Predicting The Rotten Tomatoes Scores Of 2026's Biggest Movies

Though studios are typically more interested in a film's box office performance than how it's received critically, it's also fair to say that reviews often end up playing a huge part in how a film fares commercially.

After all, we've all got limited spare time and money to spend on movies, so we want to make it count for something, right?

And so, Rotten Tomatoes is a go-to for moviegoers both casual and die-hard, to get a baseline perception of what critics think of a new film and decide whether it's worth a trip outside or not. 

Not to say that the Tomatometer is in any way an "objective" metric of a film's quality, because of course not.

And with 2026 now in full swing, what better time to pore over the year's biggest, most anticipated releases and make some educated prediction as to how they might shake out with critics?

These 20 movies all stand a strong chance of making waves at the box office, though as time has proven again and again, there's always the prospect for a film's quality to surprise us all - for better or worse.

Here's what the tea leaves are saying for 2026's biggest films...

Project Hail Mary will be the first directorial effort from Phil Lord and Christopher Miller since they were fired from Solo: A Star Wars Story mid-production in 2017, though they've kept themselves plenty busy since with their work on Sony's animated Spider-Verse movies.

Their next film, however, is a live-action sci-fi outing based on a novel penned by The Martian author Andy Weir.

The trailer looks fantastic, but beyond this, Weir's novel has an even higher Goodreads rating than The Martian, which was, of course, adapted into a Best Picture-nominated smash hit back in 2015.

Drew Goddard, who adapted The Martian to the screen, is back doing the very same for Project Hail Mary.

In addition to all this and the appealing central two-hander of Ryan Gosling and Sandra Hüller, early test screening reports have been extremely positive, causing some to believe that Sony could even have an honest-to-God awards player on their hands here.

With all this in mind, it'd be shocking if Project Hail Mary wasn't one of the year's most acclaimed films, blockbuster or not.