Summer isn’t over quite yet—but with the Venice Film Festival just around the corner, we’re already thinking ahead to the biggest and most stimulatin
Summer isn’t over quite yet—but with the Venice Film Festival just around the corner, we’re already thinking ahead to the biggest and most stimulating movies that will debut this fall. Our list includes a little bit of everything, from high-concept horror to 2025’s most likely best-picture contenders—including recent work from Oscar favorites like Chloé Zhao, Luca Guadagnino, Yorgos Lanthimos, James Cameron, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Kathryn Bigelow. Kelly Reichardt has a recent movie! So does Noah Baumbach! Richard Linklater, bless him, has two! Read on for a full preview of the best cinemas have to offer this fall, including our most anticipated movies being released from Labor Day to December 31.
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale
Premiere Date: September 12
Director: Simon Curtis
Noteworthy Cast: Michelle Dockery, Hugh Bonneville, Paul Giamatti
Those mourning the end of The Gilded Age’s most recent season won’t have to stagger on, lost and abandoned, without Julian Fellowes’s particular brand of prim social drama for too long. He’s jumped back across the pond to write one final film, closing out the Downton Abbey saga that began with the TV series’s premiere 15 years ago. We can expect some minor scandal to ripple through the lords and ladies of upstairs society, while quainter matters occupy those toiling away in the kitchens and sculleries downstairs. There will be corny jokes (dearly departed Maggie Smith will be missed on that front) and cozy sentiment, and it will all feel good and silly. We’ll maybe even cry a bit. Y’know, Downton stuff. We can’t wait. —Richard Lawson
The Long Walk
Premiere Date: September 12
Director: Francis Lawrence
Noteworthy Cast: Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Judy Greer, Mark Hamill
“I was writing a kind of a brutal thing. It was hopeless, and just what you write when you’re 19 years old, man,” says Stephen King of this film’s source material, the very first novel he ever wrote. As Anthony Breznican noted in his first look at the film, King started the novel when American men were being killed in the Vietnam War at a rapid clip. Today, the story—about a group of newborn men who sign up for an endless marathon in hopes of winning untold riches and the fulfillment of a single wish—has a different resonance. “It’s a metaphor for any sort of hard thing you’re going through, whether it’s depression or anxiety or heartbreak or whatever,” Hoffman tells Breznican. “Sometimes in life, you want to stop walking, and that’s a really dark thought. But the second you acknowledge that and come to terms with it—and then keep going—that’s a really beautiful thing.” —Hillary Busis
The History of Sound
Premiere Date: September 12
Director: Oliver Hermanus
Noteworthy Cast: Paul Mescal, Josh O’Connor, Chris Cooper
Mescal, O’Connor, and Hermanus had to wait years to make this swoony drama—which all three signed on for before Mescal and O’Connor became movie stars, thanks to Aftersun (which also earned Mescal an Oscar nomination) and Gladiator II in the former’s case, and Challengers in the latter’s. The movie follows Mescal’s Lionel and O’Connor’s David, a pair of music conservatory students in the 19-teens who find themselves embroiled in a passionate romance. “David is vocal, David has ideas, David is wealthy. And Lionel is kind of just being overwhelmed by this person, but in a very slow-drip way—taking a long time to quantify the impact of this moment in his life and this relationship,” Hermanus told David Canfield for VF’s first look at the film. “That’s just relatable to me, I guess. We all have people who define us, but we don’t realize they defined us until it’s too late.” —HB
Him
Premiere Date: September 19
Director: Justin Tipping
Noteworthy Cast: Marlon Wayans, Tyriq Withers, Julia Fox, Tim Heidecker
That’s a very all-over-the-place cast list, making for a film that’s even more interest-piquing when you learn it’s produced by Jordan Peele—but not directed by him, even if the one-word title and creepy premise seems to align the film with Peele’s features Us and Nope. This horror tale is set in the world of professional sports (its original title was GOAT) and directed by TV vet Justin Tipping. Wayans plays an aging NFL quarterback; Withers is his perhaps unwitting protégé. —HB
The Lost Bus
Premiere Date: September 19
Director: Paul Greengrass
Noteworthy Cast: Matthew McConaughey, America Ferrera
A lot of people you’ve heard of are involved in the Bourne series director’s latest project: it’s also produced by Jamie Lee Curtis and Jason Blum, and written by Greengrass and Mare of Easttown scribe Brad Ingelsby. Most of them also feel a close connection to the story, which is based on Washington Post writer Lizzie Johnson’s book about the deadly 2018 Camp Fire. Greengrass told Rebecca Ford about editing the film as recent fires swept through Los Angeles: “It was distressing,” he said in VF’s first look at the film. “We were looking at what we’d created, and then seeing what was going on, and they were the same images, really.” —HB
One Battle After Another
Premiere Date: September 26
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Noteworthy Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Teyana Taylor, Regina Hall, Chase Infiniti
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