Sci-Fi Movies That Will Blow Fans Away In 2024
As visions of various 21st-century promises and perils alike converge upon us at once — from space travel to possible extraterrestrial contact to artificial intelligence to the looming societal threat posed by climate change — the science fiction genre finds itself at arguably its most urgent and crucial point in history. In recent years, the movies, in particular, have seen a kind of artistic renaissance for the genre, with various first-rate auteurs contemplating our technological future in works ranging from the moving to the thought-provoking to the brilliantly satirical.
In 2024, that renaissance will continue at full steam. The next year in film will bring us an incredibly vast and diverse range of new sci-fi flicks, whether coming from old savants like Bong Joon-ho, Denis Villeneuve, and Alex Garland, or genre debutants like Joshua Oppenheimer, Bruno Dumont, and even Francis Ford Coppola. Here, we've compiled a list of 19 upcoming science fiction films to look forward to in 2024, including both original tales and eagerly awaited extensions to franchises about aliens, post-apocalyptic worlds, and robots that turn into cars.
Mickey 17
In addition to marking Bong Joon-ho's return to science fiction following terrific forays into the genre with "The Host," "Snowpiercer," and "Okja," "Mickey 17" will also be the alt-pop cinema maverick's third work in the English language, as well as the first to be distributed by a major Hollywood studio.
An adaptation of the 2022 novel "Mickey7" by Edward Ashton, Bong's long-awaited follow-up to "Parasite" will tell the story of a human crew on a one-way expedition to the ice planet of Niflheim. In their efforts to colonize and establish viable long-term living conditions on Niflheim, the crew members often come across missions too dangerous to offer realistic odds of survival. That's where Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) comes in: As the crew's official "expendable," he handles jobs that might well kill him, and, if/when they do, he gets cloned into a new self with all his old memories preserved.
Pattinson has described the film as unlike anything he's done before — a very intriguing qualification, seeing as he has previously starred in Claire Denis' "High Life," also an auteurist space flick. "The movie is so crazy, it's a completely different style of working," the actor told ES Magazine. Adding to the intrigue is the film's star-studded ensemble, which also includes Steven Yeun, Naomi Ackie, Toni Collette, and Mark Ruffalo, and the fact that Warner Bros.' marketing has been seemingly positioning Bong's new concoction as a major spring blockbuster. Catch it in theaters on March 29.
Dune: Part Two
It was all set to be the defining cinematic event of the fall of 2023, but alas, we'll all have to wait a little longer. In light of the continuing resistance on the part of Hollywood executives to meet the demands of the writers and actors on strike, and the ensuing impossibility of properly promoting a release of its scale, "Dune: Part Two" was delayed from its previous November 3 release date to March 15, 2024.
That change, however understandable from a business standpoint, still stung for the millions of fans smitten with Denis Villeneuve's adaptation of the classic Frank Herbert sci-fi novel. Following the epic grandeur of 2021's "Dune," the second installment of Villeneuve's diptych (or is it triptych?), which will get into the meat of the Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) revenge saga, immediately becomes one of the world's most anticipated upcoming releases.
The plot of "Dune: Part Two" will chart the joining of forces between Paul, the clairvoyant exiled heir to the fallen House Atreides, and the Fremen people indigenous to the desert planet of Arrakis, including his eventual love interest Chani (Zendaya). Having lost his family and status at the hands of House Harkonnen, Paul will now wage all-out war against the Harkonnen clan, all while contending with visions of a dark, violent fate for both himself and the universe. Whether as a fall or late winter release, "Dune: Part Two" will surely take the world by (sand)storm.
Elio
Pixar is no stranger to science fiction. Heck, it's no stranger to space adventure either. "WALL-E" remains arguably the studio's creative peak 15 years on, and we did have "Lightyear" just last year — even if not a lot of people saw it. Now, as part of its continuing post-2020, post-John Lasseter revamp, Pixar will offer up its sixth original film in four years, once again taking viewers into the final frontier but with a very different point of view from its previous entries in the genre.
Written and directed by Adrian Molina, who became known in 2017 as the co-writer and co-director of Pixar's "Coco," "Elio" will tell the story of Elio Solis (voiced by Yonas Kibreab), an 11-year-old boy who gets beamed to space and finds himself way in over his head when an interplanetary organization known as the Communiverse wrongfully identifies him as an official ambassador for Planet Earth. Before he knows it, Elio is speaking on behalf of Earth before an audience of fellow planetary ambassadors from all over the universe.
Rising to the demands of such an impossibly enormous responsibility would be daunting enough for any 11-year-old but Elio contends with the additional difficulty of being a sheltered, lonely, artsy kid whose social skills have never been the best when dealing with other humans, let alone aliens. The new animated film, out March 1, has already released a teaser trailer — and it looks all set to be another crowd-pleasing romp for Pixar.
Megalopolis
Francis Ford Coppola has not released a film since the critically panned (but Cahiers du cinéma-approved) 2011 Gothic horror "Twixt," so expectations for his upcoming new film could scarcely be higher. In addition to heralding the grand return of the legendary filmmaker behind such totemic classics as "The Conversation," "Apocalypse Now," and "The Godfather," "Megalopolis" will also represent Coppola's first proper stab at science fiction. Although he previously helmed the 1986 Disney theme park attraction short "Captain EO," starring Michael Jackson as the title character, Coppola has never tackled the genre in feature-length form.
The animus has been there for a long time, though: Coppola actually began writing "Megalopolis" all the way back in the 1980s (via The Hollywood Reporter). After years of unsuccessful efforts to bring the project to fruition, including a complete creative overhaul following the September 11, 2001 attacks (via GQ), the filmmaker finally resumed development on "Megalopolis" in 2019, largely funding the mammoth production with his own money.
Although Coppola has so far revealed little about the film's plot, we do know that it is a philosophical love story set in a futuristic version of New York City, centered around a woman (Nathalie Emmanuel) torn between loyalty to her father (Forest Whitaker) and love for an enemy of his (Adam Driver). While "Megalopolis" has no official release date or distributor yet, Coppola's production company, American Zoetrope, confirmed in March 2023 that filming had wrapped and a 2024 release would be forthcoming (via Screen Daily).
Spaceman
It used to be that, every few years, Adam Sandler would take a break from his massively successful runs of crowd-pleasing raunchy comedies to take on a more serious role, almost as if to offer periodic reminders to naysayers that he could be a brilliant dramatic actor if and when he wanted to. Recently, though, those sporadic departures have not seemed to sufficiently scratch the Sand-man's dramatic itch: Since 2017, Adam Sandler has dipped his feet into drama virtually every other year, to the point where someone introduced to his work in that period might not even think of him as a primarily comedic actor. And, in 2024, Sandler will be following his acclaimed, SAG-nominated work in "Hustle" with Johan Renck's "Spaceman."
Based on the 2017 novel "Spaceman of Bohemia" by Czech writer Jaroslav Kalfař, "Spaceman" will tell the story of Jakub Procházka (Sandler), a Czech astronaut sent on a lonely mission to gather space dust from a faraway cluster. While away in space, Jakub finds his personal life on Earth crumbling and plunges into depression. It's then that he meets a mysterious alien creature aboard his ship that may or may not be a product of his imagination, and which, in any case, becomes his only companion as he ruminates on the meaning of life and ponders what to do with his (via Collider). The first project from Renck since directing HBO's "Chernobyl," "Spaceman" will be released by Netflix sometime in 2024 (via TechRadar).
The End
Joshua Oppenheimer became one of the world's best-known documentary filmmakers when he made the 2012-2014 diptych of "The Act of Killing" and "The Look of Silence," two very different yet equally horrifying exposés on the Indonesian Communist purge of 1965-66 and its lingering effects on Indonesian society. For his third feature and first fiction film, Oppenheimer will be going in a very different direction: "The End" will be a Golden Age-inspired musical. But, in keeping with the dissonant, revelatory spirit of "The Act of Killing," Oppenheimer will once again be putting fluffy, Hollywoodian form in service of harrowing political content.
The film, starring Tilda Swinton, George MacKay, Moses Ingram, and Michael Shannon, will tell the story of the Earth's last remaining family — the clan of an oil tycoon who played a direct part in destroying the planet, and then sequestered themselves to a luxurious underground bunker where they've been living for 20 years, too unwilling to confront their own deeds to ever return to the surface. Per the film's official synopsis, the nuclear mother-father-son trio is joined by a maid, a doctor, a butler, and later a young woman who has managed to survive, and the musical numbers will offset the film's raw realism, acting as an expression of the family's willful denial about what they've done — to the Earth at large as well as the loved ones they left behind. The post-apocalyptic sci-fi film will come out on an as-yet-unspecified 2024 date (via The Film Stage).
The Empire
Although French arthouse virtuoso Bruno Dumont has never made anything close to a science fiction film — his spare, ponderous treatises on human misery and the randomness of suffering throughout history have earned him consistent comparisons to Robert Bresson — his work is infused with enough strangeness and genre-bending tonal idiosyncrasy that the idea of a Bruno Dumont sci-fi flick is not not pretty feasible, actually.
Enter "The Empire." Many in the French press expected the film, shot in late 2022 (via Cineuropa), to play at the following year's Cannes Film Festival, but it was ultimately absent from the Croisette's 2023 lineup. It has now been slated for a March 2024 release in France (via World of Reel), with Camille Cottin, Lyna Khoudri, Anamaria Vartolomei, and Fabrice Luchini set to star. Lily-Rose Depp was also reported to be attached back when shooting started (via Screen Daily), but it is unclear at the moment whether the French-American actress will actually appear in the final film.
Set in Northern France like the majority of Dumont's oeuvre, "The Empire" will chart the conflict of apocalyptic proportions that emerges when two warring extraterrestrial forces land on the Opal Coast. Little is known about the film yet on a plot level, but, conceptually speaking, Dumont has stated that "The Empire" will bridge the gap between the realism of auteurist filmmaking and the grandeur of sci-fi blockbusters, with a focus on the eternal conflict between good and evil at the heart of man.
Civil War
After the two-for-two critical home runs of "Ex Machina" and "Annihilation," English multi-hyphenate storyteller Alex Garland found himself in murkier discourse waters with his third work as a film director, 2022's "Men," which saw him depart from his established sci-fi wheelhouse and venture into surrealist folk horror — to decidedly controversial results. Now, for his fourth effort, titled "Civil War," Garland returns to the genre that made him a household name in indie cinema and auteurist television.
Writer-director Garland and A24, the film's co-producers and distributor, have been very, very secretive about plot details; all we can go on officially is that it will be an epic, action-packed tale set at some point in the near future, and that it will act as an allegory for our current political climate (via The Telegraph). Don't let the mystery dull your anticipation, though: In addition to the promise inherent to a new Garland joint, multiplied here by the fact that this may be Garland's last film as a director, the cast alone — which will include Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Cailee Spaeny, and frequent Garland collaborator Sonoya Mizuno — should be reason enough to get excited. Officially rated R in June 2023 by the MPAA, "Civil War" skipped the 2023 fall festival season altogether and is now reported to be angling for a spring 2024 release date (via World of Reel).
The Beast
Bruno Dumont is not, alas, the only French arthouse auteur coming out with a sci-fi film in 2024. Bertrand Bonello, the eccentric visionary responsible for recent cinephile favorites like "House of Tolerance," "Nocturama," and "Zombi Child," will also be contributing to the genre with the Léa Seydoux-starring "The Beast."
A very loose adaptation of the 1903 novella "The Beast in the Jungle" by Henry James, Bonello's newest film takes on a deliberately disorienting narrative form, opening with a bizarre prologue set in a 2014 Los Angeles movie set before jumping to 1910 Paris, and then darting forward to an AI-dominated 2044. In all three time periods, the film is centered around Gabrielle (Seydoux), a woman who has lived many lives over the centuries and fallen in love with Louis (George MacKay) in each of them. In 2044, to snag one of the few remaining human jobs following society's takeover by artificial intelligence, Gabrielle must face her memories and past lives in order to rid herself of feelings.
The 145-minute-long romantic drama premiered in competition at the 2023 Venice Film Festival, where critics were impressed by the panache with which Bonello navigates such a fraught political and existential conceit. "The Beast" has since been set for a February 28, 2024 release in France (via Unifrance). No U.S. distributor has picked up the film yet, but, given its very positive reception at both Venice and Toronto, expect that to change soon.
Furiosa
"Mad Max: Fury Road" is arguably 21st-century cinema's most out-of-left-field success story. While nobody expected George Miller's fourth entry in the "Mad Max" series to be anything but good given its franchise and auteur pedigree, not a lot of people were necessarily expecting the film to be the instantly classic, era-defining phenomenon that it was, either. And perhaps the most telling testament to "Fury Road'"s utter transcendence beyond the vast majority of action films ever released, including previous "Mad Max" films, is the fact that it prompted a new installment that will directly break a fundamental rule of "Mad Max" lore.
In every film prior to "Furiosa," including "Fury Road" itself, there was no lore, exactly: The whole point of Max Rockatansky was his status as a rootless, free-roaming wanderer, never tied to any backstory or continuity, just dropping in and out of self-contained adventures taking place across a vast post-apocalyptic wasteland. But the ragtag-bunch-du-jour of "Fury Road" made such a strong impression that suddenly, for the first time, there was irrepressible demand for a "Mad Max" spin-off film. Now, finally, we're just on the cusp of seeing what George Miller has concocted with "Furiosa," the eagerly-awaited prequel centered on the angst-ridden heroine originally played by Charlize Theron, which will follow Furiosa's (now played by Anya Taylor-Joy) early days in Immortan Joe's (Chris Hemsworth) Citadel. The biggest Australian film production of all time (via Deadline), "Furiosa" will roar into multiplexes on May 24, 2024.
Distant
While their films are not exactly making Cannes lineups, it could be argued that the filmmaking duo of Will Speck and Josh Gordon, who first broke out with the Academy Award-nominated short film "Culture" in 1997, are auteurs in their own way. The adult studio comedies in which they specialized early on in their career — from the campy absurdity of "Blades of Glory" to the raunchy mayhem of "Office Christmas Party" — gave way to a more generalized crowd-pleasing sensibility with 2022's "Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile," but, across their catalog, Speck and Gordon retain a dedication to putting laughs and accessible entertainment first. And that ethos should map interestingly to their upcoming debut in the sci-fi genre, "Distant."
Written by Spenser Cohen ("Moonfall," "Extinction"), "Distant" will center around Andy Ramirez (Anthony Ramos), a blue-collar space miner whose ship is struck by an asteroid during a mission, causing him to crash land on an unknown planet. Desperate to survive, running low on oxygen, and not helped at all by his AI suit (voiced by Zachary Quinto), Andy manages to establish contact with fellow crew member Naomi Calloway (Naomi Scott) via radio — only to learn that she's confined to her escape pod. The sci-fi comedy film, out January 19, 2024, depicts Andy's effort to survive the planet and its inhabitants while trying to make it to Naomi before his oxygen runs out (via Amblin).
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
Matt Reeves' "Planet of the Apes" reboot trilogy was among the most welcome surprises of its decade in film, offering up entertainment equal parts propulsive and thoughtful, improving steadily with each installment, and ultimately going down as one of the very best blockbuster franchises of the 2010s. The unique, sprawling sci-fi universe it established was too good for Disney to pass up following its acquisition of 20th Century Studios, and, sure enough, Disney confirmed in April 2019 that new "Apes" films were in development (via The Hollywood Reporter).
The newest film in the series, "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes," directed by Wes Ball of "Maze Runner" fame, takes place many years after the events of "War for the Planet of the Apes," with Cornelius (Owen Teague), the chimpanzee son of the late Caesar (Andy Serkis), now taking center stage. In the story's world, humans have become feral, while apes have branched out into several different communities since settling down in the oasis Caesar and his peers found at the end of "War." Conflict begins to brew between those communities when an ape leader starts using a warped interpretation of Caesar's ideology to justify enslaving fellow apes to pursue lost human technology. Freya Allan plays the film's human lead; Dichen Lachman and William H. Macy co-star (via The Hollywood Reporter). 20th Century will roll the film into theaters on May 24, 2024.
A Quiet Place: Day One
In 2018, Paramount Pictures learned that horror minus sound equals profit. Directed by John Krasinski and starring himself and Emily Blunt as parents trying to guide their kids through a post-apocalyptic Earth in which the slightest crunch of a leaf might spell doom, "A Quiet Place" became an unexpected runaway hit at the U.S. box office, prompting a similarly successful sequel in 2021. Now, with its third film, the unlikely blockbuster franchise will look into the past.
"A Quiet Place: Day One" is, in many ways, a very sensible move for the series — a film which, in abandoning the first two film's understandable yet all-but-depleted super-narrow focus on the Abbotts, can sate years of fan curiosity about how, exactly, the world came to be invaded and overtaken by killer aliens. With 2010s scream queen supreme Lupita Nyong'o and gifted "Pig" breakthrough filmmaker Michael Sarnoski in tow, "Day One" could well be the best "A Quiet Place" film yet if it plays its cards right. Visit your local theater on March 8, 2024 (via Variety) to find out if it does.
Alien: Romulus
Speaking of killer aliens, hey, a new "Alien" movie will invade theaters next year. The project, given the working title "Alien: Romulus" — the name of the first king of Rome, if you're keeping score — hasn't been officially titled yet but 20th Century Studios locked it in for release on August 16, 2024.
Part of the expansion of the "Alien" brand that commenced following Disney's purchase of 20th Century, the new film, helmed by illustrious Uruguayan horror filmmaker Fede Álvarez ("Don't Breathe," 2013's "Evil Dead"), has been described as a standalone story. Ridley Scott himself offered Álvarez the opportunity to direct it after he heard Álvarez's pitch for a new take on "Alien" years prior and couldn't stop thinking about it afterward. Apparently, the pitch in question was so good that it alone convinced 20th Century to officially pick up the project (via The Hollywood Reporter).
And what was that world-stopping pitch? We don't know yet. Plot information remains strictly under wraps for the moment. What do we know? The names of a few cast members: "Priscilla" breakout Cailee Spaeny, Archie Renaux, David Jonsson, Isabela Merced, and Aileen Wu.
Borderlands
How's this for cinematic Mad Libs: A "Borderlands" film, directed by Eli Roth, starring Cate Blanchett as Lilith, Jamie Lee Curtis as Tannis, and Gina Gershon as Moxxi. If it sounds like a fever dream, well, it might very well turn out to be one. But, folks, it's happening. And it will come out next summer.
Roth's adaptation of the beloved RPG shooter video game series will also star Kevin Hart as Roland and Jack Black as Claptrap; the latter will get the "House with a Clock in Its Walls" band back together alongside Blanchett and Roth. The "Hostel" director has promised that his vision for the film adaptation will delight inveterate fans of the game while also winning over new ones with fresh, accessible sci-fi adventure (via ComicBook.com). The plot tracks Lilith as she travels to her home planet of Pandora and teams up with a group of misfits to find the daughter of Atlas (Édgar Ramírez). Lionsgate currently plans to release "Borderlands" on August 9, 2024 (via MovieWeb).
Transformers One
There have been seven "Transformers" films. Next year, we'll get an eighth, and it will, ironically enough, be titled "Transformers One." That slate-cleaning title hits at the core appeal at play: For the first time in the ongoing contemporary film series, "Transformers" will honor its '80s Saturday morning cartoon roots by going fully animated.
The new film is directed by Academy Award winner Josh Cooley, in his second feature directorial effort following 2019's "Toy Story 4." Deviating from the live-action films' focus on Autobots and Decepticons wreaking havoc on Earth, "Transformers One" unfolds entirely on the giant robots' native planet of Cybertron and focuses on the relationship between Optimus Prime (Chris Hemsworth) and Megatron (Brian Tyree Henry). It will be an entirely separate affair from the live-action films and their epic continuity (via Deadline). Paramount Pictures currently has it slated for a September 13, 2024, release (via Deadline).
Untitled Ghostbusters: Afterlife Sequel
The 2021 Jason Reitman-directed legacy sequel to "Ghostbusters" and "Ghostbusters II," titled "Ghostbusters: Afterlife," proved divisive among critics due to what some saw as an excessive reliance on nostalgia. But commercially, it delivered everything that Sony Pictures hoped for, grossing more than $200 million worldwide and becoming a hit on VOD (via IndieWire). A new sequel seemed inevitable, and, sure enough, Sony announced one at the April 2022 CinemaCon (via Deadline).
The new film, which could be playing to Dan Aykroyd's eager vision for an extension of the "Ghostbusters" series bringing back the original cast like "Afterlife" did (via ScreenRant), has already confirmed the returns of Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts (via Ghostbusters News), and even William Atherton as EPA inspector Walter Peck. The core "Afterlife" cast, including Carrie Coon, Paul Rudd, Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, and Celeste O'Connor, also comes back. Directorial duties, meanwhile, will be handed over from Reitman to Gil Kenan, who previously helmed the underrated 2006 stop-motion flick "Monster House" and the 2015 "Poltergeist" remake. No plot details are known yet, save for the fact that the franchise will return to its original New York City setting. Sony will release the "Afterlife" sequel on March 29, 2024 (via Collider).
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
The "King Kong" and "Godzilla" franchises are both among the oldest in cinema history, respectively counting 12 and 37 films since being inaugurated by their classic 1933 and 1954 originals. In that time, two films have officially brought them together: 1962's Japanese-produced "King Kong vs. Godzilla," and 2021's American-produced "Godzilla vs. Kong," which served as the big crossover event in Warner Bros.'s "MonsterVerse" franchise.
The next step in the MonsterVerse will be a sequel to that crossover film, once again directed by Adam Wingard. Following "Godzilla vs. Kong'"s revelation that humans and Titans once coexisted in the Hollow Earth, "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire" will take a deeper dive into the giant creatures' history and mythology and their millennia-old relationship to mankind, with a plot that will bring Godzilla and King Kong together once more against a common world-threatening enemy. Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, and Kaylee Hottle are back and joined by newcomers Dan Stevens, Fala Chen, Alex Ferns, and Rachel House. Catch the film in an appropriately large theater on April 12, 2024 (via Digital Spy).
The Electric State
After directing the (temporarily) highest-grossing film of all time and the creative and cultural peak to an entire era of Hollywood history, Anthony and Joe Russo reinvented themselves as helmers of slick streaming-bound genre flicks, first with the critically bashed 2021 Tom Holland vehicle "Cherry," and then with 2022's somewhat better-received "The Gray Man." Now, with next year's "The Electric State," the brothers are returning to the sci-fi genre that they've proven they can excel at with their "Avengers" films.
Scripted by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, "The Electric State" adapts the eponymous illustrated novel by Simon Stålenhag, which tells of a teenage girl traveling through an America ravaged by a human-robot civil war in search of her missing younger brother. On her journey, she's accompanied by a robot named Skip. Millie Bobby Brown leads the film, which will debut in 2024 as a Netflix original and boasts an incredible ensemble cast joining the "Stranger Things" star: Chris Pratt, Ke Huy Quan, Stanley Tucci, Jason Alexander, and Woody Norman, with Giancarlo Esposito, Brian Cox, Jenny Slate, Anthony Mackie, and Billy Bob Thornton providing voice work (via MovieWeb).