From the return of Indiana Jones to Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, here’s what’s to see from May through August.
(Bloomberg) — The summer movie season is back, with some familiar faces lighting up the big screen. There’s the return of franchise favorites: Tom Cruise will appear in his seventh Mission Impossible film; and Harrison Ford will once again pick up Indiana Jones’s fedora and whip—get ready to hum the John Williams score on your way out of the theater. The Little Mermaid has been remade in live action for a new generation of Disney princess fans. And nine years after the first Guardians of the Galaxy grossed $773 million dollars, the trilogy will come to a close this May.
It’s already been a promising start to the season. Last month, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, from Universal, nabbed the biggest opening weekend of the year so far and a record debut for an animated film. Get your popcorn ready, here’s a list of some of the most exciting movies to hit the big screen this summer, arranged by release dates in the US.
Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol 3 — May 5
James Gunn’s final take on this corner of the Marvel multiverse is a character-driven story that kicks off the summer movie season in style. Our critic Esther Zuckerman calls it a mostly successful swan song to the franchise, with a “creepy heart.”
BlackBerry — May 12
Remember the phone everyone had before the iPhone? The rise and fall of the once-ubiquitous BlackBerry device is chronicled in this biopic starring Jay Baruchel and Glenn Howerton.
Fast X — May 19
Vin Diesel and the Fast family are back for this summer’s edition of the popular street racing series—and our favorite supercar spotting opportunity. Aquaman’s Jason Momoa takes on the villain mantle, playing the son of a drug lord out for revenge. Fun fact: This will be the first film in the franchise to feature electric cars.
The Little Mermaid — May 26
Halle Bailey stars as the eponymous little mermaid who’s fascinated with the human world in Disney’s live-action take on its 1989 animated classic musical. Melissa McCarthy plays the villainous sea witch Ursula, and composer Alan Menken has returned to compose the score, which includes new songs written with Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse — June 2
The hotly anticipated sequel to Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse sees web-slinging hero Miles Morales team up with Gwen Stacy for a new adventure. The first film, which garnered directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller an Oscar nomination for best animated film, featured multiple Spider-men teaming up before No Way Home did the same and broke box office records.
Asteroid City — June 16
Wes Anderson’s newest film has a starry lineup of actors, including frequent collaborators Adrien Brody, Tony Revolori and Jason Schwartzman, alongside Scarlett Johansson and Tom Hanks. The film tells the story of an American desert town in the 1950s and its Junior Stargazer convention—expect elaborate world building and bold color palettes.
No Hard Feelings — June 23
Jennifer Lawrence gets to show off her comedic chops in this R-rated sex comedy directed by Gene Stupnitsky, a writer on The Office. The Oscar winner plays a struggling Uber driver who gets paid to date the awkward son of a wealthy family.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny — June 30
Harrison Ford is back as everyone’s favorite Nazi-fighting archeologist, in his fifth and likely final outing as Indy. James Mangold ( Ford v Ferrari) is directing this time, with Fleabag’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge playing Jones’s goddaughter in a globe-trotting adventure involving the space race and the Cold War. This time, Mads Mikkelsen plays the Nazi villain.
Joy Ride — July 7
Everything Everywhere All at Once breakout star Stephanie Hsu and Emily in Paris’s Ashley Park lead this comedy about Asian-American friends who travel abroad in search of one of their birth mothers. It’s the directorial debut of Adele Lim, co-writer of Crazy Rich Asians (which turned out to not be as crazy as you might think).
Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One — July 12
Last summer, Tom Cruise was the king of the box office with his sequel to Top Gun, and he’s back playing one of his other of his archetypal characters—and doing his usual death-defying stunts. (Cruise can be seen jumping off a cliff in a motorcycle in the trailer.) The film, directed by Christopher McQuarrie, who also helmed Top Gun: Maverick, picks up where 2018’s Mission: Impossible—Fallout left off.
Barbie — July 21
Oscar-nominee Greta Gerwig directs the first live-action Barbie film, starring Margot Robbie as the titular character and Ryan Gosling as Ken in what’s sure to be a fun and feminist take on the world’s most famous doll. Issa Rae, Nicola Coughlan, Emma Mackey, Kate McKinnon and Alexandra Shipp also play incarnations of Barbie, proving that Spider-Man’s not the only franchise to wheel out different variations of a character.
Oppenheimer — July 21
Cillian Murphy stars as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, in Christopher Nolan’s biopic, with a A-list supporting cast including Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr. and Florence Pugh. Nolan, who’s called Oppenheimer the “ most important person who ever lived,” used real-world physical effects to re-create the detonation of a nuclear bomb, so it’s sure to be worth seeing on the big screen.
Blue Beetle — August 18
This film stars Xolo Maridueña (Cobra Kai) as Jaime Reyes, a college grad who gets transformed into a superhero by coming into contact with a alien relic. It’ll be the first solo film for a Latino superhero in the DC universe; director Angel Manuel Soto called it an ‘unapologetically Latino’ superhero film.
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