20 Upcoming Movies That Might Be Surprisingly Good
We might all be underestimating these 2026 movies.
First impressions count for a lot in cinema just as they do everywhere else - the very first thing you hear or see about a movie will be the launching pad for your perception of it from that point.
And so it's easy to see how films can get dragged through the mud in online discourse for months, even years before they're actually released, regardless of their eventual quality.
And while films are often maligned pre-release for very valid reasons - one being that they simply look bad - is there anyone among us who hasn't underestimated a movie and ultimately been totally surprised by it?
It's always fun to see a film soar above low expectations and deliver something genuinely good, and where the next year's worth of movies are concerned, these are the ones that could all be surprisingly good.
Each already has a certain tide of negativity going against it for one reason or another - most of them justified - but there are some glimmers of hope that the end result might actually be far better than anyone is anticipating. Fingers crossed!
20. The Wrecking Crew
January is traditionally a "dump month" for cinema, in which studios send their most low-effort, unambitious genre slop out to die with little fanfare.
And so, it's fair to be suspicious of The Wrecking Crew, a new buddy cop action-comedy starring Dave Bautista and Jason Momoa, which is being quietly sloughed onto Amazon Prime Video at the end of the month.
The first images from the film were released mere weeks before it plans to drop, there's still no sign of a trailer at the time of writing, and the script spawned from an original idea by Bautista and Momoa.
None of this inspires much hope, then, but there are a few indications it could be a pleasant surprise.
For one, David Leitch (John Wick, Deadpool 2, Bullet Train) was originally attached to direct, and if a skilled genre filmmaker saw something in the script worth pursuing, that's something.
Furthermore, the script itself was written by Banshee and Warrior creator Jonathan Tropper, who clearly knows a thing or two about bone-crunching action, and rather than farm the directing job out to a journeyman for hire, it's got the solid Ángel Manuel Soto (Charm City Kings, Blue Beetle) in the chair.
Here's hoping that The Wrecking Crew defies the odds of a junky-looking action comedy being unceremoniously dropped on a streamer in the first month of the year.