Sci Fi Movies This Week: Weekly column tracking what is coming in the current week in the way of sci fi, fantasy, and horror releases as well as news and updates on genre films, streaming and theatrical.
Sci Fi Movie Premieres This Week:
The next entry in the Summer 2026 Blockbuster Sweepstakes arrives on Friday, with Spider-Man: A Brand New Day hoping to continue to turn things around for genre movies this season as we previously saw with The Odyssey (more on that at this link). And despite the recent superhero fatigue (both Masters of the Universe and Supergirl are on track to count as flops), this one appears to be heading for a big opening day. Apart from that, there is not much else of interest to genre fans arriving in theaters, though a 4k restoration of the 1994 dystopian film Welcome II the Terrordome will be getting limited release in select cinemas. Hitting VOD earlier this week was Supergirl, Leviticus, and Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle I. And finally getting its premiere (delayed from earlier this year) is the MEGAN spin-off Soulm8te which hits VOD on Saturday. You can see highlights for this week below, and you can see the schedule of all the current and upcoming sci fi and fantasy movies at this link.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day (In Theaters, July 31st): After the record-breaking global success of Spider-Man: No Way Home, Spider-Man: Brand New Day marks an entirely new chapter for Peter Parker and Spider-Man. Four years have passed since the events of No Way Home, and Peter is now an adult living entirely alone, having voluntarily erased himself from the lives and memories of those he loves. Crime-fighting in a New York that no longer knows his name, he’s devoted himself entirely to protecting his city — a full-time Spider-Man — but as the demands on him intensify, the pressure sparks a surprising physical evolution that threatens his existence, even as a strange new pattern of crimes gives rise to one of the most powerful threats he has ever faced.
Directed by: Destin Daniel Cretton
Starring: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Sadie Sink, Jacob Batalon, Jon Bernthal, Tramell Tillman, Mark Ruffalo
Welcome II the Terrordome (In Theaters-Limited, July 31st): Ngozi Onwurah’s radically ahead-of-its-time Afrofuturist vision WELCOME II THE TERRORDOME made history as the first theatrically distributed British feature directed by a Black woman. Nevertheless, it was largely dismissed upon its release by critics unable to see the urgency in its evocation of a gritty dystopia in which Black people have been relegated to living in a slum called the Terrordome, where simmering racial tension threatens to boil over in the wake of a young boy’s death. Over thirty years later, Onwurah’s fusion of political commentary and genre spectacle looks positively prescient, and her ability to build an entire cosmology that connects the history of slavery to present-day police brutality is nothing less than visionary.
Directed by: Ngozi Onwurah
Starring: Suzette Llewellyn, Saffron Burrows, Felix Joseph
Soulm8te (On Demand, August 1st): This film follows a grieving engineer tasked with testing a ruthless tech giant’s new AI companion. But when he attempts to program her to be a truly sentient soulmate, she develops needs of her own – unleashing a relentless spree of precision-engineered mayhem.
Directed by: Kate Dolan
Starring: Lily Sullivan, David Rysdahl, Claudia Doumit
Sci Fi Movie News of Note:
A live-action reboot of Todd McFarlane’s Spawn has been gestating for a while, but there is another adaptation of the property that is much further along. At San Diego Comic Con, McFarlane revealed that an animated film is completely drawn and voiced at this point:
So I actually have a 90-minute animated show that’s all been drawn, minus the cells. All the voices have been done. Everything, like, we’re ready. All we need is a little bit of Foley, which is sound effects and stuff, and then hand it to a studio to actually draw, right? We’re like, it’s just been sitting in a box waiting to go. I have just been sitting on that going, no, I think I need to get like the movie out, and then boom, once the movie comes out, if there’s any success, then come out with that, but it’s sitting there.
Star Wars veteran and voice-acting legend Mark Hamill has provided the vocals for the character Twitch and longtime genre alum Keith David (They Live, Gargoyles) will be returning as the voice of Spawn, which he previously provided in the 1997 animated series. Nothing is moving forward on this at the moment, but maybe if the live-action film starts to get traction, they will complete the animated movie.
A new Ghost Rider movie, this one set in the MCU continuity, is in the works as announced at the San Diego Comic Con last weekend, and that it now showing up in the Production Weekly listings. Ryan Gosling (Project Hail Mary) will be playing Johnny Blaze/Ghost Rider, with Shawn Levy (Deadpool & Wolverine) directing and Jonathan Tropper (Star Wars: Starfighter) penning the script. The production is ramping up now, so this one is probably looking at a 2028 premiere.
You can read more sci fi movie news coming out of Comic Con at this link.
Recent Trailers
The Cycle (In Theaters, October 23rd): When the body of a man missing for thirty-six years is discovered at the scene of a horrific crime, it’s up to his estranged daughter to unravel his dark past.
Directed by: Jordan Downey
Starring: Deborah Ann Woll, Jeffrey Donovan, Will Hochman, Jack Doolan, Carl W. Crudup, Jeb Berrier, Gretchen Corbett, David Myers Gregory
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