Five upcoming 2026 movies that are guaranteed to fail
With every year comes a new pool of movies vying for awards success and box office domination, but you can always sense when a film is set to flop, even if it looks like it’s going for gold.
2026 will see the release of many highly anticipated films that we can only assume will actually be a success, like Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey and Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Three, and then there’s the widespread release of movies that already premiered or opened to select audiences last year, like If I Had Legs I’d Kick You and The Secret Agent, both of which have received glowing reviews so far.
It’s obviously impossible to tell whether a movie will actually succeed or not, but you can get a good inkling when you see how people respond to trailers, casting decisions, and promotional photos, with Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights a prime example in that regard.
So, from a Michael Jackson biopic nobody asked for to another instalment in the Meet the Parents franchise (focking hell, you could say), here are five 2026 movies that we’re sure are going to fail.
Five 2026 movies that are guaranteed to bomb:
‘Supergirl’ (Craig Gillespie)
Superhero movies certainly have their place in cinema, and there have admittedly been some good ones over the years, gleaming amidst a landscape of Marvel slop. But with the success of these huge blockbuster superhero films year on year, we now have to be faced with endless releases that differ in quality, favouring commercialism over genuinely impressive artistry, with Supergirl seemingly the latest in the line, ready to make a quick dollar instead of actually standing for anything interesting.
Despite the gorgeous, brightly-coloured comics that the movie is based on, promotional shots of the film, which will star Milly Alcock in the titular role, look incredibly bland and two-dimensional, and thus fan reaction is predominantly negative already. Moreover, considering that the 1984 Supergirl was a massive box office bomb, only time will tell whether this new version will fare any better and surpass the low expectations.
‘Scream 7’ (Kevin Williamson)
Now, I say this as a huge lover of the Scream franchise, but the seventh instalment in the series is surely destined to fail. What started out as a meta commentary on the horror genre has evolved into something completely different with the continuation of the series following Wes Craven’s passing, which has seen the establishment of a new main cast. While there are some good moments in 2022’s Scream and Scream VI, they’re clear indicators of the series needing to come to an end, wherein it’s surprising how you can carry on when you’ve killed off one of the best characters.
Scream 7 isn’t just destined to fail because of its plot (whoever the killers are this time will no doubt be part of an incredibly convoluted storyline), but because of the firing of Melissa Barrera due to her pro-Palestine comments online, which has left many people boycotting the film. Jenna Ortega departed the project soon after, too, so without the two leads from the past two movies, it seems like Scream 7 is going to crash and burn, hopefully corking the revivals for good.
‘Focker-in-Law’ (John Hamburg)
While Meet the Parents was a huge success when it emerged in 2000, with every sequel the franchise has got worse and worse, culminating in 2010’s Little Fockers, which is genuinely awful. Well, 16 years on, and it turns out the series didn’t end there after all, because Focker-in-Law is set for release in November, with many of the cast reprising their roles, like Robert De Niro, whose filmography seems to only be a growing a dumpster fire by the year, while new additions will come in the form of Beanie Feldstein and Ariana Grande.
Judging by the failure of Little Fockers, it’ll be a surprise if Focker-in-Law reaches the heights of Meet the Parents, where the third instalment in the franchise should’ve been the end to a once-entertaining series, but if there’s one thing Hollywood loves to do, it’s churn out countless sequels for the sake of profit. Considering that Little Fockers made $310.7million, it’s not a surprise that another movie is coming, but I can almost see the critical panning from here.
‘Michael’ (Antoine Fuqua)
Michael Jackson was never exactly the height of cool; the so-called ‘King of Pop’ has faced his fair share of allegations over the years, even spawning documentaries about his unusual relationship with children, while his treatment of himself as a God-like figure has rubbed many the wrong way.
That’s not to say he wasn’t incredibly popular, of course, with Jackson standing as one of the most commercially successful artists of all time, and he remains highly beloved by many across the world, but in 2026, do we really need a biopic about Jackson? It’s a tricky genre to master anyway, and most of the time biopics just reek of Oscar bait, but when you take a controversial figure and have his own nephew, Jaafar Jackson, play him, you know it’s going to be incredibly biased. Additionally, the fact that the film is set to gloss over the more troubling side of Jackson’s legacy makes Michael seem like an obvious misfire, and I’ll be surprised if it scoops up any award nominations.
‘Wuthering Heights’ (Emerald Fennell)
Emily Brontë’s classic novel Wuthering Heights has been adapted various times over the years, but Emerald Fennell, director of Saltburn, is set to bring forth a deeply erotic and perverted version, where there’s no doubt that her take on the tale of doomed romance, violence, and generational trauma will be laden with shock for the sake of it.
Saltburn had as much depth as a bathtub, which she filled with cum-infested water in the name of her supposedly perverse tirade on mainstream cinema, and if the trailer for Wuthering Heights is anything to go by, this’ll be a similar deal, only this time she’ll be destroying precious source material in the process. The internet has been up in arms for a while over the casting of Margot Robbie as Cathy and especially Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, not least because the character isn’t meant to be white or pretty, so while we can hope Fennell may pull a Sofia Coppola and surprise us with the anachronistic choices, including a Charli XCX soundtrack, it’s not looking very promising for the young-ish woman.
