48 summer movies we can't wait to see

'The Avengers: Age of Ultron' (May 1)

Age of Ultron pits Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Black Widow, and Hawkeye against Ultron, a genocidal artificial intelligence designed to protect the world. Ultron is not just a superhero movie, but a story about parenthood in which the battles take place on the world stage instead of in a living room. Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury is the ultimate father figure, struggling to hold together the superhero team he assembled as they face Ultron (James Spader) and a set of evildoing twins: Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch and Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Quicksilver. Meanwhile, there’s some serious interpersonal drama brewing between the superheroes themselves. For starters, that romance hinted at in the trailer between Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff and Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk alter ego, Bruce Banner, is real. Why match up Black Widow with the big green guy? Director Joss Whedon answers in song, crooning, “ ‘Tale as old as time…’ ” from Beauty and the Beast. —Anthony Breznican

Far From the Madding Crowd (May 1)

Thomas Hardy’s 1874 novel is an oft-adapted classic, and it was that prestige that gave star Carey Mulligan pause. “The costume drama is always an easy box to put British actors into,” she says. “I’ve avoided them—all those stuffy interiors and mahogany-paneled rooms in grand estate buildings. But this one starts with her turning down a proposal, as opposed to devoting her life to finding a husband. That was a very modern idea to begin a story with.” The proposal that she turns down is from a quiet shepherd named Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts). Their paths continue to cross in fate-driven ways as she’s wooed by a repressed neighbor (Michael Sheen) and a seductive soldier (Tom Sturridge). Mulligan’s director was also conscious of breathing fresh air. Thomas Vinterberg (The Hunt) shot two-thirds of the movie outdoors, amid the same verdant, sea-breeze surroundings in southwest England that Hardy described in the book. “There was so much beautiful stuff to show,” he says, while noting the pitfalls of nature: too much noise. “Horses and boars and frogs and dogs and sheep—they can be a tough ride,” he says. The gorgeous scenery and light—including a sunset-drenched doozy of a climactic scene—were worth all the barking and bleating. —Joe McGovern

Welcome to Me (May 1)

Two pages into the script, Kristen Wiig knew she wanted to play Alice Klieg, a woman with borderline personality disorder who wins $86 million in the lottery and buys her own talk show. “I thought she was such a beautiful and weird and interesting character,” says Wiig. The movie (which premiered at last year’s Toronto Film Festival, where Bill Murray called it one of the strangest and boldest comedies he’d ever seen) pushes Wiig further into dramatic territory after 2014’s The Skeleton Twins. “Hopefully I’ll be able to do both comedies and dramas,” says the actress, who also has the sci-fi thriller The Martian and the Ghostbusters reboot coming up. “If the world will let me.” Yes, please. —Sara Vilkomerson

The D Train (May 8)

Jack Black plays a suburban dad spearheading his 20th high school reunion. James Marsden is the cool guy–turned–Hollywood himbo whom he tries to lure back home in a bid for popularity. Although The D Train hinges on these two “bros” fumbling into a one-night stand (yes, really) after an evening of cocaine and tequila shots, co-writer/directors Andrew Mogel and Jarrad Paul want you to know that this is no bromance. “Tonally, it’s in a different world than a bromance comedy,” says Mogel. The goal, Paul adds, was a tragicomedy closer to John Hughes’ Planes, Trains and Automobiles: “You’re crying on the inside and the drama is still funny.” Apparently this train makes all stops. —Chris Lee

I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story (May 6)

You don’t spend 45 years playing Big Bird without collecting a few stories along the way. “Grown-ups come to me saying, ‘Are you the one I was watching when I was a little kid?’ ” says Caroll Spinney, 81, the man underneath the yellow feathers since day one. “I’d say, ‘Yes,’ and some would burst into real tears. I get a lot of people asking for hugs.” This documentary looks at Spinney’s life, from his days as an awkward, puppet-loving kid to his tenure on Sesame Street, where he plans to stay for the foreseeable future. The film even answers the biggest Big Bird burning question of all: how the suit works. —Kevin P. Sullivan

Maggie (May 8)

In his first horror flick since 1999’s End of Days, Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a loyal Midwestern dad trying to save his daughter (Abigail Breslin) from the deadly zombie virus she’s contracted. He promised Maggie’s mother he’d protect her at all costs, and no one ever said anything about breaking that promise just because she develops a craving for human brains. Schwarzenegger has called it “the most human role you’ve ever seen me take on”… so there’s that. —Jeff Labrecque

Mad Max: Fury Road (May 15)

To Mad Max aficionados, it should come as no surprise that George Miller, the franchise's creator, is a fan of roller coasters. The 69-year-old Australian auteur—who began his adult career as an emergency-room doctor, only to segue into rogue feature filmmaking in the late '70s—doesn't just enjoy the ebbs and flows of a good thrill ride atop a solid metal behemoth. He has learned how it transforms its passengers through flips and turns. Behold the 110-minute adrenaline-fueled Mad Max: Fury Road, which stars Tom Hardy as the new Mad Max and Charlize Theron as his catalyst, Imperator Furiosa, who are thrown together in a race across an apocalyptic wasteland. “I wanted to tell a very simple, linear story—a chase that virtually starts as the movie begins and continues for over 100 minutes,” says Miller, who conceived the idea 15 years ago. “Max gets swept up into this, but reluctantly … There aren't many words spoken. It's about what happens to the characters when they are thrown together in this absolute chaos and mayhem.” —Nicole Sperling

Pitch Perfect 2 (May 15)

When Pitch Perfect 2 hits theaters on May 15, 32 months will have passed since moviegoers first saw Beca (Anna Kendrick), Chloe (Brittany Snow), Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson), and the rest of the Bellas, whose all-gal pop mash-ups earned $117 million worldwide, launched the earworm “Cups” into the stratosphere, and turned a modest movie about college singers into a cult sensation. Now they just have to do it again. “You go from having no expectations, and then [the movie] explodes at an epic level,” says Universal film-music president Mike Knobloch. “All of a sudden the bar is raised, and you have to be at least that good or better.” Hailee Steinfeld’s Emily is just one new facet of the reinvented Bellas, who, three years later, have tasted the heights of fame, only to have an unfortunate mid-performance accident (involving Fat Amy) drop-kick them to the bottom of the aca–food chain. As Beca and the rest of the seniors prepare to graduate, the Bellas must claw their way back to the top via a worldwide singing competition. This time, “it’s bigger, it’s more global, the performance numbers aren’t in teeny auditoriums, and the Bellas are sort of famous,” says director and producer Elizabeth Banks, who also reprises her role as acerbic competition commentator Gail. —Marc Snetiker

Slow West (May 15)

Kodi Smit-McPhee stars as a Scottish boy who befriends a bounty hunter (Michael Fassbender) on the 1870 Western frontier. Though set in Colorado, Slow West was filmed amid the slightly surreal, Hobbit-y scenery of New Zealand—perhaps the first time that country’s landscapes had been used to mimic the American West. “Mountains and plains and forests are all right next to each other,” says writer-director John Maclean (former keyboardist for the ’90s British group Beta Band). “And there’s a fairy-tale feeling we wanted to create of a foreigner in a strange no-man’s-land. That environment gave us the perfect dreamworld.” —Joe McGovern

Poltergeist (May 22)

They’re heeeeere...agaaaain! In a remake of the Steven Spielberg-produced 1982 film, Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie DeWitt are parents desperate to protect their daughter from the evil spirits messing with their household. Sam Raimi is producing this time—Monster House’s Gil Kenan is directing—and their reboot retains several elements from the original: the horrifying bedroom-closet portal, a creepy psychic, the static-filled TV, the monster tree, and that creepy clown. This time, though, the little girl is brunette! —Jeff Labrecque

Tomorrowland (May 22)

Tomorrowland is a futuristic utopia where the best and brightest unleash their imaginations. It was the great project of a secret society founded by Gustave Eiffel, Jules Verne, Nikola Tesla, and Thomas Edison at an 1889 World’s Fair in Paris. Fast-forward to 2015: Thanks to an enchanted pin, a teenager named Casey (Britt Robertson) catches a glimpse of the place and wants a second look. So she seeks out a reclusive inventor (George Clooney) who visited long ago but is now persona non grata. Can they go back? Only if they can find it. “Tomorrowland is designed in such a way that it cannot be discovered by people who are not in possession of an invite,” says Damon Lindelof (Star Trek Into Darkness), who wrote the script with director Brad Bird (Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol). (EW TV critic Jeff Jensen has a story credit.) —Anthony Breznican

San Andreas (May 29)

There’s a term going around right now: ‘San Andreas is locked and loaded,’ ” says director Brad Peyton (Journey 2: The Mysterious Island), referring to the real threat of a colossal California earthquake—the inspiration for this disaster epic. In the film, the infamous fault finally gives, causing a magnitude 9.0 seismic upheaval. That’s one big quake. Following the catastrophe, a search-and-rescue helicopter pilot (Dwayne Johnson) and his estranged wife (Carla Gugino) head from L.A. to San Francisco to save their only daughter (Alexandra Daddario), but more trouble lies ahead. “Earthquakes don’t tend to be singular events,” Peyton warns. In other words, brace for aftershocks. Peyton says there’s more to the film than just mayhem: “The movie is really about a family coming back together. It just happens within one of the largest natural disasters in recorded history.” No better time for a family reunion, right? —C. Mollly Smith

Aloha (May 29)

Bradley Cooper teams up with writer/director Cameron Crowe to play a defense contractor who resurfaces in Hawaii to redeem himself after a professional humiliation. If he sounds a little like Jerry Maguire, well, the film’s trailer did nothing to dispel that notion, what with the character being a workaholic lone wolf, who had greatness before it all fell apart, and who gets a second chance at love and life. Emma Stone and Rachel McAdams play the women in his life, and Bill Murray costars as a wise billionaire who gets Cooper’s hotshot back in the game. —Jeff Labrecque

Spy (June 5)

Melissa McCarthy, action hero? No joke. (Okay, kinda.) In Spy, a spoof that marks her third collaboration with writer-director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids, The Heat), the actress stars as Susan Cooper, a top-of-her-class CIA agent who’s been stuck in an office job, guiding agents in the field (including a smarmy Jude Law) as the voice in their earpieces. But when she gets an unlikely shot at espionage, she disguises herself under frumpy old-lady wigs and garish cat T-shirts, fights bad guys with stale baguettes and poison darts, and teams up with an ultra-serious (and ultrahilarious) rogue spy played by Jason Statham, all in an attempt to take down a villainous aristocrat with very, very big hair (Rose Byrne). “I desperately wanted her hair to have its own billing,” says McCarthy, who loved playing an action hero. “It was the greatest playground ever. There wasn’t a day when I didn’t come home saying, ‘We did the craziest thing!’” —Nicole Sperling

Insidious: Chapter 3 (June 5)

Lin Shaye’s ghoulie-battling medium died in 2011’s Insidious, then returned as a ghost in the 2013 sequel. Now she’s back for a third go-round—and this time, she’s breathing. What gives? Insidious 3 is a prequel. “It’s set waaaay back in 2008!” writer-director Leigh Whannell says. The film chronicles the woes of a teenage girl haunted by a fresh paranormal being (Michael Reid MacKay). Creepy fact: MacKay appeared in Se7en as the man who was killed for the sin of sloth, and Whannell based his Insidious character on the killer from David Fincher’s 1995 classic. “I said to myself, ‘What if Kevin Spacey’s John Doe came back as a ghost?’” —Clark Collis

Love and Mercy (June 5)

Paul Dano and John Cusack don’t look alike. So why did director Bill Pohlad cast the former as the twentysomething Brian Wilson and the latter as the middle-aged version in this film about the troubled Beach Boy? “If you look at photos from the ‘60s versus the ‘80s, Brian looks dramatically different,” Pohlad says. While the ‘60s sequences focus on the musician losing his grip on reality, the later ones are centered on Wilson’s girlfriend Melinda (Elizabeth Banks) and her efforts to rescue him from the dubious care of psychotherapist Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti). We’re beginning to understand why the movie’s not called Good Vibrations. —Clark Collis

Jurassic World (June 12)

In the fourth movie in the Jurassic Park series, the dinosaur island theme park that John Hammond was developing in the original 1993 film has finally come to fruition 22 years later. It is a thriving vacation destination, with an elaborate main street that boasts a visitors' center, a gift shop, and restaurants. But some things never change. To boost attendance at the swank new park, operations manager Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) introduces a genetically modified dino into the mix. But of course the big baddie escapes and unleashes a rampage—right when Claire’s young nephews (Ty Simpkins and Nick Robinson) happen to be visiting the island. In one scene that pays homage to the first Jurassic’s iconic T. rex/Ford Explorer sequence, the unlucky lads come close to becoming the beast’s playthings. Howard and Chris Pratt, who plays a handsome raptor wrangler, also got to inject a bit of love/hate, Romancing the Stone-esque electricity into their characters. “They don’t like each other at all, and by the end that’s changed,” director Colin Trevorrow says. “We think that [classic conceit] absolutely can apply to a dinosaur movie.” —Tim Stack

Live From New York! (June 12)

Saturday Night Live celebrated its 40th anniversary with a TV special that ran for three and a half hours. Live From New York! had to clear a higher hurdle: Winnow 130 hours of footage into 82 minutes that define four decades of comedy. SNL creator Lorne Michaels sanctioned the project but suggested it shouldn’t be a typical backstage doc. “It’s not like Tom Shales’ book, which really gets down to anecdotal history,” says director Bao Nguyen, referring to the tome published in 2002 that has the same title as this film. “This is looking at Saturday Night Live as a reflection of what’s happened in America during that time.” Says producer JL Pomeroy. “It’s just woven into our DNA as Americans. When something major happens, we’re like, ‘I can’t wait to see what SNL does with it.’ ” Still true in 2015. —Jeff Labrecque

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (June 12)

In the coming-of-age Sundance hit, Rachel (Olivia Cooke), an 18-year-old battling leukemia, forms an unusual bond with Greg (Thomas Mann) and his friend Earl (R.J. Cyler), who create homages to their favorite movies that bear wacky titles like Senior Citizen Kane. The film is deeply personal for director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon. “I was dealing with the death of my dad,” he says. “This is an expression of my love for him, the best way I can express it: through words, images, and storytelling.” —Chris Lee

Inside Out (June 19)

Pixar’s latest addition to its lineup of lovable characters is the effervescent Joy (voiced by Amy Poehler), who lives inside the mind of an 11-year-old girl named Riley. Since Riley’s birth, Joy has guided a quirky group of anamorphized emotions that includes Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Mindy Kaling), Fear (Bill Hader), and Sadness (Phyllis Smith). With Joy in control, Riley is optimistic and upbeat. But when puberty kicks in, she turns moody, forcing Joy to begin her own journey of letting go and growing up. It’s an emotional adventure that strikes a chord with writer-director Pete Docter (Up). "[When] my daughter grew up, she became a different person. It's wonderful, but it's different. It fundamentally changes the way you speak to her, relate to her," Docter says. “That's what Joy goes through in this story." Luckily, Docter's animation style lends itself to making the pains of puberty both relatable and adorable. —Nina Terrero

Dope (June 19)

Call it an alternate-reality Boyz N the Hood. The indie comedy Dope follows Malcolm (Shameik Moore), a “geek” in a proto-punk trio whose dreams of escaping the mean streets of Inglewood, Calif., to attend Harvard are imperiled by a drug deal gone wrong. With its sly nod to ’70s blaxploitation films—as well as Tom Cruise’s teenage pimp in 1983’s Risky Business—the film connects cultural dots between the Deep Web and Yo! MTV Raps to present a cutting-edge slice of millennial life. Writer-director Rick Famuyiwa (The Wood, Brown Sugar) was inspired by post-gangsta-rap acts such as Odd Future and Kendrick Lamar. “It got me thinking about what it is to be a geek if you are a black kid in Inglewood or Compton or Detroit,” he says. Adds Moore: “This movie is going to give a new perspective on the black community in general.” —Chris Lee

Infinitely Polar Bear (June 19)

Mark Ruffalo faced at least two formidable challenges making Infinitely Polar Bear: accurately embodying bipolar disorder and honoring the man who inspired his character, writer-director Maya Forbes’ father. The story comes directly from Forbes’ experiences as a girl, when her mother (portrayed here by Zoe Saldana) temporarily left her two daughters in the care of their unstable dad. To play his part, Ruffalo decided to focus on the man, not the malady. “Let’s say you’re in a wheelchair. If you’re an a--hole, you’re going to be an a--hole in a wheelchair,” he says. “If you’re a lovely guy, you’re still going to be a lovely guy but with bipolar.” —Kevin P. Sullivan

Ted 2 (June 26)

When Ted hit theaters in 2012, offering the chance to watch Mark Wahlberg bro down in Boston with a beer-swilling plushie, it became one of the highest-grossing R-rated comedies of all time. What was the secret? “It could be as simple as the world just likes a cute fuzzy thing that behaves badly,” creator Seth MacFarlane posits. Now the not-so-cuddly living toy is back with his best buddy for a second adventure. “The powers that be, as soon as they start smelling money, they’re thinking, ‘Why not four or five of them in a row?’ ” says Wahlberg. “But this is my first sequel to a movie that I’ve done, so I only wanted in if we had a good story.” That story is Ted’s quest for “legalization.” To have a baby with his new wife, he must get his bid for personhood recognized by the courts. That’s a process Wahlberg never went through with his previous stuffed companions. “I did carry a monkey with me everywhere I went when I was a kid,” the actor says. “But he didn’t smoke pot and bang chicks in grocery-store freezers.” Well, at least as far as he knows. —Keith Staskiewicz

Magic Mike XXL (July 1)

What happens in the sequel to 2012’s male-stripper hit? “No plot,” teases Channing Tatum. “Just a bunch of naked dudes sitting around doing dude stuff. We read all the message boards, and people were like, ‘Less story. Less plot. Just dudes’ things.’ And we listened to that.” There’s more to XXL than just naked dudes—although there is a lot of that, too. The film picks up three years later, with Mike (Tatum) and his dancing buddies (Matt Bomer and Joe Manganiello, among others) taking a road trip to a—yes!—stripper convention in Myrtle Beach, S.C. On their way, they run into newcomers to the Mike universe, including Jada Pinkett Smith as a strip-club owner and NFLer-turned-Kelly Ripa cohost Michael Strahan as one of her gyrating employees. While Magic Mike XXL doesn’t boast giant dinos or flying superheroes, Tatum teases that there’s plenty of spectacle. “Basically, we all were taking penis-enlargement pills since the last one, so we weren’t worried about what temperature the room was when we came out to do our dances,” he jokes. (We think.) “That’s what XXL means.” Who says there’s no truth in advertising? —Tim Stack

Terminator Genisys (July 1)

Ever since Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator first zapped down to Earth in his birthday suit 31 years ago, fans of the franchise have relied on the idea of John Connor as the savior of the human race. But in Terminator Genisys, Connor’s heroism is less certain. And that mystery made Jason Clarke (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) excited to take on the iconic character. “The script expands on our preconceived notions of who John Connor is,” he says. “So I knew I couldn’t just show up and lay down some hard military guy. There’s a lot more going on than that.” The time-travel-heavy plot toggles between 1984, 2017, and 2029 and introduces both a new Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke) and a new Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney). The filmmakers also aim to remind audiences what they love about these movies—which, according to Schwarzenegger, who reprises his role in Genisys, all comes down to the title character. “How cool is it not to feel pain? How cool is it to be like a machine?” he says. “You can be indestructible. It’s a heroic character. I think people admire all this stuff.” Not that he’s biased. —Nicole Sperling

Minions (July 10)

Since their debut in 2010’s Despicable Me, minions have become a pop culture superpower. So naturally they got their own spin-off. Set in 42 b.g. (i.e., Before Gru, the villain/hero of Despicable Me), Minions tells the origin story of the three main yellow fellows (Kevin, Stuart, and Bob) as they look for an evil mastermind to serve. They find one in Scarlet Overkill (voiced by Sandra Bullock). How did directors Pierre Coffin and Kyle Balda handle an entire movie with creatures who speak their own hybrid tongue? “You should be able to turn off the sound and understand everything that’s happening,” says Coffin. Adds Balda, “It all really depends on their poses and their acting—like a Chaplin film.” —C. Molly Smith

Self/Less (July 10)

A dying wealthy man (Ben Kingsley) undergoes a freakish medical procedure that transfers his consciousness into the body of a younger man (Ryan Reynolds). But immortality has a price in the new movie from director Tarsem Singh (The Cell). In this case, the handsome “empty vessel” might have remnants of his own human past that refuse to go away. “Immortality has some side effects,” concedes Matthew Goode’s creepy biogenics exec, in the movie’s trailer, as all sides battle for their souls. “There is no science, no progress, without sacrifice.”—Jeff Labrecque

Ant-Man (July 17)

In Marvel’s Ant-Man, Paul Rudd plays jailbird-turned-superhero Scott Lang, who has the power to shrink himself and control his six-legged namesakes, thanks to gear designed by inventor Hank Pym (Michael Douglas). But Lang’s armor is positively pacifist compared with the more advanced suit worn by the nefarious Darren Cross, a.k.a. Yellowjacket (Corey Stoll). “Hank Pym’s Ant-Man suit doesn’t have a single weapon,” says director Peyton Reed (Yes Man), “whereas Yellowjacket is armed with plasma cannons.” That would make the first big showdown between the foes a decided mismatch, right? Maybe not. “Ant-Man is very fast when he’s small,” he says. “Also, when he shrinks, he increases his density, so he’s got increased strength.” (Not to mention that ant-whispering power, which plays a crucial role in Lang’s attempt to steal Yellowjacket’s garb.) —Clark Collis

Trainwreck (July 17)

While Amy Schumer was writing Trainwreck, director Judd Apatow encouraged her to dip into her own personal well of fears and neuroses for inspiration. What she came up with is a story about Amy (Schumer), a men’s-magazine writer who avoids serious romantic commitment whenever possible. But after she’s assigned to write about a sports doctor (Bill Hader), she realizes—with horror—she’s found a good guy she actually likes. Look for plenty of surprising cameos from star athletes, and a supporting turn from LeBron James, who’s been getting lots of laughs in preview screenings. “He can quit basketball and fall back on his real dream,” says Schumer. “He’s like a tall Kevin Hart.” —Sara Vilkomerson

Mr. Holmes (July 17)

The most portrayed character in film may be retired, but he never quits. Sherlock Holmes (Ian McKellen) is 93 and losing his memory as he recalls a case from 35 years earlier. “Imagine someone whose mental agility, the very thing he’s defined by, has now abandoned him,” says director Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters). McKellen, 75, was aged with prosthetics, and when his makeup artists learned that the Hobbit team had needed a scant 45 minutes to transform him into Gandalf, they took it as a challenge. “By the first week,” says Condon, “they had gotten it down to 44.” Nothing like breaking a record, even if just by a (fake) nose. —Joe McGovern

Pan

Yes, it’s an origin story, and yes, if you ask the producers about trilogy possibilities they all but cross themselves and mutter “God willing,” but director Joe Wright is doing all he can to avoid the current trend of turning well-known stories like Peter Pan into CG dirges of moral and visual murk. “Neverland is vivid and bright and hyperreal,” says Wright. “We want color.” And color there will be, in the form of outlandishly attired pirates, tribesmen who explode into powdered pigment, an entire fight sequence on a trampoline, and, of course, an over-the-top villain of the mustache-twirling variety played by Hugh Jackman. No, not Captain Hook. Jackman plays Blackbeard, who has kidnapped hordes of orphans, including Peter (Levi Miller), and forced them to work in his fairy-dust mines. Armed with a sword and a penchant for oratory, Blackbeard is a baddie of the old sort. “The villains that I like have an Anthony Hopkins quality, a slight twinkle in their eye,” says Jackman. “This is a man who loves to make speeches. He doesn’t want any of them to end.” —Keith Staskiewicz

SCHEDULE ALERT: Pan's release date has been bumped to Oct. 9.

Paper Towns (July 24)

It’s been a whirlwind of a year for John Green, the best-selling author of The Fault in Our Stars. This July yet another of his novels is coming to the big screen—and this one doesn’t require three hankies. A mystery-romance directed by Jake Schreier (2012’s Robot & Frank), Paper Towns tells the story of Quentin, a.k.a. Q (Nat Wolff), a wry teenager who sets off on a road trip to find out what ever happened to the enigmatic girl next door, Margo (Cara Delevingne). “Paper Towns is a really funny movie, and The Fault in Our Stars, for all of its excellence, fell very flat for me as a comedy,” says Green, with a laugh. “The last movie I got to watch people crush my soul, and this time I got to watch them lift it up.” —Sara Vilkomerson

Pixels (July 24)

Get ready, gamers. If aliens ever send ’80s arcade-game characters to Earth to destroy us, you’ll be our first line of defense. That’s how it all plays out in Chris Columbus’ action-comedy, in which former console kings (Adam Sandler, Peter Dinklage, Josh Gad) battle once-benign creatures like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. “We had to peel away some of that innocence to make them really life-threatening,” says Columbus. A giant 3-D Pac-Man might actually be less menacing than Dinklage’s character, a mulleted geek-turned-criminal goon. Says Columbus: “Peter delivers a performance that’s unlike anything you’ve seen.” —Nina Terrero

Southpaw (July 24)

Kurt Sutter (Sons of Anarchy) originally wrote the script for Eminem as an unofficial follow-up to 8 Mile. After the rapper dropped out to focus on music, director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) had a hunch that Jake Gyllenhaal could play the angry, undefeated light heavyweight champion who has to care for his young daughter when his wife (Rachel McAdams) dies. But could he fight? Once he got the role, his first stop was the gym. Gyllenhaal trained twice daily for four months and completely transformed himself into the ripped, tatted brawler. Appearance wasn’t his main concern, though. “You can’t play a boxer and just look like a boxer,” says the actor, last seen playing a rail-thin sociopath in Nightcrawler. “You have to believe that you can exist in that world.” And he did. Fuqua shot the fight sequences in real time, using an HBO Sports crew as Gyllenhaal sparred with pro boxers like Victor Ortiz. “It turns out that he’s a pretty good fighter,” Fuqua says. “He’s got some skills.” —Kevin P. Sullivan

Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation (July 31)

Over the course of the Mission: Impossible films, Tom Cruise has dangled from ceilings, jumped from motorcycles and helicopters, and scaled the tallest building in the world. So it’s safe to say hanging on to the side of an Airbus A400M cargo plane as it took off was just part of the day’s work as Ethan Hunt, who takes on the Syndicate, a mysterious shadow organization that operates as an anti-IMF. “They brought me this plane, and I was looking at the model,” says director Christopher McQuarrie (Jack Reacher) “And I said to Tom, ‘What if you were on the outside of this plane?’ I was kinda half joking when I said it, and he just looked at me and said, ‘Yeah, I could do that.’ ” Cruise, always one to do his own stunts, was actually strapped to the plane as it was flying at 3,000 feet while filming the sequence. —Keith Staskiewicz

Vacation (July 31)

Ed Helms plays Rusty Griswold, who 32 years ago endured his dad Clark’s odyssey to Walley World in the original National Lampoon’s Vacation. Now he’s taking his wife (Christina Applegate) and kids down the same holiday road. The film features stopovers with Rusty’s sister, Audrey (Leslie Mann), and her stud husband (Chris Hemsworth), plus cameos from Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo and franchise-appropriate adult humor. “European Vacation was the first time I saw breasts,” says Helms. “So, yeah, this is going to be an R-rated movie, and I think it does a pretty good job earning the R.” —Joe McGovern

The End of the Tour (July 31)

When James Ponsoldt (The Spectacular Now) approached Jason Segel to play the brilliant and notoriously moody writer David Foster Wallace, no one was more surprised than the former How I Met Your Mother actor. “There was a big part of me that thought, ‘Why me?’ ” Segel says. To prepare for the film—about an epic 1996 interview between Wallace and a Rolling Stone reporter (Jesse Eisenberg)—Segel formed a book club with guys from his local L.A.-area bookstore to get through the author’s challenging magnum opus, Infinite Jest. “It was one of the sweetest experiences I’ve ever had as a grown man with other grown men,” he says. —Sara Vilkomerson

Fantastic Four (August 7)

In most comic-book adaptations, superpowers are mainly just supercool. In the new Fantastic Four, they feel more like a disability. In this origin-story reboot, the Four—Reed Richards (Miles Teller), Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan), Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell), and Sue (Kate Mara)—are “infected” during an interdimensional-travel experiment. The event turns Reed into the elastic Mr. Fantastic, Johnny into the Human Torch, Ben into the Thing, and Sue into the Invisible Woman. “It’s as if you got into a car accident,” Mara says, “and a part of you is different for the rest of your life.” Making matters worse, the fifth member of their crew, Victor (Toby Kebbell), has transformed as well, into an updated version of Dr. Doom, and the gang must grapple with their new skills—and the loss of their old selves—while finding a way to defeat him. Director Josh Trank describes the tone of the film as a cross between Steven Spielberg and Tim Burton—what he calls “Dark Amblin.” He wanted the film to feel scary and very real, more like a horror movie than a superhero flick. —Tim Stack

Dark Places (August 7)

Rough-hewn Libby Day wouldn’t be friends with Gone Girl’s privileged Amy Dunne, but they share a seed of darkness planted by Gillian Flynn. In this adaptation of Flynn’s second novel, Libby (Charlize Theron) is famous for surviving a family massacre that she blamed on her older brother, Ben (Corey Stoll). Twenty-five years later, she trades on her fading tabloid fame and revisits the crime with a macabre “kill club” determined to prove Ben’s innocence. Flynn consulted with writer-director Gilles Paquet-Brenner (Sarah’s Key) on his screenplay. “Gilles loved the nastiness of Libby, so there was never even a conversation about making her [nicer],” says Flynn. —Jeff Labrecque

Masterminds (August 7)

Directed by Napoleon Dynamite’s Jared Hess, Masterminds is based on the true story of the 1997 Loomis Fargo robbery in North Carolina, an incident dubbed the hillbilly heist, in which a gang of quixotic goobers robbed an armored-car company of $17.3 million, spent the stolen loot on tacky luxury items and a house containing a black-velvet Elvis, and were caught less than five months later. Zach Galifianakis and Kristen Wiig have worked with a lot of the same people, but never in a movie together. “I told my friends, ‘I wish I had known Kristen in New York years ago, because I feel like we really would have been close friends,’ ” says Galifianakis. “But now it’s just fake friends because we’re in show business.” Responds Wiig, “That’s the nicest thing that you’ve ever said.” —Keith Staskiewicz

The Diary of a Teenage Girl (August 7)

How do you take Phoebe Gloeckner’s 2002 novel about a teen who loses her virginity to her mother’s boyfriend and not make it salacious or downright creepy? You put it in the hands of Marielle Heller, who spent three years transforming it into an Off Broadway play (that she also starred in) before turning it into this bold cinematic examination of a girl’s sexual evolution. “I’ve never cared about a project this much in my whole life,” says Heller of the Sundance hit, which centers on Minnie (Bel Powley), the daughter of a young, withholding mother (Kristen Wiig) living in 1970s San Francisco, ground zero of the sexual revolution. “I am telling this story from this girl’s point of view, and she doesn’t feel like she’s being taken advantage of, so we, as an audience, can’t feel like she’s being taken advantage of either.” —Nicole Sperling

Ricki and the Flash (August 7)

Meryl Streep is Ricki Randazzo, the lead singer in a cover band who faced a difficult decision 20 years earlier—a kind of Sophie’s Choice between her obligations as a married mother of three and rock & roll. She chose option B and bolted. When her daughter (Streep’s daughter Mamie Gummer) finds herself in crisis, Ricki returns from wannabe rock stardom to, ahem, face the music. “She comes back to Indiana to help rather than to patch things up,” says director Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs). “And she’s very much persona non grata, showing up as a mom for the first time in decades. Abandonment issues!” Gummer (The Good Wife) made her film debut opposite Streep in 1986’s Heartburn at 18 months old. But this new mother-daughter collaboration wasn’t so much a no-brainer as a nontalker. “I was sitting at home, she came by, wordlessly dropped the script in front of me, and walked away,” Gummer says. “We didn’t talk much about it before stepping onto set the first day. Clearly, I trust she knows what she’s doing. She trusted me. We held hands, shut our eyes, and jumped.” This one goes to 11. —Chris Lee

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (August 14)

Guy Ritchie (Sherlock Holmes) has long loved the early Bond movies and the 1960s films built around British spy Harry Palmer (Michael Caine). So he decided to make one in that spirit. In his reboot of the cult ’60s spy series, Henry Cavill (Man of Steel) plays Napoleon Solo, a CIA agent who reluctantly joins forces with a KGB spook, Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer), during the height of the Cold War. They’re tasked with taking out a secret organization that has kidnapped the father of Gabriella Teller, an East German mechanic (Alicia Vikander). Before Solo and Kuryakin buddy up, though, they’re hardcore enemies. In one extended chase sequence, Solo and Teller elude Kuryakin by zip-lining across the Berlin Wall. “What we’re trying to capture are iconic memories of the East-meets-West scenario,” Ritchie says. —Clark Collis

Straight Outta Compton (August 14)

Late-’80s Los Angeles was a roiling cauldron of gang violence, racial tensions, and police brutality from which hip-hop firebrands N.W.A burst forth to forge gangsta rap as a cultural force. Now, a quarter century after their incendiary song “F--- tha Police” provoked a rebuke by the FBI, former members Ice Cube and Dr. Dre have teamed up to produce this biopic tracing N.W.A’s profanity-laced history. “You’ll get the sex, drugs, and rock & roll that go with a music biopic, but we go beyond the surface,” says director F. Gary Gray (The Italian Job). That involved investigating the personal stories that inspired the group to rage against the proverbial machine. And with Compton’s scenes of rioting and racial profiling, Gray hopes the movie will be seen as more than just a period piece in our post-Ferguson America. “We’re not just looking back on things that used to happen,” he says. “They are still happening.” —Chris Lee

Underdogs (August 14)

Watch closely and you might see a trace of Ingrid Bergman’s Casablanca performance in this CG soccer story, a hit in director Juan José Campanella’s native Argentina. “Those great close-ups [inspired us to create] faces with very specific emotion,” he says. The Stateside version tracks the story of childhood rivals (Nicholas Hoult and Matthew Morrison) who clash again as adults when one becomes a professional soccer player and decides to bulldoze their hometown to build a new sports stadium. Campanella aims to score with U.S. audiences, but he’s already won over his soccer-hating 7-year-old son: “He ended up loving the movie.” Score one goooooooooooooooal for Pops. —Nina Terrero

Hitman: Agent 47 (August 28)

Agent 47 (Rupert Friend) is a genetically engineered hitman tasked with killing Katia (Hannah Ware), the daughter of the head of a megacorporation. Why? Because the company is building an army of assassins even deadlier than he is. With help from a protector (Zachary Quinto), Katia seeks out her dad to resolve some matters of her own. “She’s the lost girl looking for where she belongs,” says Aleksander Bach, who’s making his directorial debut with this adaptation of the Hitman videogame. Katia and 47 team up, and he learns he may be more than just the sum of his bar code. “He’s not prepared for the human emotion,” Bach says. “When you’re a cold assassin, how much humanity is still there?” —Dana Rose Falcone

Grandma (August TBD)

It’s always a surprise when directors build movies around 75-year-old actresses—especially when the director is a guy who established himself with American Pie. But Paul Weitz had an idea, and when he met Lily Tomlin while making 2013’s Admission, it all spilled out: An ornery lesbian helps her teenage granddaughter (Julia Garner) raise $600 for an abortion. “The key thing was using a voice that was as articulate and profane as I needed this character to be,” says Weitz, who also wrote the script. “When Lily saw it, she jokingly said to me, ‘That’s the first time I’ve played myself. I should’ve thought of doing that earlier.’ ” —Jeff Labrecque

Z for Zachariah (August TBD)

At what point does the postapocalypse become prehistory, cycling past Revelation back around to Genesis? Margot Robbie plays a young survivor living on the family farm after a nuclear exclamation point punctuates the rest of humanity’s sentence. Her life is thrown into turmoil by the arrival of two men (Chiwetel Ejiofor and Chris Pine), and she becomes something of an Eve with two Adams. The small cast and crew made the film in such bucolic seclusion—on location on a farm in New Zealand—that for all they knew, the end of days had actually occurred. “We felt like we were in this bubble,” says Robbie. “We had no phone reception, and you felt really, really cut off from the outside world. It was bizarre but so perfect for the film.” —Keith Staskiewicz