Summer 2027 Movie Preview: Why Warner Bros.' Man of Tomorrow and Minecraft 2 Scheduling Looks Like a Huge Mistake

Summer 2026 was, in my view, amazing, the best summer for Hollywood since 2019, which means the best since the pandemic. There have been glimmers of hope like Barbenheimer that felt like they might have been a unicorn that could not be repeated, and Margot Robbie deserves credit for that one, along with Warner Bros. I do not think this past summer's Spider-Man moment is exactly the same thing, but it is close enough, and I think they fed into each other. We were also worried Marvel might never be the same, but after Spider-Man did so much for Hollywood, maybe Marvel is back.

We also had two incredible fan conventions this summer. Comic-Con had a very good Marvel presentation, and Disney followed it up with its own incredible fan convention, which I think is a fantastic argument for every studio having its own fan showcase. There was briefly a DC fandom event, very good one year, not so good the next, and now we do not have it at all. A lot of the exciting projects people got hyped about at those two conventions are not coming until 2028, but that does not mean summer 2027 is empty. There are real contenders on the calendar, including one of the best scheduled movies I have ever seen, and one horribly scheduled movie that is not too late to fix.

Warner Bros. put Man of Tomorrow and Minecraft 2 just two weeks apart, and I think they need to swap dates

The horrible scheduling snafu belongs to Warner Bros., which is strange given how strong 2025 was for the studio, though it seems to be struggling since, and I am sure some of that is the stress of the potential merger hanging over the company. Man of Tomorrow and Minecraft 2 currently sit just two weeks apart, and I think the obvious fix is simple: whichever of those two movies is more suited to Comic-Con should be the one that opens on that Comic-Con weekend, and to me that is clearly Man of Tomorrow, not Minecraft.

I understand why James Gunn wants that date for Man of Tomorrow, since it is essentially the same slot the first movie had in 2025, and I think it may be a special date to him, maybe even a superstitious one, as if he is trying to keep the same train rolling. But that first Superman beat Marvel in a year when Marvel was having an off year, and Marvel is doing quite well right now. Minecraft, meanwhile, is not going to get real momentum out of Comic-Con the way a comic book movie can.

Ryan Reynolds set a high bar for what Comic-Con can do for a superhero release with Deadpool and Wolverine, complete with a Friday night panel and a drone show. Gunn has skipped every Comic-Con since taking over DC and has never held a proper panel there. Fantastic Four had that same Comic-Con date and did not do well, and Marvel did not even show up at the convention for it, which I think was a mistake. Gunn's projects are extremely comics accurate, which is exactly why Man of Tomorrow, with how comics accurate the photos already look, including David Corenswet's growth in the role and the take on Lex Luthor, should be the one playing to that crowd. Comic-Con is not just a good date for Man of Tomorrow, it is the perfect one, and Warner Bros. is lucky enough to already own a second date it could shift Minecraft 2 into.

Sony gave Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse the perfect release date after Pixar gave up its usual slot

On the flip side, Sony has the ideal release date for Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse, finally continuing Miles Morales' story. It has been a minute since the last film. This lands on Father's Day weekend, which is typically Pixar's date and one Pixar has done extremely well with, but in 2027 Pixar is releasing a film in March instead, giving up its usual spot. Sony grabbed the vacated Father's Day slot for its next animated Spider-Verse movie, and the rumor is that this third chapter focuses very heavily on Miles' relationship with his father, which would make Father's Day an unbelievably perfect fit.

It gets even better because the date also falls on Juneteenth, which feels like a perfect way to frame a film that needs all the help it can get given how long the delay has been. Spider-Man is currently at what seems like the height of his popularity, having just had his highest grossing movie ever. Sony Animation has also been on a roll, pulling off the feat of getting an animated superhero movie, a Miles Morales film, to win the Best Animated Feature Oscar, and following it with its K-pop themed animated film, which still made money even after being nerfed on release. I am sure Sony knows it needs to go big here after such a long wait.

Man of Tomorrow, Minecraft 2 and Legend of Zelda look like the three tentpoles of the summer

Looking at what is scheduled beyond those two, I think these three sequels, all from popular and successful franchises, are the tentpoles that will drive the summer. Interestingly, Superman is the lowest grossing predecessor of the three, which just shows how competitive this space has become. I am curious whether Minecraft can strike lightning twice the way the Super Mario movie did, and when it comes to Nintendo, I am not underestimating one of its movies again, since The Legend of Zelda could be huge.

Still, I see potential hurdles for Zelda. It is live action rather than animated, so it will not feel exactly like the games in the way the animated Mario movies did, which I think helped those films a great deal. On top of that, Avi Arad is producing, which gives me pause, and Wes Ball is directing, whose movies I would describe as okay, but I think Zelda deserved someone hot and new rather than someone who has been around as long as Ball has, and I would not want to see it lumped into a box set with the Maze Runner and Planet of the Apes movies the way his career has gone so far.

There is a hopeful comparison here, since Matt Reeves came off the previous Apes movies and went on to do an amazing job with Batman, so maybe Disney and the studio are hoping for that kind of glow up with Ball. Benjamin Evan Ainsworth was so good in House of the Dragon that it made me feel better about this movie, and the medieval fantasy vibe is similar. The question is whether Zelda feels like a genuine event movie for everyone or like it blends in with mid-range films such as the new live action How to Train Your Dragon movies and the new Hunger Games films.

We are actually getting another live action How to Train Your Dragon this same summer with Cate Blanchett, the latest to jump from the voice booth to the screen, and the two films are only a month apart, with Zelda going first on April 30th. At least Zelda has the head start, though I would not be happy if I were Universal having How to Train Your Dragon land right behind it.

Shrek 5 is claiming Universal's traditional Fourth of July weekend after a delay

Universal always releases a movie right before the Fourth of July, usually a Despicable Me or Jurassic film, but in 2027 that date goes to Shrek 5, which had to be delayed from what was originally meant to be a holiday release. Warner Bros. should take note, since this is proof a studio can move its own release dates around between its own movies.

Universal has released four Shrek movies and all were successful, though only the first two were actually good, and people are already complaining about the new character animation. Still, Shrek is one of the biggest franchises of all time, and I rewatched Shrek 2 recently and it really holds up. The last film came out in 2010, so this will be 17 years later, which is some powerful nostalgia bait landing right on the Fourth of July holiday weekend, when everybody is going to be trying to draw a crowd.

Star Wars: Starfighter is trying to be Disney's Force Awakens moment, but Star Wars right now feels stuck in apathy

When The Force Awakens came out, Star Wars was coming out of a similar dry spell and the film did very well, even though in hindsight most people, myself included, agree it was not that good and was a blatant repeat of A New Hope, something Bob Iger admitted in an interview years later. So Starfighter could still be a Force Awakens moment even if it is not great, but there has been a lot of Star Wars lately that has not been well received, and that is not stopping Disney from trying to revive the franchise, even after taking a bit of a break from the movie space.

That is part of why it was so shocking that The Mandalorian and Grogu did not do well, since there was supposed to be pent up demand for it. Disney gave up Pixar's usual 2027 release date but is keeping Memorial Day weekend, which has had mixed results for the studio, sometimes very positive and sometimes not, as with Mandalorian and Grogu. Starfighter lands there in 2027, and Disney is so committed to the pairing of Ryan Gosling and Shawn Levy that it has already fast tracked them into a Marvel project.

Star Wars right now feels to me like Stranger Things season five, also from Shawn Levy, and while hate is obviously not great for a franchise, apathy is a whole other problem, which is where I think Star Wars is stuck. It is also strange that this movie has had several fan presentations at this point and we still do not really know its premise or any of its other characters, even though it is coming out next year, not two or three years from now. A couple of things were reportedly shown privately at D23, which oddly did not leak, unlike the Frozen 3 trailer.

Nolan's Odyssey and Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ sequel are landing on the same Mother's Day weekend

Everyone is impressed with Christopher Nolan's ability to turn Homer's epic poem into a mega blockbuster, but over 20 years ago Mel Gibson did the exact same thing with the Bible, and I do wonder if Nolan was at all inspired by that. Adjusted for inflation, The Passion of the Christ would be close to, if not over, a billion dollars. Gibson's sequel, The Resurrection of the Christ Part One, is being distributed by Lionsgate on essentially the same release date, and where we might once have asked whether Lionsgate could release a billion dollar movie, now it seems they can.

Legend of Zelda comes out April 30th, but the official start of the summer movie season is usually the first weekend of May, which falls later this year, which I think is why Zelda is going out a bit early. The Odyssey and The Resurrection of the Christ Part One land on that official first weekend of summer, which is also Mother's Day weekend, a slot that became huge for moviegoing in 2026. Father's Day has always been a strong date for movies, but nobody has really programmed for Mother's Day before, and I think a lot of moms and grandmas are into the Bible, which makes this a smart date.

They have some competition, since Disney usually also releases on the first weekend of summer but does not have an Avengers movie ready, so it is filling the gap with a romcom based on a hit bestseller with fairly low star wattage but a clever premise: two neighboring writers on a beach for the summer, each stuck with writer's block in totally different genres, challenge each other to write the other's genre, and fall in love in the process. I am curious whether that 90s style romcom comeback can work here, and whether people will turn out for both films on the same weekend, given Gibson's past scandals, which I think were offensive to everyone including women, though I think being behind the camera makes it a little more palatable.

Margot Robbie's Ocean's 11 prequel is set at the 1962 Monaco Grand Prix with Wagner Moura and Josh Gad

Women have become an even bigger force at the box office over the past few years, with Barbie a crucial part of that growth, proving that women can not only turn out for a movie but turn it into a genuine billion dollar blockbuster. I find it fascinating that Margot Robbie and Sydney Sweeney, who both started out appealing largely to male audiences, have leveled up into A listers building franchises that appeal to women, with men still enjoying those films too.

Robbie returns to fun filmmaking with an Ocean's 11 prequel co-starring Wagner Moura and Josh Gad. I am not sure whether Robbie is producing this one, but the casting is phenomenal. The caper is set during the 1962 Monaco Grand Prix, giving it To Catch a Thief vibes, one of my favorite movies of all time, and Robbie is an excellent match for Grace Kelly. I do not see Cary Grant in Bradley Cooper, though it is fitting that he and Robbie are playing Danny Ocean's parents, since George Clooney modeled his own career very clearly, and successfully, on Cary Grant.

Bradley Cooper is co-starring and directing, and I still have some lingering feelings about his years of trying hard for an Oscar, but the set photos look really, really good, and it is almost impossible to mess up a crime caper set in Monaco and the South of France.

A Quiet Place 3, Young Rambo and more sequels round out the summer, alongside Bluey and The Simpsons on the big screen

A Quiet Place 3 drops at the end of July, and there is another Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, another Paranormal Activity, the eighth in that franchise, and a new Rambo film called Young Rambo, with Noah Centineo taking over the role. Whether he can make Rambo appeal to Gen Z while keeping older fans is a tall order, and I think that will depend partly on how Street Fighter does in October and whether that makes Centineo more of a star. James Franco and David Harbour are also part of the cast, and while Harbour on his own is probably fine, pairing him with Franco is not the way to win over Gen Z.

Disney Plus is bringing two of its strongest animation brands to the big screen, with a new Simpsons movie and Bluey's big screen debut. Bluey is set to play all through August, while The Simpsons drops for Labor Day weekend, which I think is an excellent use of a release date that rarely sees big movies, though Shang-Chi and Equalizer 3 both did well there in the past. The recent Disney Plus Simpsons specials have not been particularly well received, though people must be watching them since the studio keeps making more, but the rough D23 preview of the new movie got some buzz, so I think it will do well.

Original films for summer 2027 include Bad Fairies with Cynthia Erivo and a Tom Hanks baseball movie

Cynthia Erivo heads up a new animated movie called Bad Fairies, hoping to appeal to Wicked fans, which will be tough given that she does not want to talk about Wicked anymore, which is a bit sad. I hope the movie is great and does well anyway. Jason Statham is teaming up with Deadpool 2 and John Wick director David Leitch, and I am hoping this is not just the usual Statham movie he has been churning out recently. I remember him in the very crazy Crank a long time ago, which I made the mistake of watching with my parents, and I hope this new one is just as nuts.

There are also two baseball movies coming: a romcom starring Emma Stone, directed by her husband, where I am hoping he is more talented than Melissa McCarthy's husband, and a feel good tearjerker from Tom Hanks, though I have to ask, didn't he say there is no crying in baseball? Bad Bunny and Colman Domingo were last reported to be joining that cast, which is a really awesome lineup.

Which of these do you think are surefire hits, which are heading for a flop, and do you think Warner Bros. should actually swap the release dates for Man of Tomorrow and Minecraft 2?