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Cinema isn’t just about the latest Disney/Pixar project or Star Wars spin-off. Memorable storytelling is happening all over the film industry, from Hollywood’s box-office-busting superhero smashes to small, innovative indie experiments. The Verge’s film section is here to help you sort through the latest Hollywood news and reviews, from favorite genres like sci-fi, fantasy, and horror to the independent movies that matter.

Superman’s Fortress of Solitude is a Silver Age man cave inspired by nature’s beauty

At one point, production designer Beth Mickle contemplated just building the Kryptonian stronghold out of ice.

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A Sundance standout is coming to Netflix.

Train Dreams, which was one of my favorite films at the festival this year, is streaming on November 21st, and will also be coming to select theaters this fall. It’s an understated and heartbreaking movie about coping with loss and change, telling a story that spans a single lifetime and is buoyed by some incredible performances from Joel Edgerton and Felicity Jones. You can get a feel for it in the new trailer below.

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Sean Hollister
I tested the Star Wars droid that carries things for you.

Oh, I had such high hopes for the Piaggio G1T4-M1N1 (“Gita Mini”). An officially licensed Star Wars bot that follows you around, dodging pedestrians while carrying 20 pounds of cargo and playing The Imperial March on its party speaker? Heck yes. But a single walk to the park showed me that this $2,875 bot doesn’t have enough smarts. (I couldn’t fit all its fails into one video!)

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Andrew Webster
Mo’ money no problems?

Good Fortune seems familiar on the surface — Keanu Reeves is an angel who tries to show the destitute Aziz Ansari that money isn’t everything — but the formulaic plan also appears to backfire when it turns out money does fix a lot of problems. You can check out the new trailer here, while the movie hits theaters on October 17th.

Fantastic Four: First Steps’ greatest superpower is its gorgeous visuals

The new Fantastic Four movie is a little formulaic, but it features some of Marvel’s most impressive set pieces yet.

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Jay Peters
The trailer for the third Avatar movie will be available exclusively in theaters.

Well, at least “this weekend,” according to a post on X. You can see the trailer before showings of The Fantastic Four: First Steps.

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Charles Pulliam-Moore
Predator: Badlands’ new trailer puts Yautja on the menu.

We knew Predator: Badlands was going to tell the story of an outcast Yautja forced to prove its worth by surviving on a planet full of monsters. But the movie’s latest trailer reveals that the Predator’s human-seeming companion Thia (Elle Fanning) is actually a Weyland-Yutani android, and the pair are going to find themselves fighting what appears to be... alien dinosaurs.

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Charles Pulliam-Moore
Spider-Verse, Spider-Verse, another delay for the next Spider-Verse.

Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse was slated to his theaters on June 4th 2027, but The Wrap reports that Sony has pushed the film’s debut back by a few weeks to June 25th.

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Andrew Webster
A quick turnaround.

Wes Anderson’s latest, The Phoenician Scheme, is still in select theaters, but it’ll also be streaming very soon. Peacock just announced that it’ll air the movie starting on July 25th. The news comes just a day after the streamer announced a sizable price hike.

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Andrew Webster
That ‘90s fighter you like is going to come back in style.

The first trailer for Mortal Kombat IIyes, there was a first one — is heavy on meta humor and, as you’d expect, on action. And it doesn’t look like it’s skimping on the gore. The good news is that the new movie will focus on the titular tournament when it hits theaters in October. Even better: Karl Urban is shaping up to be an excellent Johnny Cage.

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We’re doing it live.

Disney Plus is continuing to take steps into the world of live streaming, this time to promote The Fantastic Four: First Steps. Subscribers will be able to watch the red blue carpet event on July 21st, live from the film’s premiere at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. For the rest of us, the movie hits theaters on July 25th.

The best movie about the pandemic yet is still not a very good movie

Eddington hilariously and diligently evokes 2020 but has learned nothing from it.

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Jess Weatherbed
This filmmaker is fighting piracy with piracy.

We’re All Gonna Die director Freddie Wong uploaded the movie to torrent networks with an exclusive intro message, on the same day it was released for digital download. Wong hopes viewers will support future filmmaking efforts by buying a lousy JPEG that proudly proclaims their pirate nature. Yarrr.

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Andrew Webster
What if Avatar was about beavers?

That certainly seems like the premise of Pixar’s next feature, Hoppers, where people can inhabit 3D-printed versions of animals and live amongst the real ones in the wild. It also has a bit of a Wild Robot vibe, which isn’t a bad thing. Hoppers hits theaters on March 6th, 2026.

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Charles Pulliam-Moore
MORTAL KOUNTDOWN.

A sequel to Warner Bros.’ 2021 Mortal Kombat movie (which you definitely remember) is hitting theaters on October 24th. And when the movie’s first trailer drops tomorrow, we’ll be able to see whether Karl Urban’s Johnny Cage and Tati Gabrielle’s Jade are something to get excited about.

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Look out.

Next year’s Supergirl movie promises to be a little more rough and ready than Superman, so this first official look at the film suits it well.

Milly Alcock plays the Kryptonian cousin, following a cameo in Superman, in a story adapting the comics’ Woman of Tomorrow arc. It’s DC’s next movie, followed by Clayface, a body horror take on the Batman villain.

Poster for Supergirl with ‘Look Out’ graffitied over a Superman logo
Image: DC Studios
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Dominic Preston
Superman’s an all-American hit again.

Director James Gunn’s DCU reboot scored $122 million in the US this weekend, the best launch ever for a Superman solo pick, and the biggest comic opening since Deadpool & Wolverine.

That’s a strong start, but $95 million in the rest of the world is less impressive, suggesting the Man of Steel hasn’t entirely shed the patriotic sheen that Trump tried to take advantage of. That probably hurts its hopes of joining the billion dollar club.

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Charles Pulliam-Moore
Luma’s going to LA.

Luma, the AI startup whose video generation tool almost immediately started churning out IP-infringing slop when it launched last year, is opening up a “combined meeting, coworking and educational” space in Los Angeles, per The Hollywood Reporter. The venue’s meant to give filmmakers a place where they can experiment with this technology, which has produced pretty lackluster output so far.

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Space 11 Corp is adding a NASA vet to its ranks.

After years of working as NASA’s film liaison, Bert Ulrich is reportedly heading to Space 11 Corp — a studio focused on making cinematic projects about and sometimes set in outer space — where he will serve as executive vice president of production development and communications.

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Ne Zha 2 is getting an English release.

The record-breaking animated film is going to be hitting theaters in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand on August 22nd, this time with dialogue in English. CMC Pictures has partnered with A24 for the new release, and the cast will include Michelle Yeoh, who described the movie in a statement as “a landmark in Chinese animation and a powerful reminder of how universal our stories can be.”

James Gunn’s Superman is exactly what DC’s movies have been missing

DC Studios’ new Superman movie feels like a wild comic book that’s been brought to life.

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The third Dune movie is titled “Dune: Part Three.”

It won’t be called Dune: Messiah even though it’s an adaptation of that book, Variety reports. The movie is set to release in December 2026.

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Jess Weatherbed
F1 is Apple’s new polesitter.

The racing drama is now Apple’s highest-grossing movie to date after generating $293 million at the global box office over the last ten days, overtaking the $221 million total intake set by Ridley Scott’s Napoleon in 2023. It’s a short leaderboard given that Apple has only released five films theatrically, however, and it already covers the $250 million that F1 cost to produce.

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Jess Weatherbed
Saja beats your idols.

Netflix only released the Sony-animated K-Pop Demon Hunters movie two weeks ago, but its catchy soundtrack is already beating out established K-pop artists in the US. “Your Idol” by the Saja Boys — the movie’s villainous and entirely fictional boy band backed by some respected voices — hit No.2 on the US Spotify chart Thursday, dethroning BTS as the highest-charting K-pop band in US Spotify history.

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Charles Pulliam-Moore
Boys Go to Jupiter to get more ...isometric.

From director Julian Glander (Summer Camp Island), Boys Go to Jupiter revolves around Billy 5000 (Jack Corbett) — a gig worker whose life is upended when he stumbles across an alien egg that hatches into a small creature he must take care of. The movie looks equal parts inspired, adorable, and like something worth checking out when it hits theaters on August 8th.

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Charles Pulliam-Moore
Blumhouse is going back to the drawing board.

You could see that Blumhouse really believed it could recreate the success of the original M3gan with its recently-released sequel. But according to The Hollywood Reporter, M3gan 2.0’s bombing at the box office this month has spooked the studio into reassessing its plans to put out a spin-off next year.

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Night of the streaming dead.

If you missed Brandon Salisbury’s documentary George Romero’s Resident Evil earlier this year — which, as the name implies, explores Romero’s failed adaptation of the the Capcom survival horror series — now it’s available to watch for free on YouTube.

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Can’t keep runnin’ away.

Not long after the first trailer for The Long Walk, we’re getting a look at another adaptation of a Stephen King dystopia about forward momentum, this time with Edgar Wright’s take on The Running Man. The movie hits theaters in November, but the trailer drops tomorrow.

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Dominic Preston
Apple’s F1 movie is a hit.

The Brad Pitt-starring racing drama opened to more than $55 million in the US this weekend, and $144 million worldwide. That’s still a ways short of the movie’s $200-300 million production budget, but it’s easily on track to beat the $221 million-earning Napoleon as Apple’s biggest film yet.

Sadly we may never know how many of those ticket sales came from the unexpectedly pushy ads in Apple Wallet notifications.