind assassin played by Donnie Yen. Yen will direct the latter, which will be set in Hong Kong and presumably follow up on the post-credits scene in John Wick: Chapter Four.
Going for a Long Walk
Lionsgate also announced an upcoming adaptation of Stephen King’s The Long Walk, which was originally published in 1979 under King’s Richard Bachman pseudonym. Directed by Francis Lawrence (The Hunger Games, Constantine), the film follows a group of teens who are forced to walk a hundred miles through a dystopian America as part of a twisted competition. (In an uncharacteristic turn, Star Wars’ Mark Hamill plays the film’s villain.) The Long Walk will be stroll into theaters on September 12, 2025, two months before Edgar Wright’s adaptation of Bachman’s The Running Man.
The Coyote Finally Gets His Day in Court
Last year, I wrote about Coyote vs. Acme, a live-action/animated hybrid film about Wile E. Coyote suing the Acme Corporation after their inventions keep failing to capture the Roadrunner. Despite garnering some initial buzz, the film was shelved by Warner Brothers for a tax write-off. But as of this week, the studio has sold the film’s worldwide rights to Ketchup Entertainment, which released The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie earlier this year. Coyote vs. Acme will be released sometime in 2026.
Journeying to Hyrule
Back in November 2023, Shigeru Miyamoto announced plans for a live-action Legend of Zelda movie based on the iconic game franchise. We now know that filming will begin later this year in New Zealand, with a planned release date of March 26, 2027, it’s being directed by Wes Ball (Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes), and it could be the first film in a trilogy.