2026
The year of the horse?
As I heard PTA recently blare - whomever’s complaining about movies in 2025 needs to take a seat. He’s right. What a year! Some of the best original movies I’ve seen in decades, I saw this year. We witnessed a surge in the box office and cemented that Hollywood is still creating waves when it comes to cultural impact and politics. I mean, who can argue when the president himself greenlit Brett Ratner’s Rush Hour Four! C’mon! Can’t wait…
As I know some of you don’t, you should check in with Gower Street every now and then. It’s frankly not that interesting until this time of year, when they release their Hollywood forecast (which they are usually somewhat right about) and there is some great news in there! Great news for someone like me. Not only do they predict almost pre-pandemic-level box office returns, they also seem pretty bullish on China (let’s see what Xi does with Taiwan post-Maduro kidnapping… Exciting times!).
It is true, this year will be a hell of a year for the movies. We have Nolan’s Odyssey, Denis’ third Dune, Spielberg’s return to UFOs, and Gerwig’s Narnia. I wouldn’t be too surprised if these four bring home close to a billion dollars each (obviously not Narnia, thx Netflix). We will also see a new Avengers, Spider-Man, and Toy Story. On the more independent (read: exciting) side of things, we have The Bride, The Drama, Whalefall (a book I tried to option last year), and Iñárritu’s Digger… and if that doesn’t excite you, what will?
Now.. will Congress approve a Netflix and WB merger, and will Apple stop making movies?
Let’s see…
YouTube
For people that hang out with me too much, you know this already - but I’m a huge proponent of YouTube. I think, and I spy, a version of the future led by YouTube. I think in ’26 we will see an aggressive takeover within the TV space by YouTube. We already know that they just bought the rights to air (stream?) the Academy Awards on YouTube this year, but this is just the start. Netflix’s biggest competitor when it comes to TV will be YouTube, and the first real taste of this will come in ’26.
They won’t, however, move into the movie space just yet, but with eyeballs comes responsibility, and I’ve said it before and I will say it again: YouTube will be the biggest studio on the planet within the next decade. Netflix will be reduced to Emily-in-Paris-flow-TV. YouTube won’t. YouTube is where you will turn to access news, sports, and entertainment. It’s just that Google doesn’t know who to attack first. The Academy Awards was an unlikely candidate, but what the hell.. why not?
Disney
As we all know, this is the last year Iger will be in charge of this old, rotten ship we once called home to great stories - but he’s already at work laying out the groundwork for his replacement by sucking Sam Altman’s dick. This could be good and bad. It depends on how they play it.
It’s not strange to think that a legacy animation studio like Disney would build the first AI-driven animation studio, but one can only hope there are some adults in the room when it happens. In all honesty - who would really care if Toy Story 7 is AI-generated, other than the poor animators who lose their jobs? I predict that Disney moves fast into this space in ’26 and announces a completely AI-generated feature at the end of the year.
Will it work?
That’s up to the film gods to decide. Will they try? Absolutely.
Apple
I predict ’26 will be the last year Tim Cook holds office in Cupertino. This is not great for the film industry, as he was - and is - an advocate for good movies. Even though he didn’t manage to make Apple the major studio he probably set out to do, he tried and almost succeeded. Apple, with all their wealth, did manage to collaborate with some great filmmakers and produce some pretty good movies and TV shows.
But without Tim, this won’t last.
They are already losing good minds to Ellison & Co. and will continue to do so when Tim’s gone and his replacement is in charge - a replacement that will most likely come from engineering and not the school of Steve Jobs.
Will Apple TV vanish?
Probably not now, but eventually, yes. We will see the first fractures appear this year, though. Even though Pluribus and The Studio were a success, the guy greenlighting those shows is with Paramount now.
Speaking of the devil…
Paramount, WB and Netflix
Poor David will lose the deal. I mean - most likely. Whether Trump’s mind is awake enough to care about his ol’ pal Larry, I don’t know - but most likely not. He will make it slide to Congress, who will, after some hard-boiled questions to Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos, finally give in and approve the merger. I mean, why wouldn’t they? People tend to forget that Warner Brother’s have been owned by some pretty shady companies before. Netflix is, to say the least - the least shady… I mean, remember AOL?
Is this bad? You already know what I think of this. But this also creates a great opportunity for the rest of the players to step up and actually make great films - especially for the loser David and his dad, Goliath. If they had $100 billion to spend on a merger, they have $100 billion to spend on “content” (please excuse my language).
One thing is for sure - this defeat will not be taken graciously by the Ellisons and their investors. They will fight, and fight hard. One can only hope they will fight creatively, and not only politically. My prediction: Paramount will struggle, but return stronger, with a different aim - free movies. They already have Pluto (who the fuck knows what that is) and Paramount+ (..eh?). The only way to compete is free. How they do it, I don’t know - but there is a way. They know tech, and as we know - tech is usually free. They could argue: can movies be too?
A24 and the rest…
If you asked me last year, I would have said that in 2025 A24 would sell. This clearly didn’t happen. Why? Who knows. Will it happen this year? Probably not, because their slate is weaker than ever, and they still have yet to produce a movie that grosses $500M+ to show investors they can generate real returns.
Are they trying? Oh boy, do they try. Rumor has it Marty Supreme needs to bank $300M to break even. This won’t happen, of course. Even though international hasn’t kicked in yet, it’s unlikely it’s European enough to sway audiences en masse. But who knows? I certainly hope it’s successful enough to convince every major studio to come up with their own Marty… but that’s for later.
What A24 does in 2026 is clear: nothing major. They have some exciting titles coming our way - movies that will actually be great, like my friend Kristoffer Borgli’s The Drama who I was fortunate to watch last summer (it’s great) - but will it gross $500M?
No.
One thing is for sure: A24 won’t sell until they have a few of those titles in their bag.
What will be exciting to track is whether Euphoria leaves HBO and ends up at Netflix after the merger - because I do think season three will create waves in the TV space.
Hell of a year for Zendaya, by the way.
Film Festivals (Cannes) and the market
I predict a Palm-d’Or hat trick by my fellow Swede - but set that aside - film festivals will decline rapidly in ’26 if nothing major changes. They’ve been, for too long, an exclusive club for hunter-gatherers like Harvey Weinstein, but movies are no longer “exclusive” and we can already see the decline in the importance of festivals.
Very few major studios go to festivals to buy titles anymore, and the big “indie” studios decide to release films outside festivals because the risk of running bad press is too great, and the truth is: press isn’t that valuable anymore when Letterboxd and real audience reactions matter more. Who cares about Critics’ Week when no one shows up when the film premieres anyways? Mubi certainly didn’t make their 25 million back on Die My Love…
There’s also the delay between release and festival premiere, which is utterly frustrating for the audience. In 2026, we’ll still see big movies, like Spielberg’s Disclosure Day - premiere at festivals (probably Cannes), but the result is that the market for independently financed films diminishes. Why premiere your film when the press won’t bother, the market won’t bother, and the festival only cares about where Tom Cruise will have lunch?
I predict that fewer films will be for sale at festivals in 2026. Festivals will become expensive red-carpet showcases for stars to show their Balenciaga’sss - not places where movies are bought. This is sad.
Unions
I doubt the Writers Guild will strike again given the volatile market - but if they do, it will happen soon. SAG will stay quiet, and negotiations will remain civil. What we learned from the last two negotiations is: was it really worth it?
Well, for Fran Drescher, it surely was. I don’t think she would have been snagged by Josh Safdie for Marty Supreme if it weren’t for that megaphone at the barricades a few years ago. She did well. She did good. Good job, Fran! You were fantastic in Marty.
Quick predictions:
Larry and David Ellison will buy the American outpost of TikTok.
The Charli XCX film will be better than we think.
Digger will be the best film of the year, and Tom Cruise will win Best Actor in ‘27.
Michael De Luca will depart WB and become president of film at Paramount.
David Fincher’s spin-off of Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood will be a sleek disaster and cement the notion that Netflix can’t produce great films, not even when they give Fincher carte blanche.
A micro-drama will be a surprising hit among my cinephilic friends and erupt a moral dilemma - can scrollable dramas really be good? No. Please no. No!
AI-generated porn will do a hostile takeover and reduce human-generated porn to the equivalent of jazz bars - very niche.
That’s it, folks.
Happy ’26!