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Why Your Business Needs a Marketing Operating System
Why Your Business Needs a Marketing Operating System written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Listen to the full episode: Episode Overview In this solo episode, John Jantsch breaks down a major innovation in small business marketing: the Marketing Operating System. After decades of helping businesses grow with a strategy-first approach, John explains why it is no longer enough to just run campaigns or chase tactics. He introduces the […]

Why Your Business Needs a Marketing Operating System written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Listen to the full episode:

Episode Overview

In this solo episode, John Jantsch breaks down a major innovation in small business marketing: the Marketing Operating System. After decades of helping businesses grow with a strategy-first approach, John explains why it is no longer enough to just run campaigns or chase tactics.

He introduces the Marketing Pyramid, a strategic spine that aligns business strategy, brand development, customer experience, and team execution. You will learn about the 7 stages required to install a complete, repeatable, and scalable system that drives consistent results. From eliminating chaos to integrating AI, this episode gives you a roadmap to transform your marketing from random acts into a finely tuned system.

If your marketing feels disjointed or overly complex, this episode is your blueprint for clarity and structure.

Guest Bio

John Jantsch is a marketing consultant, speaker, and the bestselling author behind Duct Tape Marketing, The Referral Engine, and The Ultimate Marketing Engine. As the founder of the Duct Tape Marketing System, John has spent over 30 years helping small businesses implement simple, effective marketing strategies that actually work. His latest innovation, the Marketing Operating System, offers a new way for businesses to install a fully integrated marketing framework that scales.

Key Takeaways
- Why marketing needs to operate like every other system in your business
- The Marketing Pyramid: business, brand, growth, experience, tech, and team strategies
- The 7 Stages of a Marketing Operating System
- How to integrate AI into marketing workflows using structured playbooks
- Why disconnected tactics kill momentum
- The importance of rhythm, ownership, and optimization in modern marketing
- How to build a system that drives accountability, visibility, and consistency
The 7 Stages of a Marketing Operating System
1. Strategy First Core – Foundation based on business goals, client journey, and strategic clarity
2. Campaign Builder System – Plan 90-day campaigns with a brand, growth, and experience engine
3. Workstream Engine – SOPs, OKRs, team roles, and execution rhythms
4. AI-Powered Marketing Hub – AI-integrated content, comms, and creative systems
5. Scorecards and Signals – A performance dashboard built on actionable data
6. Momentum Meetings – Monthly alignment and accountability sessions
7. Optimization Loop – Ongoing feedback, iteration, and system tuning
Timestamps
- 00:00 – Why this might be the last solo show of 2025
- 01:09 – What is a Marketing Operating System?
- 02:00 – The Marketing Pyramid: Strategy as the Spine
- 04:30 – Business, Brand, Growth, and Experience Strategies
- 06:56 – The 7 Stages of Building the System
- 09:21 – Integrating AI and building marketing playbooks
- 11:34 – Momentum meetings and continuous optimization
- 13:13 – What happens next and how to get started
Quotes

“Marketing should be a system, not a series of random acts.” – John Jantsch

“Disconnected tactics make it impossible to scale. Strategy brings clarity and confidence.” – John Jantsch

Ready to finally stop guessing and start growing?

Watch the free Clarity Engine workshop and download your Strategy Pyramid worksheet at dtm.world/clarity.

Duct Tape Transcript

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John Jantsch (00:00.91)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and no guest today. I am going to do a solo show. Might be one of my last solo shows of 2025, depending upon when you’re listening to this. I’m going to call this, Why Your Business Needs a Marketing Operating System. So if you’ve been listening for any amount of time at all, you’ve certainly heard me say marketing is a system. It starts with strategy before tactics. I’ve been saying that for 30 years.

And in some ways, we have brought a systematic approach to marketing. Have we brought a system? Probably not always. It’s probably been more of a concept because we just really haven’t had the tools necessary to do it. But I believe we are approaching that point where we do have the actual tools to create a tangible, installable

marketing operating system in a business. I’m very excited about that. That’s really going to be the next chapter of duct tape marketing. If you will, we are going to go very heavily into that. What I think is a needed innovation in the market. I will still say that we encounter every single day businesses that feel chaotic, disconnected, even if they look outwardly like, yeah, they’re succeeding. They’re growing.

Internally, when you get in there, there’s a lot of things going on that nobody’s really sure of. There’s not a lot of planning. There’s certainly tactic of the week still going on. And every now and then you get lucky and some of that stuff works, but it certainly makes it difficult to scale a business in that way. And that’s really what I want to tackle today. Kind of the common pain points that we encounter. Random tactics, too many tools, inconsistent results, no clear message or direction. Boy, that one’s a killer.

A lot of businesses, when I talk about marketing as a system, maybe they have financial systems, they have hiring systems, have systems, whatever it is they make out the door. But then when it comes to marketing, it just feels like such a foreign concept. And I think it’s just a normal concept we’ve been taught to really think differently about. So before I get into the stages of the system, what the system might look like in your world or in any business’s world.

John Jantsch (02:19.95)

It has to be built on something that is strategic. And so we’ve been using for the last couple of years something I call the marketing pyramid. And it’s a framework to really, it’s really in a lot of ways the spine of the system. That it’s the structure that really informs kind of how we build it. And a lot of times when people talk about strategy, certainly when they talk about marketing strategy,

It’s like they do it in a vacuum. I mean, a lot of times when they’re talking about a marketing strategy, they’re really just talking about how are going to get business? And that’s a gross strategy, maybe, but that’s all. Here’s the idea behind the pyramid is that you need to build from the bottom up. And that first rung of the strategy pyramid begins with business strategy. I what is the vision, values, goals? What’s even the business model? mean, if you’re talking about, we need to grow 20 percent. Well, why? How?

Is that going to happen and so? That without a conversation about that or at least some analysis of that It’s very difficult for you to think in terms of like here’s gonna be our marketing strategy because your marketing strategy is supposed to Solve for the all of that right it’s like if these are our objectives of this is where we’re trying to go the marketing strategy is gonna just support that it’s not going to just be this thing that we operate and hope we get to where we’re going and inside of

the marketing strategy, there are really three layers. It’s not just about getting the phone to ring. It’s not just about getting leads. The first layer, well, the three layers are brand strategy, growth strategy, which I mentioned, and customer experience strategy. Those are all a combined whole really that go into a marketing strategy. And so many people leave out the first one and the third one. So that brand strategy is, you know, what’s your message? What’s your identity? What’s your positioning? What’s your proof?

You know, what do you want the market to be thinking about you out there? And do you have a defensible competitive difference that you can really go out there and understand who your ICP is, your ideal client profile, and understand who you’re competing with for that ideal client profile so that you can send the right message and really have a strong brand strategy. Now, after that, this is the part most people understand.

John Jantsch (04:40.654)

is the growth strategy and that’s really the offers, the channels of how you’re going to generate leads. Ultimately, how you’re going to convert leads as well. And then the third part that I see people quite often missing and not thinking about is the customer experience strategy. How are we going to retain customers? How are we going to generate referrals? How are we going to wow our customers?

so that they are out there actually talking about us and advocating for doing work with us. Those all need to just be planned things. So we need to build now, start building objectives around what we want to accomplish in each of those strategies. Now, if we’re going to build a true marketing operating system, one of the core pieces that this is going to be built on is a system strategy. So what’s our tool stack?

What are the processes? How do we create automation? Increasingly, what role is AI going to play in our creating systems? Because this is really how you get this repeatable system in place is by actually having a plan, having that business and marketing strategy that is then going to be executed by who’s doing things. And then of course, that’s the final tip of the pyramid, and that’s the team strategy. What are the roles? What’s the rhythm?

How is AI going to be integrated into your team? So that’s the spine. That’s ultimately what we want to have a plan for. And then we build the marketing operating system in stages to actually execute on that. There isn’t any way for me to put a pyramid down in structure in front of you and say, here, fill out all of this and we’ll have this. That’s the ultimate goal to actually have this completed marketing pyramid that’s going to be our guide.

but we’re going to build it in, and we’re going to build each of those pieces in stages. So, what are the seven stages? I like seven as a number. Seems like I’ve used a lot in the things that we’ve created. So, the first one is the strategy first core. This is something we’ve been doing for 25 years, and it’s still a crucial element. I don’t care what we’re developing, it’s a crucial element, always will be.

John Jantsch (06:56.302)

tools come, platforms come and go, AI is here this week, who knows what’s here next week, strategy, the strategy core, and fundamentally what we’re here to do as marketers, I don’t think will ever change. So we have to build that, we have to diagnose the gaps, we have to clarify the message, we have to define the client journey, and we have to tie those back, and really part of the first part before we’d ever get started is we would have an in-depth analysis.

with your help, of course, as the business owner on what the business strategy is. And quite frankly, that may be a discussion that we have to start because you’ve never really looked at a long term approach to your overall business strategy. So we may start there before we actually start or maybe as the discovery phase of the strategy first core. The second component then is what we call the campaign builder system. So I mean, this is where we’re going to plan.

you know what 90 day campaigns would look like. But we’re going to start here with building your brand engine and your growth engine and your customer experience engine because those are going to be the things that we’re going to launch really out there. We have to have those built in order to build campaigns. Stage number three, the third component is what we are calling the work stream engine. So this is where we’re going to assign roles, SOPs, rhythms for execution.

probably build OKRs, which is an objective key result tool that I think Google was, or people at Google were most noted for developing that. It’s great tool for actually breaking things down into small chunks so you can get to it. Then the next stage we’re gonna go to really is the AI powered marketing hub. I believe that, you know, a lot of people are still looking at AI as a tool or they’re looking at it as a

platform or as a way to do automation or as a way to do things faster and more efficiently, I ultimately believe that it’s going to be just baked into how we work as a company. let’s say you have Google Workspace or you have Microsoft Teams. Today, a lot of the communication across organizations, even outward communication, say via Gmail, things of that nature, is all just baked into those kind of

John Jantsch (09:21.304)

tools. mean, they basically are workplace tools that everybody uses in the organization. They all communicate with each other. They all collaborate. Well, AI is going to be baked in. Increasingly, it is being baked into those tools. But what we’re going to build is the AI marketing hub. So you’ll have playbooks now for how’s the newsletter going to be written? What are blog posts going to be? How are we going to do social? What are our ads going to look like? I believe we can use the AI tools to build a framework inside of an organization so that

no matter who’s operating the system inside the organization, they will actually have the playbooks to do it correctly and to use AI in a way that’s branded and in your voice and trained, but can also produce a lot of output that is part of the marketing plan.

Now, the fifth stage is actually, we’re calling it scorecards and signals. So this is gonna be your dashboard. It’s gonna be how you track performance without really getting into the vanity metrics. It’s gonna be, we’re gonna measure what matters, right? Now, this comes in the fifth stage, but frankly, we are using data throughout. I mean, when we are looking at an ICP, we’re looking at data. When we’re looking at core messaging, we’re looking at data. So…

Data becomes this fifth stage where we’re going to build the ultimate output tool, but we’re going to be baking data into the culture and the DNA of the organization. I think that that’s a real gap for lot of organizations. They don’t know what to measure. They aren’t measuring anything, or they’re measuring stuff that’s so complex it doesn’t really give any insight. And so we’re going to bake it into every stage, but then you’re going to have actually the dashboard as part of that.

One of the things that’s really important is this is not no system is set and forget it. We’ve got to tune it. We’ve got to maintain it. We’ve got to give it oil. All the metaphors you want to use there. And so we’re going to actually have what we call the momentum meeting. So it would be a very structured monthly check in that’s going to drive accountability and alignment and reassign ownership, reassign responsibility on what’s going on.

John Jantsch (11:34.688)

assess where you are on meeting your system output. And then the last piece, I think any good system, you’re basically building the thing and hoping you got it right. And so constant optimization is probably, many of you probably experienced that in your own business. mean, we’re every 90 days tweaking something or maybe.

changing direction almost in a large way or to some degree or in a new product offering or something. So there’s this constant feedback and review to refine and improve what’s working that we call the optimization loop.

Once we build that, what happens after that? It’s our belief that clear strategy is something that doesn’t change every month, but your marketing systems run consistently. Campaigns generate results, not noise. the key is inside the organization, think everybody knows what their role is. Everybody knows what their objectives are. Everybody has…

has visibility into what’s working, what’s not working. And I think that confidence across the team should really soar. Even if the team includes outside folks that are third party suppliers, partners, vendors, it really gives them confidence to know that there is a plan that they’re not just doing their one little part out there. So.

John Jantsch (13:13.922)

What’s next?

This is something that we are building now for clients. And it’s something that if it makes sense for you, we would love to show you this system.

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December 10, 2025
Marvel’s Wonder Man: A Timeline of the Iconic Ionic Hero

This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. You can read all of our magazine stories here. “For now they kill me with a living death.” – King Richard III, William Shakespeare. Death and rebirth have been the only constants in the ever-shifting life of Simon Williams, a.k.a. Wonder Man. Long before Marvel Comics […]

The post Marvel’s Wonder Man: A Timeline of the Iconic Ionic Hero appeared first on Den of Geek.

It feels strange to be talking about 2026 movies when we haven’t even escaped 2025 yet, but here we are! What makes the coming 12 months notable is that it might be the first full calendar year in which the cycle of film production and distribution has not been suffering residual effects from the pandemic in 2020/2021 or the writers’ and actors’ strikes in 2023. As a result, one glance at the upcoming release schedule indicates that 2026 could be the most packed year at the multiplex in a long time.

Even narrowing this list down to fewer than 20 entries was difficult, and the films we list below show the breadth of releases coming our way: everything from Gothic romances to mythological epics to make-or-break superhero spectaculars. As William Goldman famously said, nobody knows anything, so each of the movies in our survey holds the potential for massive success or catastrophic failure. Whatever happens, we’ll be there for each one.

Sony Pictures

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

January 16

After taking (ahem) 23 years off between installments, Danny Boyle and Alex Garland are continuing 28 Years Later‘s sordid legacy in faster succession, albeit this time with fresh blood. Candyman and Hedda helmer Nia DaCosta picks up the directorial reins in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, a movie which filmed simultaneously with last June’s zombie showdown. The new movie continues the story of Ralph Fiennes’ enigmatic good(ish?) doctor obsessed with memento mori and what happens to young Spike (Alfie Williams) when he falls into a band of “Jimmies,” led by Jack O’Connell’s eerily chipper and self-christened St. Jimmy.

In an exclusive preview with Den of Geek, DaCosta hinted, “You have these two trains on a track, essentially, that are going to collide. They’re going to end up with these two worlds in a clash, because you kind of feel that Spike and Kelson are going to interact again.”

Warner Bros. Pictures

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Wuthering Heights

February 13

The always-provocative filmmaker Emerald Fennell is following up her Oscar-winning Promising Young Woman and divisive Saltburn with a splashy adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic 1847 Gothic romance, and it stars no less than Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff. The castings are already raising eyebrows, with the latter earning accusations of whitewashing a literary character of famously ambiguous origin. But by working from source material that was considered scandalously edgy in its time, we can expect Fennell to welcome it all while amping up the tale’s eroticism and psychological melodrama—and with lots of heaving chests and Charli XCX songs if the trailer is anything to go by. In other words, don’t expect your high school teacher’s Wuthering Heights.

Warner Bros. Pictures

The Bride!

March 6

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s second outing as a director is a wild pivot from 2021’s The Lost Daughter: it’s been described as a musical, a satire, and an homage to The Bride of Frankenstein. Set in 1930s Chicago, the film finds Frankenstein’s Monster (Christian Bale) asking Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening) to create a companion for him, which arrives in the form of the Bride (Jessie Buckley). What happens from there involves murder, mayhem, and, er, social change. It seems a gamble by Warners, but a bold one given the amount of talent involved, as well as the fact that Mary Shelley reworkings seem to be in season if Poor Things and Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein are anything to go by.

Amazon MGM

Project Hail Mary

March 20

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller are at last in the director’s chairs again for a live-action film after they were dismissed from Solo: A Star Wars Story in 2018. (Their last completed live-action effort, 22 Jump Street, came out in 2014.) This time, though, the newly Spider-Verse emboldened duo is adapting Andy Weir’s sci-fi bestseller. The movie stars Ryan Gosling as a man who wakes up on an interstellar ship with no recollection of how he got there. And soon he learns that he is the last hope for humanity. The marketing promises a high-concept adventure with plenty of thrills, humor, and that ol’ Gosling charm. The Weir connection also suggests this is particularly well-suited to the screen. See Ridley Scott’s adaptation of The Martian for more.

Universal Pictures

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie

April 3

After 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie became the most successful video game-based movie of all time (nearly $1.4 billion worldwide), there was no doubt that Illumination and Nintendo would immediately greenlight a sequel. And while the plot remains under wraps, any gamer with passing familiarity with the Nintendo Wii’s beloved Super Mario Galaxy is already expecting gravity-bending visuals and out-of-this-world shenanigans for the plumber brothers. Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Jack Black, Charlie Day, and Keegan-Michael Key are all returning to their signature roles from the first film, while Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic are again directing.

20th Century Studios / Disney

The Devil Wears Prada 2

May 1

It’s time to get the devil her due, because Miranda Priestly is back in the long-rumored and hoped-for The Devil Wears Prada 2. Story details remain relatively tight-lipped, but we do know that despite having very different lanes of journalism in their purviews, Meryl Streep’s ice queen and Anne Hathaway’s Andy Sachs wind up in the same room again. The Dave Frankel-directed film also features the return of fan-favorite characters played by Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci.

Warner Bros. Pictures

Mortal Kombat II

May 8

Mortal Kombat II has certainly risen in the ranks of expectations. A sequel to the pretty-looking but somewhat divisively-received 2021 reboot of the franchise, Mortal Kombat, this sequel was originally pegged to be an October release date. But after enthusiastic test screenings and buzzy word-of-mouth, WB apparently got bullish about the Simon McQuoid-directed joint and moved the fighter to May of next year. It probably helps that the intended R-rated spectacle is bringing in a lot of fan-favorite characters and setups, including Karl Urban as an over-the-hill Johnny Cage who gets recruited into the titular tournament after his career as a movie star falls on hard times.

“The point where we find Johnny in this movie is very relatable to everybody, because he’s on the back foot in life,” Urban tells us in an exclusive cover story interview. “His career is in the tank, the world’s forgotten him, and he’s at a real low point. His confidence has been knocked, and it is at this very juncture that he is called upon to be at his best and to use his skillset to defend Earthrealm.” That leads to stunt work which the star teases has both humor and dexterity. “You also see specifically Van Damme, who in my opinion, was phenomenal, and Jackie Chan, who I drew huge inspiration from for the tone of some of Johnny Cage’s fights.”

Lucasfilm / Disney

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu

May 22

It will be nearly seven years since a Star Wars movie blasted across the big screen by the time this comes out, which is hopefully long enough for the bad taste left by The Rise of Skywalker to have disappeared. Either way, director Jon Favreau and co-writer Dave Filoni’s new film is set to answer a hard question for the franchise: will vast amounts of people come out for a story that requires viewing at least one, if not two, shows that aired on Disney+? A little Pedro Pascal charisma, even in a mask, can’t hurt. Meanwhile, the Lucasfilm braintrust appears to be betting that there’s enough good faith—and enough fans still in love with Baby Yoda—to restore this aging franchise to cinematic glory.

Photo by Rodin Eckenroth / Getty Images

Untitled Steven Spielberg Movie

June 12

While Steven Spielberg is not the box office or cultural powerhouse that he was in previous decades, there is no question that the mind races with possibilities at the thought of what this movie could be. Here’s what we know: it’s a science fiction film, reportedly having something to do with UFOs, that’s based on an idea Spielberg personally had before handing it off to his go-to blockbuster scribe, David Koepp. Keep in mind that Spielberg also dreamed up the original concepts for Close Encounters and E.T. Furthermore, the cast—including Emily Blunt, Colman Domingo, Josh O’Connor, and Colin Firth—is top-notch. And the idea of Spielberg returning to a genre that has provided us with so many classic films is enough to get us there opening day.

Pixar / Disney

Toy Story 5

June 19

What do you do when you make a near-perfect trilogy of animated films? Why, you keep going, of course! And if you thought that Toy Story 4 was a risky add-on, then you’re probably even more fretful over Toy Story 5. But Pixar, in a bit of a slump these days, is going back to its original franchise one more time with Woody, Buzz, Jessie, Forky, and all the rest returning. This time, the gang must fight for Bonnie’s attention with a tablet named Lilypad (Anna Faris)—setting up a clash between toys and tech that has no doubt gripped many households in recent years.

Warner Bros. Pictures

Supergirl

June 26

In some sense, Supergirl might be more of a test of James Gunn’s DC Studios than even 2025’s Superman. While that DCU kickoff had a lot to prove, Supergirl is the first follow-up to gauge how much audiences bought in, including to a cliffhanger of Milly Alcock’s party gal Kryptonian. Luckily, this spinoff is based on one of the best superhero stories of the decade, Tom King and Bilquis Evely’s Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, which finds a far more haunted Kara Zor-El than CW fans might remember. It also comes from director Craig Gillespie, who’s had success in left-of-center genre-benders like I, Tonya, Cruella, and Lars and the Real Girl. Together with Alcock and Jason Momoa (as… Lobo?!), this one could have a whole different vibe.

The Odyssey

July 17

How do you follow up a three-hour, billion-dollar-grossing, Best Picture-winning historical drama about the invention of the atomic bomb? With an epic film based on an ancient Greek myth, naturally. Fantasy and mythology movies tend to sink at the box office unless the name Tolkien is attached to them, but if anyone can turn Homer’s landmark of Greek literature into box office gold, it’s Christopher Nolan, who did the same for a tormented nuclear physicist in Oppenheimer. As usual, the cast—led by Matt Damon as Odysseus—is stacked, and Nolan is perhaps the only director aside from James Cameron whose name alone puts butts in seats. Whatever The Odyssey ends up being, we don’t expect to call it modest.

Sony Pictures

Spider-Man: Brand New Day

July 31

Following up the $1.9 billion-grossing Spider-Man: No Way Home is no easy feat, but the MCU’s Tom Holland-led iteration of your friendly neighborhood webslinger seems to be one of the few bright spots of Marvel’s post-Infinity Saga daze. The usual rumors persist about villains, storylines, multiverse variants, and the like, but all we really know is that Spidey will once again be supported by other MCU favorites like Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk and Jon Bernthal’s Punisher, while the identity and exact nature of the main antagonist remain unknown. Destin Daniel Cretton (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) replaces Jon Watts behind the camera for this one, and Stranger Things’ Sadie Sink joins returning cast members Zendaya and Jacob Batalon. Perhaps most interestingly, it’s speculated that this is Holland’s last non-Avengers stint in the red and blue suit.

Kevin Winter / Getty Images

Untitled Cruise/Iñárritu Film

October 2

We know even less about this movie than Spielberg’s, but it’s notable for two reasons: it’s a new work by Birdman and The Revenant director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, and it’s Tom Cruise’s first original film in eight years, following his recent run of Top Gun/Mission: Impossible sequels. The supporting cast is also excellent, including Jesse Plemons, Sandra Hüller, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Michael Stuhlbarg, and others. Shot in VistaVision, it’s said to be a black comedy about a man who sets out to save humanity after nearly destroying it. And that’s all we’ve got—except that the pairing of star and director may indicate a new phase of both their careers.

Lionsgate

The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping

November 20

With the success of 2023’s The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, Lionsgate and director Francis Lawrence adapting Suzanne Collins’ next prequel novel, Sunrise on the Reaping, is a smart bet. Set some four decades after Songbirds & Snakes, and just 24 years before the events of The Hunger Games (2012), this film stars Joseph Zada as a young Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson in the original movies) as he competes and (no spoiler) wins in the 50th Hunger Games. Yet the trials and tragedies he faces along the way have made this novel a fan favorite since its publication. Once again, the story’s young tributes will be supported by all-star veterans, including Jesse Plemons, Ralph Fiennes, Kieran Culkin, Elle Fanning, and Glenn Close. Meanwhile, Mckenna Grace plays Maysilee Donner, a young tribute who has captured the minds of millions of readers.

Avengers: Doomsday

December 18

This is it: high noon for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This is the one that features the return of Infinity War/Endgame directors Anthony and Joe Russo, Robert Downey Jr. coming back not as Iron Man but Doctor Doom, the inclusion of the OG Fox X-Men cast, the rumored appearance of everyone from Chris Evans to Ryan Reynolds… and it all adds up to either a Hail Mary pass of titanic proportions or a glorious relaunch to box office dominance. Don’t let the reports of an unfinished script or extended reshoots fool you; Marvel can pull this off—they’ve done so in the past—but the question is whether the Avengers brand still has the power to bring the MCU back from its recent decline.

WB

Dune: Part Three

December 18

Denis Villeneuve’s first two Dune movies were arguably the most epic, visionary genre releases since Peter Jackson bestowed The Lord of the Rings on us 20 years earlier. But concluding a trilogy has been the downfall of many a filmmaker, and Villeneuve faces a formidable task here. The movie will ostensibly be based on Frank Herbert’s Dune Messiah, a very different story from the original and in many ways a more difficult one to imagine as a film. But if Villeneuve keeps the core of the novel—the willful self-destruction of Paul Atreides—intact, he can stick this landing like a breaking Shai-Hulud. We’re rooting for him all the way.

Focus Features

Werwulf

December 25

With his four previous movies, writer/director Robert Eggers has proven himself as the master of grim, atmospheric period horror (yes, even The Northman was a horror story in its own way). He immerses us in barbaric worlds of the past like no other filmmaker currently working. Having conquered the most seminal of vampire tales with Nosferatu, he’s now turning his attention to lycanthropy with what he himself calls “the darkest thing I have ever written,” an original werewolf story set in 13th-century England. Blood, gore, mud, and disease? Sounds like Eggers is going to have us howling in terror when this thing crawls toward holiday theaters.

The post Upcoming Movies in 2026: The Most Anticipated Films of Next Year appeared first on Den of Geek.

December 10, 2025
Whistle: Inside Shudder and Dafne Keen’s Sinister New Curse Movie

This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. You can read all of our magazine stories here. Every generation gets the monster it deserves. For the Victorians, it was mad scientist Victor Frankenstein or regal bloodsucker Count Dracula; in the 1980s, Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger violated safe suburban and summer camp spaces; and […]

The post Whistle: Inside Shudder and Dafne Keen’s Sinister New Curse Movie appeared first on Den of Geek.

It feels strange to be talking about 2026 movies when we haven’t even escaped 2025 yet, but here we are! What makes the coming 12 months notable is that it might be the first full calendar year in which the cycle of film production and distribution has not been suffering residual effects from the pandemic in 2020/2021 or the writers’ and actors’ strikes in 2023. As a result, one glance at the upcoming release schedule indicates that 2026 could be the most packed year at the multiplex in a long time.

Even narrowing this list down to fewer than 20 entries was difficult, and the films we list below show the breadth of releases coming our way: everything from Gothic romances to mythological epics to make-or-break superhero spectaculars. As William Goldman famously said, nobody knows anything, so each of the movies in our survey holds the potential for massive success or catastrophic failure. Whatever happens, we’ll be there for each one.

Sony Pictures

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

January 16

After taking (ahem) 23 years off between installments, Danny Boyle and Alex Garland are continuing 28 Years Later‘s sordid legacy in faster succession, albeit this time with fresh blood. Candyman and Hedda helmer Nia DaCosta picks up the directorial reins in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, a movie which filmed simultaneously with last June’s zombie showdown. The new movie continues the story of Ralph Fiennes’ enigmatic good(ish?) doctor obsessed with memento mori and what happens to young Spike (Alfie Williams) when he falls into a band of “Jimmies,” led by Jack O’Connell’s eerily chipper and self-christened St. Jimmy.

In an exclusive preview with Den of Geek, DaCosta hinted, “You have these two trains on a track, essentially, that are going to collide. They’re going to end up with these two worlds in a clash, because you kind of feel that Spike and Kelson are going to interact again.”

Warner Bros. Pictures

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Wuthering Heights

February 13

The always-provocative filmmaker Emerald Fennell is following up her Oscar-winning Promising Young Woman and divisive Saltburn with a splashy adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic 1847 Gothic romance, and it stars no less than Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff. The castings are already raising eyebrows, with the latter earning accusations of whitewashing a literary character of famously ambiguous origin. But by working from source material that was considered scandalously edgy in its time, we can expect Fennell to welcome it all while amping up the tale’s eroticism and psychological melodrama—and with lots of heaving chests and Charli XCX songs if the trailer is anything to go by. In other words, don’t expect your high school teacher’s Wuthering Heights.

Warner Bros. Pictures

The Bride!

March 6

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s second outing as a director is a wild pivot from 2021’s The Lost Daughter: it’s been described as a musical, a satire, and an homage to The Bride of Frankenstein. Set in 1930s Chicago, the film finds Frankenstein’s Monster (Christian Bale) asking Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening) to create a companion for him, which arrives in the form of the Bride (Jessie Buckley). What happens from there involves murder, mayhem, and, er, social change. It seems a gamble by Warners, but a bold one given the amount of talent involved, as well as the fact that Mary Shelley reworkings seem to be in season if Poor Things and Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein are anything to go by.

Amazon MGM

Project Hail Mary

March 20

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller are at last in the director’s chairs again for a live-action film after they were dismissed from Solo: A Star Wars Story in 2018. (Their last completed live-action effort, 22 Jump Street, came out in 2014.) This time, though, the newly Spider-Verse emboldened duo is adapting Andy Weir’s sci-fi bestseller. The movie stars Ryan Gosling as a man who wakes up on an interstellar ship with no recollection of how he got there. And soon he learns that he is the last hope for humanity. The marketing promises a high-concept adventure with plenty of thrills, humor, and that ol’ Gosling charm. The Weir connection also suggests this is particularly well-suited to the screen. See Ridley Scott’s adaptation of The Martian for more.

Universal Pictures

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie

April 3

After 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie became the most successful video game-based movie of all time (nearly $1.4 billion worldwide), there was no doubt that Illumination and Nintendo would immediately greenlight a sequel. And while the plot remains under wraps, any gamer with passing familiarity with the Nintendo Wii’s beloved Super Mario Galaxy is already expecting gravity-bending visuals and out-of-this-world shenanigans for the plumber brothers. Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Jack Black, Charlie Day, and Keegan-Michael Key are all returning to their signature roles from the first film, while Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic are again directing.

20th Century Studios / Disney

The Devil Wears Prada 2

May 1

It’s time to get the devil her due, because Miranda Priestly is back in the long-rumored and hoped-for The Devil Wears Prada 2. Story details remain relatively tight-lipped, but we do know that despite having very different lanes of journalism in their purviews, Meryl Streep’s ice queen and Anne Hathaway’s Andy Sachs wind up in the same room again. The Dave Frankel-directed film also features the return of fan-favorite characters played by Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci.

Warner Bros. Pictures

Mortal Kombat II

May 8

Mortal Kombat II has certainly risen in the ranks of expectations. A sequel to the pretty-looking but somewhat divisively-received 2021 reboot of the franchise, Mortal Kombat, this sequel was originally pegged to be an October release date. But after enthusiastic test screenings and buzzy word-of-mouth, WB apparently got bullish about the Simon McQuoid-directed joint and moved the fighter to May of next year. It probably helps that the intended R-rated spectacle is bringing in a lot of fan-favorite characters and setups, including Karl Urban as an over-the-hill Johnny Cage who gets recruited into the titular tournament after his career as a movie star falls on hard times.

“The point where we find Johnny in this movie is very relatable to everybody, because he’s on the back foot in life,” Urban tells us in an exclusive cover story interview. “His career is in the tank, the world’s forgotten him, and he’s at a real low point. His confidence has been knocked, and it is at this very juncture that he is called upon to be at his best and to use his skillset to defend Earthrealm.” That leads to stunt work which the star teases has both humor and dexterity. “You also see specifically Van Damme, who in my opinion, was phenomenal, and Jackie Chan, who I drew huge inspiration from for the tone of some of Johnny Cage’s fights.”

Lucasfilm / Disney

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu

May 22

It will be nearly seven years since a Star Wars movie blasted across the big screen by the time this comes out, which is hopefully long enough for the bad taste left by The Rise of Skywalker to have disappeared. Either way, director Jon Favreau and co-writer Dave Filoni’s new film is set to answer a hard question for the franchise: will vast amounts of people come out for a story that requires viewing at least one, if not two, shows that aired on Disney+? A little Pedro Pascal charisma, even in a mask, can’t hurt. Meanwhile, the Lucasfilm braintrust appears to be betting that there’s enough good faith—and enough fans still in love with Baby Yoda—to restore this aging franchise to cinematic glory.

Photo by Rodin Eckenroth / Getty Images

Untitled Steven Spielberg Movie

June 12

While Steven Spielberg is not the box office or cultural powerhouse that he was in previous decades, there is no question that the mind races with possibilities at the thought of what this movie could be. Here’s what we know: it’s a science fiction film, reportedly having something to do with UFOs, that’s based on an idea Spielberg personally had before handing it off to his go-to blockbuster scribe, David Koepp. Keep in mind that Spielberg also dreamed up the original concepts for Close Encounters and E.T. Furthermore, the cast—including Emily Blunt, Colman Domingo, Josh O’Connor, and Colin Firth—is top-notch. And the idea of Spielberg returning to a genre that has provided us with so many classic films is enough to get us there opening day.

Pixar / Disney

Toy Story 5

June 19

What do you do when you make a near-perfect trilogy of animated films? Why, you keep going, of course! And if you thought that Toy Story 4 was a risky add-on, then you’re probably even more fretful over Toy Story 5. But Pixar, in a bit of a slump these days, is going back to its original franchise one more time with Woody, Buzz, Jessie, Forky, and all the rest returning. This time, the gang must fight for Bonnie’s attention with a tablet named Lilypad (Anna Faris)—setting up a clash between toys and tech that has no doubt gripped many households in recent years.

Warner Bros. Pictures

Supergirl

June 26

In some sense, Supergirl might be more of a test of James Gunn’s DC Studios than even 2025’s Superman. While that DCU kickoff had a lot to prove, Supergirl is the first follow-up to gauge how much audiences bought in, including to a cliffhanger of Milly Alcock’s party gal Kryptonian. Luckily, this spinoff is based on one of the best superhero stories of the decade, Tom King and Bilquis Evely’s Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, which finds a far more haunted Kara Zor-El than CW fans might remember. It also comes from director Craig Gillespie, who’s had success in left-of-center genre-benders like I, Tonya, Cruella, and Lars and the Real Girl. Together with Alcock and Jason Momoa (as… Lobo?!), this one could have a whole different vibe.

The Odyssey

July 17

How do you follow up a three-hour, billion-dollar-grossing, Best Picture-winning historical drama about the invention of the atomic bomb? With an epic film based on an ancient Greek myth, naturally. Fantasy and mythology movies tend to sink at the box office unless the name Tolkien is attached to them, but if anyone can turn Homer’s landmark of Greek literature into box office gold, it’s Christopher Nolan, who did the same for a tormented nuclear physicist in Oppenheimer. As usual, the cast—led by Matt Damon as Odysseus—is stacked, and Nolan is perhaps the only director aside from James Cameron whose name alone puts butts in seats. Whatever The Odyssey ends up being, we don’t expect to call it modest.

Sony Pictures

Spider-Man: Brand New Day

July 31

Following up the $1.9 billion-grossing Spider-Man: No Way Home is no easy feat, but the MCU’s Tom Holland-led iteration of your friendly neighborhood webslinger seems to be one of the few bright spots of Marvel’s post-Infinity Saga daze. The usual rumors persist about villains, storylines, multiverse variants, and the like, but all we really know is that Spidey will once again be supported by other MCU favorites like Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk and Jon Bernthal’s Punisher, while the identity and exact nature of the main antagonist remain unknown. Destin Daniel Cretton (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) replaces Jon Watts behind the camera for this one, and Stranger Things’ Sadie Sink joins returning cast members Zendaya and Jacob Batalon. Perhaps most interestingly, it’s speculated that this is Holland’s last non-Avengers stint in the red and blue suit.

Kevin Winter / Getty Images

Untitled Cruise/Iñárritu Film

October 2

We know even less about this movie than Spielberg’s, but it’s notable for two reasons: it’s a new work by Birdman and The Revenant director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, and it’s Tom Cruise’s first original film in eight years, following his recent run of Top Gun/Mission: Impossible sequels. The supporting cast is also excellent, including Jesse Plemons, Sandra Hüller, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Michael Stuhlbarg, and others. Shot in VistaVision, it’s said to be a black comedy about a man who sets out to save humanity after nearly destroying it. And that’s all we’ve got—except that the pairing of star and director may indicate a new phase of both their careers.

Lionsgate

The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping

November 20

With the success of 2023’s The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, Lionsgate and director Francis Lawrence adapting Suzanne Collins’ next prequel novel, Sunrise on the Reaping, is a smart bet. Set some four decades after Songbirds & Snakes, and just 24 years before the events of The Hunger Games (2012), this film stars Joseph Zada as a young Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson in the original movies) as he competes and (no spoiler) wins in the 50th Hunger Games. Yet the trials and tragedies he faces along the way have made this novel a fan favorite since its publication. Once again, the story’s young tributes will be supported by all-star veterans, including Jesse Plemons, Ralph Fiennes, Kieran Culkin, Elle Fanning, and Glenn Close. Meanwhile, Mckenna Grace plays Maysilee Donner, a young tribute who has captured the minds of millions of readers.

Avengers: Doomsday

December 18

This is it: high noon for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This is the one that features the return of Infinity War/Endgame directors Anthony and Joe Russo, Robert Downey Jr. coming back not as Iron Man but Doctor Doom, the inclusion of the OG Fox X-Men cast, the rumored appearance of everyone from Chris Evans to Ryan Reynolds… and it all adds up to either a Hail Mary pass of titanic proportions or a glorious relaunch to box office dominance. Don’t let the reports of an unfinished script or extended reshoots fool you; Marvel can pull this off—they’ve done so in the past—but the question is whether the Avengers brand still has the power to bring the MCU back from its recent decline.

WB

Dune: Part Three

December 18

Denis Villeneuve’s first two Dune movies were arguably the most epic, visionary genre releases since Peter Jackson bestowed The Lord of the Rings on us 20 years earlier. But concluding a trilogy has been the downfall of many a filmmaker, and Villeneuve faces a formidable task here. The movie will ostensibly be based on Frank Herbert’s Dune Messiah, a very different story from the original and in many ways a more difficult one to imagine as a film. But if Villeneuve keeps the core of the novel—the willful self-destruction of Paul Atreides—intact, he can stick this landing like a breaking Shai-Hulud. We’re rooting for him all the way.

Focus Features

Werwulf

December 25

With his four previous movies, writer/director Robert Eggers has proven himself as the master of grim, atmospheric period horror (yes, even The Northman was a horror story in its own way). He immerses us in barbaric worlds of the past like no other filmmaker currently working. Having conquered the most seminal of vampire tales with Nosferatu, he’s now turning his attention to lycanthropy with what he himself calls “the darkest thing I have ever written,” an original werewolf story set in 13th-century England. Blood, gore, mud, and disease? Sounds like Eggers is going to have us howling in terror when this thing crawls toward holiday theaters.

The post Upcoming Movies in 2026: The Most Anticipated Films of Next Year appeared first on Den of Geek.

December 10, 2025
Ella McCay Review: A ’90s Dramedy Throwback Without the Drama or Comedy

Why do they not make movies like the old days? It’s a refrain we hear time and again, be it among critic groups, awards voters, or vocal Letterboxd users looking for a fight. The broad sentiment can go back to the silent stars of yesteryear, reminiscing about an era before the pictures got small, but […]

The post Ella McCay Review: A ’90s Dramedy Throwback Without the Drama or Comedy appeared first on Den of Geek.

It feels strange to be talking about 2026 movies when we haven’t even escaped 2025 yet, but here we are! What makes the coming 12 months notable is that it might be the first full calendar year in which the cycle of film production and distribution has not been suffering residual effects from the pandemic in 2020/2021 or the writers’ and actors’ strikes in 2023. As a result, one glance at the upcoming release schedule indicates that 2026 could be the most packed year at the multiplex in a long time.

Even narrowing this list down to fewer than 20 entries was difficult, and the films we list below show the breadth of releases coming our way: everything from Gothic romances to mythological epics to make-or-break superhero spectaculars. As William Goldman famously said, nobody knows anything, so each of the movies in our survey holds the potential for massive success or catastrophic failure. Whatever happens, we’ll be there for each one.

Sony Pictures

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

January 16

After taking (ahem) 23 years off between installments, Danny Boyle and Alex Garland are continuing 28 Years Later‘s sordid legacy in faster succession, albeit this time with fresh blood. Candyman and Hedda helmer Nia DaCosta picks up the directorial reins in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, a movie which filmed simultaneously with last June’s zombie showdown. The new movie continues the story of Ralph Fiennes’ enigmatic good(ish?) doctor obsessed with memento mori and what happens to young Spike (Alfie Williams) when he falls into a band of “Jimmies,” led by Jack O’Connell’s eerily chipper and self-christened St. Jimmy.

In an exclusive preview with Den of Geek, DaCosta hinted, “You have these two trains on a track, essentially, that are going to collide. They’re going to end up with these two worlds in a clash, because you kind of feel that Spike and Kelson are going to interact again.”

Warner Bros. Pictures

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Wuthering Heights

February 13

The always-provocative filmmaker Emerald Fennell is following up her Oscar-winning Promising Young Woman and divisive Saltburn with a splashy adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic 1847 Gothic romance, and it stars no less than Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff. The castings are already raising eyebrows, with the latter earning accusations of whitewashing a literary character of famously ambiguous origin. But by working from source material that was considered scandalously edgy in its time, we can expect Fennell to welcome it all while amping up the tale’s eroticism and psychological melodrama—and with lots of heaving chests and Charli XCX songs if the trailer is anything to go by. In other words, don’t expect your high school teacher’s Wuthering Heights.

Warner Bros. Pictures

The Bride!

March 6

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s second outing as a director is a wild pivot from 2021’s The Lost Daughter: it’s been described as a musical, a satire, and an homage to The Bride of Frankenstein. Set in 1930s Chicago, the film finds Frankenstein’s Monster (Christian Bale) asking Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening) to create a companion for him, which arrives in the form of the Bride (Jessie Buckley). What happens from there involves murder, mayhem, and, er, social change. It seems a gamble by Warners, but a bold one given the amount of talent involved, as well as the fact that Mary Shelley reworkings seem to be in season if Poor Things and Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein are anything to go by.

Amazon MGM

Project Hail Mary

March 20

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller are at last in the director’s chairs again for a live-action film after they were dismissed from Solo: A Star Wars Story in 2018. (Their last completed live-action effort, 22 Jump Street, came out in 2014.) This time, though, the newly Spider-Verse emboldened duo is adapting Andy Weir’s sci-fi bestseller. The movie stars Ryan Gosling as a man who wakes up on an interstellar ship with no recollection of how he got there. And soon he learns that he is the last hope for humanity. The marketing promises a high-concept adventure with plenty of thrills, humor, and that ol’ Gosling charm. The Weir connection also suggests this is particularly well-suited to the screen. See Ridley Scott’s adaptation of The Martian for more.

Universal Pictures

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie

April 3

After 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie became the most successful video game-based movie of all time (nearly $1.4 billion worldwide), there was no doubt that Illumination and Nintendo would immediately greenlight a sequel. And while the plot remains under wraps, any gamer with passing familiarity with the Nintendo Wii’s beloved Super Mario Galaxy is already expecting gravity-bending visuals and out-of-this-world shenanigans for the plumber brothers. Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Jack Black, Charlie Day, and Keegan-Michael Key are all returning to their signature roles from the first film, while Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic are again directing.

20th Century Studios / Disney

The Devil Wears Prada 2

May 1

It’s time to get the devil her due, because Miranda Priestly is back in the long-rumored and hoped-for The Devil Wears Prada 2. Story details remain relatively tight-lipped, but we do know that despite having very different lanes of journalism in their purviews, Meryl Streep’s ice queen and Anne Hathaway’s Andy Sachs wind up in the same room again. The Dave Frankel-directed film also features the return of fan-favorite characters played by Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci.

Warner Bros. Pictures

Mortal Kombat II

May 8

Mortal Kombat II has certainly risen in the ranks of expectations. A sequel to the pretty-looking but somewhat divisively-received 2021 reboot of the franchise, Mortal Kombat, this sequel was originally pegged to be an October release date. But after enthusiastic test screenings and buzzy word-of-mouth, WB apparently got bullish about the Simon McQuoid-directed joint and moved the fighter to May of next year. It probably helps that the intended R-rated spectacle is bringing in a lot of fan-favorite characters and setups, including Karl Urban as an over-the-hill Johnny Cage who gets recruited into the titular tournament after his career as a movie star falls on hard times.

“The point where we find Johnny in this movie is very relatable to everybody, because he’s on the back foot in life,” Urban tells us in an exclusive cover story interview. “His career is in the tank, the world’s forgotten him, and he’s at a real low point. His confidence has been knocked, and it is at this very juncture that he is called upon to be at his best and to use his skillset to defend Earthrealm.” That leads to stunt work which the star teases has both humor and dexterity. “You also see specifically Van Damme, who in my opinion, was phenomenal, and Jackie Chan, who I drew huge inspiration from for the tone of some of Johnny Cage’s fights.”

Lucasfilm / Disney

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu

May 22

It will be nearly seven years since a Star Wars movie blasted across the big screen by the time this comes out, which is hopefully long enough for the bad taste left by The Rise of Skywalker to have disappeared. Either way, director Jon Favreau and co-writer Dave Filoni’s new film is set to answer a hard question for the franchise: will vast amounts of people come out for a story that requires viewing at least one, if not two, shows that aired on Disney+? A little Pedro Pascal charisma, even in a mask, can’t hurt. Meanwhile, the Lucasfilm braintrust appears to be betting that there’s enough good faith—and enough fans still in love with Baby Yoda—to restore this aging franchise to cinematic glory.

Photo by Rodin Eckenroth / Getty Images

Untitled Steven Spielberg Movie

June 12

While Steven Spielberg is not the box office or cultural powerhouse that he was in previous decades, there is no question that the mind races with possibilities at the thought of what this movie could be. Here’s what we know: it’s a science fiction film, reportedly having something to do with UFOs, that’s based on an idea Spielberg personally had before handing it off to his go-to blockbuster scribe, David Koepp. Keep in mind that Spielberg also dreamed up the original concepts for Close Encounters and E.T. Furthermore, the cast—including Emily Blunt, Colman Domingo, Josh O’Connor, and Colin Firth—is top-notch. And the idea of Spielberg returning to a genre that has provided us with so many classic films is enough to get us there opening day.

Pixar / Disney

Toy Story 5

June 19

What do you do when you make a near-perfect trilogy of animated films? Why, you keep going, of course! And if you thought that Toy Story 4 was a risky add-on, then you’re probably even more fretful over Toy Story 5. But Pixar, in a bit of a slump these days, is going back to its original franchise one more time with Woody, Buzz, Jessie, Forky, and all the rest returning. This time, the gang must fight for Bonnie’s attention with a tablet named Lilypad (Anna Faris)—setting up a clash between toys and tech that has no doubt gripped many households in recent years.

Warner Bros. Pictures

Supergirl

June 26

In some sense, Supergirl might be more of a test of James Gunn’s DC Studios than even 2025’s Superman. While that DCU kickoff had a lot to prove, Supergirl is the first follow-up to gauge how much audiences bought in, including to a cliffhanger of Milly Alcock’s party gal Kryptonian. Luckily, this spinoff is based on one of the best superhero stories of the decade, Tom King and Bilquis Evely’s Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, which finds a far more haunted Kara Zor-El than CW fans might remember. It also comes from director Craig Gillespie, who’s had success in left-of-center genre-benders like I, Tonya, Cruella, and Lars and the Real Girl. Together with Alcock and Jason Momoa (as… Lobo?!), this one could have a whole different vibe.

The Odyssey

July 17

How do you follow up a three-hour, billion-dollar-grossing, Best Picture-winning historical drama about the invention of the atomic bomb? With an epic film based on an ancient Greek myth, naturally. Fantasy and mythology movies tend to sink at the box office unless the name Tolkien is attached to them, but if anyone can turn Homer’s landmark of Greek literature into box office gold, it’s Christopher Nolan, who did the same for a tormented nuclear physicist in Oppenheimer. As usual, the cast—led by Matt Damon as Odysseus—is stacked, and Nolan is perhaps the only director aside from James Cameron whose name alone puts butts in seats. Whatever The Odyssey ends up being, we don’t expect to call it modest.

Sony Pictures

Spider-Man: Brand New Day

July 31

Following up the $1.9 billion-grossing Spider-Man: No Way Home is no easy feat, but the MCU’s Tom Holland-led iteration of your friendly neighborhood webslinger seems to be one of the few bright spots of Marvel’s post-Infinity Saga daze. The usual rumors persist about villains, storylines, multiverse variants, and the like, but all we really know is that Spidey will once again be supported by other MCU favorites like Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk and Jon Bernthal’s Punisher, while the identity and exact nature of the main antagonist remain unknown. Destin Daniel Cretton (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) replaces Jon Watts behind the camera for this one, and Stranger Things’ Sadie Sink joins returning cast members Zendaya and Jacob Batalon. Perhaps most interestingly, it’s speculated that this is Holland’s last non-Avengers stint in the red and blue suit.

Kevin Winter / Getty Images

Untitled Cruise/Iñárritu Film

October 2

We know even less about this movie than Spielberg’s, but it’s notable for two reasons: it’s a new work by Birdman and The Revenant director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, and it’s Tom Cruise’s first original film in eight years, following his recent run of Top Gun/Mission: Impossible sequels. The supporting cast is also excellent, including Jesse Plemons, Sandra Hüller, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Michael Stuhlbarg, and others. Shot in VistaVision, it’s said to be a black comedy about a man who sets out to save humanity after nearly destroying it. And that’s all we’ve got—except that the pairing of star and director may indicate a new phase of both their careers.

Lionsgate

The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping

November 20

With the success of 2023’s The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, Lionsgate and director Francis Lawrence adapting Suzanne Collins’ next prequel novel, Sunrise on the Reaping, is a smart bet. Set some four decades after Songbirds & Snakes, and just 24 years before the events of The Hunger Games (2012), this film stars Joseph Zada as a young Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson in the original movies) as he competes and (no spoiler) wins in the 50th Hunger Games. Yet the trials and tragedies he faces along the way have made this novel a fan favorite since its publication. Once again, the story’s young tributes will be supported by all-star veterans, including Jesse Plemons, Ralph Fiennes, Kieran Culkin, Elle Fanning, and Glenn Close. Meanwhile, Mckenna Grace plays Maysilee Donner, a young tribute who has captured the minds of millions of readers.

Avengers: Doomsday

December 18

This is it: high noon for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This is the one that features the return of Infinity War/Endgame directors Anthony and Joe Russo, Robert Downey Jr. coming back not as Iron Man but Doctor Doom, the inclusion of the OG Fox X-Men cast, the rumored appearance of everyone from Chris Evans to Ryan Reynolds… and it all adds up to either a Hail Mary pass of titanic proportions or a glorious relaunch to box office dominance. Don’t let the reports of an unfinished script or extended reshoots fool you; Marvel can pull this off—they’ve done so in the past—but the question is whether the Avengers brand still has the power to bring the MCU back from its recent decline.

WB

Dune: Part Three

December 18

Denis Villeneuve’s first two Dune movies were arguably the most epic, visionary genre releases since Peter Jackson bestowed The Lord of the Rings on us 20 years earlier. But concluding a trilogy has been the downfall of many a filmmaker, and Villeneuve faces a formidable task here. The movie will ostensibly be based on Frank Herbert’s Dune Messiah, a very different story from the original and in many ways a more difficult one to imagine as a film. But if Villeneuve keeps the core of the novel—the willful self-destruction of Paul Atreides—intact, he can stick this landing like a breaking Shai-Hulud. We’re rooting for him all the way.

Focus Features

Werwulf

December 25

With his four previous movies, writer/director Robert Eggers has proven himself as the master of grim, atmospheric period horror (yes, even The Northman was a horror story in its own way). He immerses us in barbaric worlds of the past like no other filmmaker currently working. Having conquered the most seminal of vampire tales with Nosferatu, he’s now turning his attention to lycanthropy with what he himself calls “the darkest thing I have ever written,” an original werewolf story set in 13th-century England. Blood, gore, mud, and disease? Sounds like Eggers is going to have us howling in terror when this thing crawls toward holiday theaters.

The post Upcoming Movies in 2026: The Most Anticipated Films of Next Year appeared first on Den of Geek.

December 10, 2025
A24’s The Drama Trailer Dares You to Pretend Robert Pattinson and Zendaya Have No Rizz

Robert Pattinson and Zendaya are two of the most attractive people in Hollywood. And one’s wedding day is such an important event, an event that involves so many professional beauticians and photographers, that even schlubs look like stars for a bit. So why in the world do Pattinson and Zendaya look so weird in the […]

The post A24’s The Drama Trailer Dares You to Pretend Robert Pattinson and Zendaya Have No Rizz appeared first on Den of Geek.

It feels strange to be talking about 2026 movies when we haven’t even escaped 2025 yet, but here we are! What makes the coming 12 months notable is that it might be the first full calendar year in which the cycle of film production and distribution has not been suffering residual effects from the pandemic in 2020/2021 or the writers’ and actors’ strikes in 2023. As a result, one glance at the upcoming release schedule indicates that 2026 could be the most packed year at the multiplex in a long time.

Even narrowing this list down to fewer than 20 entries was difficult, and the films we list below show the breadth of releases coming our way: everything from Gothic romances to mythological epics to make-or-break superhero spectaculars. As William Goldman famously said, nobody knows anything, so each of the movies in our survey holds the potential for massive success or catastrophic failure. Whatever happens, we’ll be there for each one.

Sony Pictures

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

January 16

After taking (ahem) 23 years off between installments, Danny Boyle and Alex Garland are continuing 28 Years Later‘s sordid legacy in faster succession, albeit this time with fresh blood. Candyman and Hedda helmer Nia DaCosta picks up the directorial reins in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, a movie which filmed simultaneously with last June’s zombie showdown. The new movie continues the story of Ralph Fiennes’ enigmatic good(ish?) doctor obsessed with memento mori and what happens to young Spike (Alfie Williams) when he falls into a band of “Jimmies,” led by Jack O’Connell’s eerily chipper and self-christened St. Jimmy.

In an exclusive preview with Den of Geek, DaCosta hinted, “You have these two trains on a track, essentially, that are going to collide. They’re going to end up with these two worlds in a clash, because you kind of feel that Spike and Kelson are going to interact again.”

Warner Bros. Pictures

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Wuthering Heights

February 13

The always-provocative filmmaker Emerald Fennell is following up her Oscar-winning Promising Young Woman and divisive Saltburn with a splashy adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic 1847 Gothic romance, and it stars no less than Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff. The castings are already raising eyebrows, with the latter earning accusations of whitewashing a literary character of famously ambiguous origin. But by working from source material that was considered scandalously edgy in its time, we can expect Fennell to welcome it all while amping up the tale’s eroticism and psychological melodrama—and with lots of heaving chests and Charli XCX songs if the trailer is anything to go by. In other words, don’t expect your high school teacher’s Wuthering Heights.

Warner Bros. Pictures

The Bride!

March 6

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s second outing as a director is a wild pivot from 2021’s The Lost Daughter: it’s been described as a musical, a satire, and an homage to The Bride of Frankenstein. Set in 1930s Chicago, the film finds Frankenstein’s Monster (Christian Bale) asking Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening) to create a companion for him, which arrives in the form of the Bride (Jessie Buckley). What happens from there involves murder, mayhem, and, er, social change. It seems a gamble by Warners, but a bold one given the amount of talent involved, as well as the fact that Mary Shelley reworkings seem to be in season if Poor Things and Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein are anything to go by.

Amazon MGM

Project Hail Mary

March 20

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller are at last in the director’s chairs again for a live-action film after they were dismissed from Solo: A Star Wars Story in 2018. (Their last completed live-action effort, 22 Jump Street, came out in 2014.) This time, though, the newly Spider-Verse emboldened duo is adapting Andy Weir’s sci-fi bestseller. The movie stars Ryan Gosling as a man who wakes up on an interstellar ship with no recollection of how he got there. And soon he learns that he is the last hope for humanity. The marketing promises a high-concept adventure with plenty of thrills, humor, and that ol’ Gosling charm. The Weir connection also suggests this is particularly well-suited to the screen. See Ridley Scott’s adaptation of The Martian for more.

Universal Pictures

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie

April 3

After 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie became the most successful video game-based movie of all time (nearly $1.4 billion worldwide), there was no doubt that Illumination and Nintendo would immediately greenlight a sequel. And while the plot remains under wraps, any gamer with passing familiarity with the Nintendo Wii’s beloved Super Mario Galaxy is already expecting gravity-bending visuals and out-of-this-world shenanigans for the plumber brothers. Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Jack Black, Charlie Day, and Keegan-Michael Key are all returning to their signature roles from the first film, while Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic are again directing.

20th Century Studios / Disney

The Devil Wears Prada 2

May 1

It’s time to get the devil her due, because Miranda Priestly is back in the long-rumored and hoped-for The Devil Wears Prada 2. Story details remain relatively tight-lipped, but we do know that despite having very different lanes of journalism in their purviews, Meryl Streep’s ice queen and Anne Hathaway’s Andy Sachs wind up in the same room again. The Dave Frankel-directed film also features the return of fan-favorite characters played by Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci.

Warner Bros. Pictures

Mortal Kombat II

May 8

Mortal Kombat II has certainly risen in the ranks of expectations. A sequel to the pretty-looking but somewhat divisively-received 2021 reboot of the franchise, Mortal Kombat, this sequel was originally pegged to be an October release date. But after enthusiastic test screenings and buzzy word-of-mouth, WB apparently got bullish about the Simon McQuoid-directed joint and moved the fighter to May of next year. It probably helps that the intended R-rated spectacle is bringing in a lot of fan-favorite characters and setups, including Karl Urban as an over-the-hill Johnny Cage who gets recruited into the titular tournament after his career as a movie star falls on hard times.

“The point where we find Johnny in this movie is very relatable to everybody, because he’s on the back foot in life,” Urban tells us in an exclusive cover story interview. “His career is in the tank, the world’s forgotten him, and he’s at a real low point. His confidence has been knocked, and it is at this very juncture that he is called upon to be at his best and to use his skillset to defend Earthrealm.” That leads to stunt work which the star teases has both humor and dexterity. “You also see specifically Van Damme, who in my opinion, was phenomenal, and Jackie Chan, who I drew huge inspiration from for the tone of some of Johnny Cage’s fights.”

Lucasfilm / Disney

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu

May 22

It will be nearly seven years since a Star Wars movie blasted across the big screen by the time this comes out, which is hopefully long enough for the bad taste left by The Rise of Skywalker to have disappeared. Either way, director Jon Favreau and co-writer Dave Filoni’s new film is set to answer a hard question for the franchise: will vast amounts of people come out for a story that requires viewing at least one, if not two, shows that aired on Disney+? A little Pedro Pascal charisma, even in a mask, can’t hurt. Meanwhile, the Lucasfilm braintrust appears to be betting that there’s enough good faith—and enough fans still in love with Baby Yoda—to restore this aging franchise to cinematic glory.

Photo by Rodin Eckenroth / Getty Images

Untitled Steven Spielberg Movie

June 12

While Steven Spielberg is not the box office or cultural powerhouse that he was in previous decades, there is no question that the mind races with possibilities at the thought of what this movie could be. Here’s what we know: it’s a science fiction film, reportedly having something to do with UFOs, that’s based on an idea Spielberg personally had before handing it off to his go-to blockbuster scribe, David Koepp. Keep in mind that Spielberg also dreamed up the original concepts for Close Encounters and E.T. Furthermore, the cast—including Emily Blunt, Colman Domingo, Josh O’Connor, and Colin Firth—is top-notch. And the idea of Spielberg returning to a genre that has provided us with so many classic films is enough to get us there opening day.

Pixar / Disney

Toy Story 5

June 19

What do you do when you make a near-perfect trilogy of animated films? Why, you keep going, of course! And if you thought that Toy Story 4 was a risky add-on, then you’re probably even more fretful over Toy Story 5. But Pixar, in a bit of a slump these days, is going back to its original franchise one more time with Woody, Buzz, Jessie, Forky, and all the rest returning. This time, the gang must fight for Bonnie’s attention with a tablet named Lilypad (Anna Faris)—setting up a clash between toys and tech that has no doubt gripped many households in recent years.

Warner Bros. Pictures

Supergirl

June 26

In some sense, Supergirl might be more of a test of James Gunn’s DC Studios than even 2025’s Superman. While that DCU kickoff had a lot to prove, Supergirl is the first follow-up to gauge how much audiences bought in, including to a cliffhanger of Milly Alcock’s party gal Kryptonian. Luckily, this spinoff is based on one of the best superhero stories of the decade, Tom King and Bilquis Evely’s Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, which finds a far more haunted Kara Zor-El than CW fans might remember. It also comes from director Craig Gillespie, who’s had success in left-of-center genre-benders like I, Tonya, Cruella, and Lars and the Real Girl. Together with Alcock and Jason Momoa (as… Lobo?!), this one could have a whole different vibe.

The Odyssey

July 17

How do you follow up a three-hour, billion-dollar-grossing, Best Picture-winning historical drama about the invention of the atomic bomb? With an epic film based on an ancient Greek myth, naturally. Fantasy and mythology movies tend to sink at the box office unless the name Tolkien is attached to them, but if anyone can turn Homer’s landmark of Greek literature into box office gold, it’s Christopher Nolan, who did the same for a tormented nuclear physicist in Oppenheimer. As usual, the cast—led by Matt Damon as Odysseus—is stacked, and Nolan is perhaps the only director aside from James Cameron whose name alone puts butts in seats. Whatever The Odyssey ends up being, we don’t expect to call it modest.

Sony Pictures

Spider-Man: Brand New Day

July 31

Following up the $1.9 billion-grossing Spider-Man: No Way Home is no easy feat, but the MCU’s Tom Holland-led iteration of your friendly neighborhood webslinger seems to be one of the few bright spots of Marvel’s post-Infinity Saga daze. The usual rumors persist about villains, storylines, multiverse variants, and the like, but all we really know is that Spidey will once again be supported by other MCU favorites like Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk and Jon Bernthal’s Punisher, while the identity and exact nature of the main antagonist remain unknown. Destin Daniel Cretton (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) replaces Jon Watts behind the camera for this one, and Stranger Things’ Sadie Sink joins returning cast members Zendaya and Jacob Batalon. Perhaps most interestingly, it’s speculated that this is Holland’s last non-Avengers stint in the red and blue suit.

Kevin Winter / Getty Images

Untitled Cruise/Iñárritu Film

October 2

We know even less about this movie than Spielberg’s, but it’s notable for two reasons: it’s a new work by Birdman and The Revenant director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, and it’s Tom Cruise’s first original film in eight years, following his recent run of Top Gun/Mission: Impossible sequels. The supporting cast is also excellent, including Jesse Plemons, Sandra Hüller, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Michael Stuhlbarg, and others. Shot in VistaVision, it’s said to be a black comedy about a man who sets out to save humanity after nearly destroying it. And that’s all we’ve got—except that the pairing of star and director may indicate a new phase of both their careers.

Lionsgate

The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping

November 20

With the success of 2023’s The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, Lionsgate and director Francis Lawrence adapting Suzanne Collins’ next prequel novel, Sunrise on the Reaping, is a smart bet. Set some four decades after Songbirds & Snakes, and just 24 years before the events of The Hunger Games (2012), this film stars Joseph Zada as a young Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson in the original movies) as he competes and (no spoiler) wins in the 50th Hunger Games. Yet the trials and tragedies he faces along the way have made this novel a fan favorite since its publication. Once again, the story’s young tributes will be supported by all-star veterans, including Jesse Plemons, Ralph Fiennes, Kieran Culkin, Elle Fanning, and Glenn Close. Meanwhile, Mckenna Grace plays Maysilee Donner, a young tribute who has captured the minds of millions of readers.

Avengers: Doomsday

December 18

This is it: high noon for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This is the one that features the return of Infinity War/Endgame directors Anthony and Joe Russo, Robert Downey Jr. coming back not as Iron Man but Doctor Doom, the inclusion of the OG Fox X-Men cast, the rumored appearance of everyone from Chris Evans to Ryan Reynolds… and it all adds up to either a Hail Mary pass of titanic proportions or a glorious relaunch to box office dominance. Don’t let the reports of an unfinished script or extended reshoots fool you; Marvel can pull this off—they’ve done so in the past—but the question is whether the Avengers brand still has the power to bring the MCU back from its recent decline.

WB

Dune: Part Three

December 18

Denis Villeneuve’s first two Dune movies were arguably the most epic, visionary genre releases since Peter Jackson bestowed The Lord of the Rings on us 20 years earlier. But concluding a trilogy has been the downfall of many a filmmaker, and Villeneuve faces a formidable task here. The movie will ostensibly be based on Frank Herbert’s Dune Messiah, a very different story from the original and in many ways a more difficult one to imagine as a film. But if Villeneuve keeps the core of the novel—the willful self-destruction of Paul Atreides—intact, he can stick this landing like a breaking Shai-Hulud. We’re rooting for him all the way.

Focus Features

Werwulf

December 25

With his four previous movies, writer/director Robert Eggers has proven himself as the master of grim, atmospheric period horror (yes, even The Northman was a horror story in its own way). He immerses us in barbaric worlds of the past like no other filmmaker currently working. Having conquered the most seminal of vampire tales with Nosferatu, he’s now turning his attention to lycanthropy with what he himself calls “the darkest thing I have ever written,” an original werewolf story set in 13th-century England. Blood, gore, mud, and disease? Sounds like Eggers is going to have us howling in terror when this thing crawls toward holiday theaters.

The post Upcoming Movies in 2026: The Most Anticipated Films of Next Year appeared first on Den of Geek.

December 10, 2025
Upcoming Movies in 2026: The Most Anticipated Films of Next Year

It feels strange to be talking about 2026 movies when we haven’t even escaped 2025 yet, but here we are! What makes the coming 12 months notable is that it might be the first full calendar year in which the cycle of film production and distribution has not been suffering residual effects from the pandemic […]

The post Upcoming Movies in 2026: The Most Anticipated Films of Next Year appeared first on Den of Geek.

It feels strange to be talking about 2026 movies when we haven’t even escaped 2025 yet, but here we are! What makes the coming 12 months notable is that it might be the first full calendar year in which the cycle of film production and distribution has not been suffering residual effects from the pandemic in 2020/2021 or the writers’ and actors’ strikes in 2023. As a result, one glance at the upcoming release schedule indicates that 2026 could be the most packed year at the multiplex in a long time.

Even narrowing this list down to fewer than 20 entries was difficult, and the films we list below show the breadth of releases coming our way: everything from Gothic romances to mythological epics to make-or-break superhero spectaculars. As William Goldman famously said, nobody knows anything, so each of the movies in our survey holds the potential for massive success or catastrophic failure. Whatever happens, we’ll be there for each one.

Sony Pictures

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

January 16

After taking (ahem) 23 years off between installments, Danny Boyle and Alex Garland are continuing 28 Years Later‘s sordid legacy in faster succession, albeit this time with fresh blood. Candyman and Hedda helmer Nia DaCosta picks up the directorial reins in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, a movie which filmed simultaneously with last June’s zombie showdown. The new movie continues the story of Ralph Fiennes’ enigmatic good(ish?) doctor obsessed with memento mori and what happens to young Spike (Alfie Williams) when he falls into a band of “Jimmies,” led by Jack O’Connell’s eerily chipper and self-christened St. Jimmy.

In an exclusive preview with Den of Geek, DaCosta hinted, “You have these two trains on a track, essentially, that are going to collide. They’re going to end up with these two worlds in a clash, because you kind of feel that Spike and Kelson are going to interact again.”

Warner Bros. Pictures

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Wuthering Heights

February 13

The always-provocative filmmaker Emerald Fennell is following up her Oscar-winning Promising Young Woman and divisive Saltburn with a splashy adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic 1847 Gothic romance, and it stars no less than Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff. The castings are already raising eyebrows, with the latter earning accusations of whitewashing a literary character of famously ambiguous origin. But by working from source material that was considered scandalously edgy in its time, we can expect Fennell to welcome it all while amping up the tale’s eroticism and psychological melodrama—and with lots of heaving chests and Charli XCX songs if the trailer is anything to go by. In other words, don’t expect your high school teacher’s Wuthering Heights.

Warner Bros. Pictures

The Bride!

March 6

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s second outing as a director is a wild pivot from 2021’s The Lost Daughter: it’s been described as a musical, a satire, and an homage to The Bride of Frankenstein. Set in 1930s Chicago, the film finds Frankenstein’s Monster (Christian Bale) asking Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening) to create a companion for him, which arrives in the form of the Bride (Jessie Buckley). What happens from there involves murder, mayhem, and, er, social change. It seems a gamble by Warners, but a bold one given the amount of talent involved, as well as the fact that Mary Shelley reworkings seem to be in season if Poor Things and Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein are anything to go by.

Amazon MGM

Project Hail Mary

March 20

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller are at last in the director’s chairs again for a live-action film after they were dismissed from Solo: A Star Wars Story in 2018. (Their last completed live-action effort, 22 Jump Street, came out in 2014.) This time, though, the newly Spider-Verse emboldened duo is adapting Andy Weir’s sci-fi bestseller. The movie stars Ryan Gosling as a man who wakes up on an interstellar ship with no recollection of how he got there. And soon he learns that he is the last hope for humanity. The marketing promises a high-concept adventure with plenty of thrills, humor, and that ol’ Gosling charm. The Weir connection also suggests this is particularly well-suited to the screen. See Ridley Scott’s adaptation of The Martian for more.

Universal Pictures

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie

April 3

After 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie became the most successful video game-based movie of all time (nearly $1.4 billion worldwide), there was no doubt that Illumination and Nintendo would immediately greenlight a sequel. And while the plot remains under wraps, any gamer with passing familiarity with the Nintendo Wii’s beloved Super Mario Galaxy is already expecting gravity-bending visuals and out-of-this-world shenanigans for the plumber brothers. Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Jack Black, Charlie Day, and Keegan-Michael Key are all returning to their signature roles from the first film, while Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic are again directing.

20th Century Studios / Disney

The Devil Wears Prada 2

May 1

It’s time to get the devil her due, because Miranda Priestly is back in the long-rumored and hoped-for The Devil Wears Prada 2. Story details remain relatively tight-lipped, but we do know that despite having very different lanes of journalism in their purviews, Meryl Streep’s ice queen and Anne Hathaway’s Andy Sachs wind up in the same room again. The Dave Frankel-directed film also features the return of fan-favorite characters played by Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci.

Warner Bros. Pictures

Mortal Kombat II

May 8

Mortal Kombat II has certainly risen in the ranks of expectations. A sequel to the pretty-looking but somewhat divisively-received 2021 reboot of the franchise, Mortal Kombat, this sequel was originally pegged to be an October release date. But after enthusiastic test screenings and buzzy word-of-mouth, WB apparently got bullish about the Simon McQuoid-directed joint and moved the fighter to May of next year. It probably helps that the intended R-rated spectacle is bringing in a lot of fan-favorite characters and setups, including Karl Urban as an over-the-hill Johnny Cage who gets recruited into the titular tournament after his career as a movie star falls on hard times.

“The point where we find Johnny in this movie is very relatable to everybody, because he’s on the back foot in life,” Urban tells us in an exclusive cover story interview. “His career is in the tank, the world’s forgotten him, and he’s at a real low point. His confidence has been knocked, and it is at this very juncture that he is called upon to be at his best and to use his skillset to defend Earthrealm.” That leads to stunt work which the star teases has both humor and dexterity. “You also see specifically Van Damme, who in my opinion, was phenomenal, and Jackie Chan, who I drew huge inspiration from for the tone of some of Johnny Cage’s fights.”

Lucasfilm / Disney

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu

May 22

It will be nearly seven years since a Star Wars movie blasted across the big screen by the time this comes out, which is hopefully long enough for the bad taste left by The Rise of Skywalker to have disappeared. Either way, director Jon Favreau and co-writer Dave Filoni’s new film is set to answer a hard question for the franchise: will vast amounts of people come out for a story that requires viewing at least one, if not two, shows that aired on Disney+? A little Pedro Pascal charisma, even in a mask, can’t hurt. Meanwhile, the Lucasfilm braintrust appears to be betting that there’s enough good faith—and enough fans still in love with Baby Yoda—to restore this aging franchise to cinematic glory.

Photo by Rodin Eckenroth / Getty Images

Untitled Steven Spielberg Movie

June 12

While Steven Spielberg is not the box office or cultural powerhouse that he was in previous decades, there is no question that the mind races with possibilities at the thought of what this movie could be. Here’s what we know: it’s a science fiction film, reportedly having something to do with UFOs, that’s based on an idea Spielberg personally had before handing it off to his go-to blockbuster scribe, David Koepp. Keep in mind that Spielberg also dreamed up the original concepts for Close Encounters and E.T. Furthermore, the cast—including Emily Blunt, Colman Domingo, Josh O’Connor, and Colin Firth—is top-notch. And the idea of Spielberg returning to a genre that has provided us with so many classic films is enough to get us there opening day.

Pixar / Disney

Toy Story 5

June 19

What do you do when you make a near-perfect trilogy of animated films? Why, you keep going, of course! And if you thought that Toy Story 4 was a risky add-on, then you’re probably even more fretful over Toy Story 5. But Pixar, in a bit of a slump these days, is going back to its original franchise one more time with Woody, Buzz, Jessie, Forky, and all the rest returning. This time, the gang must fight for Bonnie’s attention with a tablet named Lilypad (Anna Faris)—setting up a clash between toys and tech that has no doubt gripped many households in recent years.

Warner Bros. Pictures

Supergirl

June 26

In some sense, Supergirl might be more of a test of James Gunn’s DC Studios than even 2025’s Superman. While that DCU kickoff had a lot to prove, Supergirl is the first follow-up to gauge how much audiences bought in, including to a cliffhanger of Milly Alcock’s party gal Kryptonian. Luckily, this spinoff is based on one of the best superhero stories of the decade, Tom King and Bilquis Evely’s Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, which finds a far more haunted Kara Zor-El than CW fans might remember. It also comes from director Craig Gillespie, who’s had success in left-of-center genre-benders like I, Tonya, Cruella, and Lars and the Real Girl. Together with Alcock and Jason Momoa (as… Lobo?!), this one could have a whole different vibe.

The Odyssey

July 17

How do you follow up a three-hour, billion-dollar-grossing, Best Picture-winning historical drama about the invention of the atomic bomb? With an epic film based on an ancient Greek myth, naturally. Fantasy and mythology movies tend to sink at the box office unless the name Tolkien is attached to them, but if anyone can turn Homer’s landmark of Greek literature into box office gold, it’s Christopher Nolan, who did the same for a tormented nuclear physicist in Oppenheimer. As usual, the cast—led by Matt Damon as Odysseus—is stacked, and Nolan is perhaps the only director aside from James Cameron whose name alone puts butts in seats. Whatever The Odyssey ends up being, we don’t expect to call it modest.

Sony Pictures

Spider-Man: Brand New Day

July 31

Following up the $1.9 billion-grossing Spider-Man: No Way Home is no easy feat, but the MCU’s Tom Holland-led iteration of your friendly neighborhood webslinger seems to be one of the few bright spots of Marvel’s post-Infinity Saga daze. The usual rumors persist about villains, storylines, multiverse variants, and the like, but all we really know is that Spidey will once again be supported by other MCU favorites like Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk and Jon Bernthal’s Punisher, while the identity and exact nature of the main antagonist remain unknown. Destin Daniel Cretton (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) replaces Jon Watts behind the camera for this one, and Stranger Things’ Sadie Sink joins returning cast members Zendaya and Jacob Batalon. Perhaps most interestingly, it’s speculated that this is Holland’s last non-Avengers stint in the red and blue suit.

Kevin Winter / Getty Images

Untitled Cruise/Iñárritu Film

October 2

We know even less about this movie than Spielberg’s, but it’s notable for two reasons: it’s a new work by Birdman and The Revenant director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, and it’s Tom Cruise’s first original film in eight years, following his recent run of Top Gun/Mission: Impossible sequels. The supporting cast is also excellent, including Jesse Plemons, Sandra Hüller, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Michael Stuhlbarg, and others. Shot in VistaVision, it’s said to be a black comedy about a man who sets out to save humanity after nearly destroying it. And that’s all we’ve got—except that the pairing of star and director may indicate a new phase of both their careers.

Lionsgate

The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping

November 20

With the success of 2023’s The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, Lionsgate and director Francis Lawrence adapting Suzanne Collins’ next prequel novel, Sunrise on the Reaping, is a smart bet. Set some four decades after Songbirds & Snakes, and just 24 years before the events of The Hunger Games (2012), this film stars Joseph Zada as a young Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson in the original movies) as he competes and (no spoiler) wins in the 50th Hunger Games. Yet the trials and tragedies he faces along the way have made this novel a fan favorite since its publication. Once again, the story’s young tributes will be supported by all-star veterans, including Jesse Plemons, Ralph Fiennes, Kieran Culkin, Elle Fanning, and Glenn Close. Meanwhile, Mckenna Grace plays Maysilee Donner, a young tribute who has captured the minds of millions of readers.

Avengers: Doomsday

December 18

This is it: high noon for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This is the one that features the return of Infinity War/Endgame directors Anthony and Joe Russo, Robert Downey Jr. coming back not as Iron Man but Doctor Doom, the inclusion of the OG Fox X-Men cast, the rumored appearance of everyone from Chris Evans to Ryan Reynolds… and it all adds up to either a Hail Mary pass of titanic proportions or a glorious relaunch to box office dominance. Don’t let the reports of an unfinished script or extended reshoots fool you; Marvel can pull this off—they’ve done so in the past—but the question is whether the Avengers brand still has the power to bring the MCU back from its recent decline.

WB

Dune: Part Three

December 18

Denis Villeneuve’s first two Dune movies were arguably the most epic, visionary genre releases since Peter Jackson bestowed The Lord of the Rings on us 20 years earlier. But concluding a trilogy has been the downfall of many a filmmaker, and Villeneuve faces a formidable task here. The movie will ostensibly be based on Frank Herbert’s Dune Messiah, a very different story from the original and in many ways a more difficult one to imagine as a film. But if Villeneuve keeps the core of the novel—the willful self-destruction of Paul Atreides—intact, he can stick this landing like a breaking Shai-Hulud. We’re rooting for him all the way.

Focus Features

Werwulf

December 25

With his four previous movies, writer/director Robert Eggers has proven himself as the master of grim, atmospheric period horror (yes, even The Northman was a horror story in its own way). He immerses us in barbaric worlds of the past like no other filmmaker currently working. Having conquered the most seminal of vampire tales with Nosferatu, he’s now turning his attention to lycanthropy with what he himself calls “the darkest thing I have ever written,” an original werewolf story set in 13th-century England. Blood, gore, mud, and disease? Sounds like Eggers is going to have us howling in terror when this thing crawls toward holiday theaters.

The post Upcoming Movies in 2026: The Most Anticipated Films of Next Year appeared first on Den of Geek.

December 10, 2025
John Cena: The WWE Legend Who Never Feared Risks or Failure

How does one sum up the career of a pro-wrestling icon like John Cena, especially when he is always claiming we can’t see him? By remembering what once was, and not by the end—which by many standards has been flat and featured unnecessarily convoluted stories for someone who was not on every TV show each […]

The post John Cena: The WWE Legend Who Never Feared Risks or Failure appeared first on Den of Geek.

It feels strange to be talking about 2026 movies when we haven’t even escaped 2025 yet, but here we are! What makes the coming 12 months notable is that it might be the first full calendar year in which the cycle of film production and distribution has not been suffering residual effects from the pandemic in 2020/2021 or the writers’ and actors’ strikes in 2023. As a result, one glance at the upcoming release schedule indicates that 2026 could be the most packed year at the multiplex in a long time.

Even narrowing this list down to fewer than 20 entries was difficult, and the films we list below show the breadth of releases coming our way: everything from Gothic romances to mythological epics to make-or-break superhero spectaculars. As William Goldman famously said, nobody knows anything, so each of the movies in our survey holds the potential for massive success or catastrophic failure. Whatever happens, we’ll be there for each one.

Sony Pictures

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

January 16

After taking (ahem) 23 years off between installments, Danny Boyle and Alex Garland are continuing 28 Years Later‘s sordid legacy in faster succession, albeit this time with fresh blood. Candyman and Hedda helmer Nia DaCosta picks up the directorial reins in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, a movie which filmed simultaneously with last June’s zombie showdown. The new movie continues the story of Ralph Fiennes’ enigmatic good(ish?) doctor obsessed with memento mori and what happens to young Spike (Alfie Williams) when he falls into a band of “Jimmies,” led by Jack O’Connell’s eerily chipper and self-christened St. Jimmy.

In an exclusive preview with Den of Geek, DaCosta hinted, “You have these two trains on a track, essentially, that are going to collide. They’re going to end up with these two worlds in a clash, because you kind of feel that Spike and Kelson are going to interact again.”

Warner Bros. Pictures

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Wuthering Heights

February 13

The always-provocative filmmaker Emerald Fennell is following up her Oscar-winning Promising Young Woman and divisive Saltburn with a splashy adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic 1847 Gothic romance, and it stars no less than Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff. The castings are already raising eyebrows, with the latter earning accusations of whitewashing a literary character of famously ambiguous origin. But by working from source material that was considered scandalously edgy in its time, we can expect Fennell to welcome it all while amping up the tale’s eroticism and psychological melodrama—and with lots of heaving chests and Charli XCX songs if the trailer is anything to go by. In other words, don’t expect your high school teacher’s Wuthering Heights.

Warner Bros. Pictures

The Bride!

March 6

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s second outing as a director is a wild pivot from 2021’s The Lost Daughter: it’s been described as a musical, a satire, and an homage to The Bride of Frankenstein. Set in 1930s Chicago, the film finds Frankenstein’s Monster (Christian Bale) asking Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening) to create a companion for him, which arrives in the form of the Bride (Jessie Buckley). What happens from there involves murder, mayhem, and, er, social change. It seems a gamble by Warners, but a bold one given the amount of talent involved, as well as the fact that Mary Shelley reworkings seem to be in season if Poor Things and Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein are anything to go by.

Amazon MGM

Project Hail Mary

March 20

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller are at last in the director’s chairs again for a live-action film after they were dismissed from Solo: A Star Wars Story in 2018. (Their last completed live-action effort, 22 Jump Street, came out in 2014.) This time, though, the newly Spider-Verse emboldened duo is adapting Andy Weir’s sci-fi bestseller. The movie stars Ryan Gosling as a man who wakes up on an interstellar ship with no recollection of how he got there. And soon he learns that he is the last hope for humanity. The marketing promises a high-concept adventure with plenty of thrills, humor, and that ol’ Gosling charm. The Weir connection also suggests this is particularly well-suited to the screen. See Ridley Scott’s adaptation of The Martian for more.

Universal Pictures

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie

April 3

After 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie became the most successful video game-based movie of all time (nearly $1.4 billion worldwide), there was no doubt that Illumination and Nintendo would immediately greenlight a sequel. And while the plot remains under wraps, any gamer with passing familiarity with the Nintendo Wii’s beloved Super Mario Galaxy is already expecting gravity-bending visuals and out-of-this-world shenanigans for the plumber brothers. Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Jack Black, Charlie Day, and Keegan-Michael Key are all returning to their signature roles from the first film, while Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic are again directing.

20th Century Studios / Disney

The Devil Wears Prada 2

May 1

It’s time to get the devil her due, because Miranda Priestly is back in the long-rumored and hoped-for The Devil Wears Prada 2. Story details remain relatively tight-lipped, but we do know that despite having very different lanes of journalism in their purviews, Meryl Streep’s ice queen and Anne Hathaway’s Andy Sachs wind up in the same room again. The Dave Frankel-directed film also features the return of fan-favorite characters played by Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci.

Warner Bros. Pictures

Mortal Kombat II

May 8

Mortal Kombat II has certainly risen in the ranks of expectations. A sequel to the pretty-looking but somewhat divisively-received 2021 reboot of the franchise, Mortal Kombat, this sequel was originally pegged to be an October release date. But after enthusiastic test screenings and buzzy word-of-mouth, WB apparently got bullish about the Simon McQuoid-directed joint and moved the fighter to May of next year. It probably helps that the intended R-rated spectacle is bringing in a lot of fan-favorite characters and setups, including Karl Urban as an over-the-hill Johnny Cage who gets recruited into the titular tournament after his career as a movie star falls on hard times.

“The point where we find Johnny in this movie is very relatable to everybody, because he’s on the back foot in life,” Urban tells us in an exclusive cover story interview. “His career is in the tank, the world’s forgotten him, and he’s at a real low point. His confidence has been knocked, and it is at this very juncture that he is called upon to be at his best and to use his skillset to defend Earthrealm.” That leads to stunt work which the star teases has both humor and dexterity. “You also see specifically Van Damme, who in my opinion, was phenomenal, and Jackie Chan, who I drew huge inspiration from for the tone of some of Johnny Cage’s fights.”

Lucasfilm / Disney

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu

May 22

It will be nearly seven years since a Star Wars movie blasted across the big screen by the time this comes out, which is hopefully long enough for the bad taste left by The Rise of Skywalker to have disappeared. Either way, director Jon Favreau and co-writer Dave Filoni’s new film is set to answer a hard question for the franchise: will vast amounts of people come out for a story that requires viewing at least one, if not two, shows that aired on Disney+? A little Pedro Pascal charisma, even in a mask, can’t hurt. Meanwhile, the Lucasfilm braintrust appears to be betting that there’s enough good faith—and enough fans still in love with Baby Yoda—to restore this aging franchise to cinematic glory.

Photo by Rodin Eckenroth / Getty Images

Untitled Steven Spielberg Movie

June 12

While Steven Spielberg is not the box office or cultural powerhouse that he was in previous decades, there is no question that the mind races with possibilities at the thought of what this movie could be. Here’s what we know: it’s a science fiction film, reportedly having something to do with UFOs, that’s based on an idea Spielberg personally had before handing it off to his go-to blockbuster scribe, David Koepp. Keep in mind that Spielberg also dreamed up the original concepts for Close Encounters and E.T. Furthermore, the cast—including Emily Blunt, Colman Domingo, Josh O’Connor, and Colin Firth—is top-notch. And the idea of Spielberg returning to a genre that has provided us with so many classic films is enough to get us there opening day.

Pixar / Disney

Toy Story 5

June 19

What do you do when you make a near-perfect trilogy of animated films? Why, you keep going, of course! And if you thought that Toy Story 4 was a risky add-on, then you’re probably even more fretful over Toy Story 5. But Pixar, in a bit of a slump these days, is going back to its original franchise one more time with Woody, Buzz, Jessie, Forky, and all the rest returning. This time, the gang must fight for Bonnie’s attention with a tablet named Lilypad (Anna Faris)—setting up a clash between toys and tech that has no doubt gripped many households in recent years.

Warner Bros. Pictures

Supergirl

June 26

In some sense, Supergirl might be more of a test of James Gunn’s DC Studios than even 2025’s Superman. While that DCU kickoff had a lot to prove, Supergirl is the first follow-up to gauge how much audiences bought in, including to a cliffhanger of Milly Alcock’s party gal Kryptonian. Luckily, this spinoff is based on one of the best superhero stories of the decade, Tom King and Bilquis Evely’s Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, which finds a far more haunted Kara Zor-El than CW fans might remember. It also comes from director Craig Gillespie, who’s had success in left-of-center genre-benders like I, Tonya, Cruella, and Lars and the Real Girl. Together with Alcock and Jason Momoa (as… Lobo?!), this one could have a whole different vibe.

The Odyssey

July 17

How do you follow up a three-hour, billion-dollar-grossing, Best Picture-winning historical drama about the invention of the atomic bomb? With an epic film based on an ancient Greek myth, naturally. Fantasy and mythology movies tend to sink at the box office unless the name Tolkien is attached to them, but if anyone can turn Homer’s landmark of Greek literature into box office gold, it’s Christopher Nolan, who did the same for a tormented nuclear physicist in Oppenheimer. As usual, the cast—led by Matt Damon as Odysseus—is stacked, and Nolan is perhaps the only director aside from James Cameron whose name alone puts butts in seats. Whatever The Odyssey ends up being, we don’t expect to call it modest.

Sony Pictures

Spider-Man: Brand New Day

July 31

Following up the $1.9 billion-grossing Spider-Man: No Way Home is no easy feat, but the MCU’s Tom Holland-led iteration of your friendly neighborhood webslinger seems to be one of the few bright spots of Marvel’s post-Infinity Saga daze. The usual rumors persist about villains, storylines, multiverse variants, and the like, but all we really know is that Spidey will once again be supported by other MCU favorites like Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk and Jon Bernthal’s Punisher, while the identity and exact nature of the main antagonist remain unknown. Destin Daniel Cretton (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) replaces Jon Watts behind the camera for this one, and Stranger Things’ Sadie Sink joins returning cast members Zendaya and Jacob Batalon. Perhaps most interestingly, it’s speculated that this is Holland’s last non-Avengers stint in the red and blue suit.

Kevin Winter / Getty Images

Untitled Cruise/Iñárritu Film

October 2

We know even less about this movie than Spielberg’s, but it’s notable for two reasons: it’s a new work by Birdman and The Revenant director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, and it’s Tom Cruise’s first original film in eight years, following his recent run of Top Gun/Mission: Impossible sequels. The supporting cast is also excellent, including Jesse Plemons, Sandra Hüller, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Michael Stuhlbarg, and others. Shot in VistaVision, it’s said to be a black comedy about a man who sets out to save humanity after nearly destroying it. And that’s all we’ve got—except that the pairing of star and director may indicate a new phase of both their careers.

Lionsgate

The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping

November 20

With the success of 2023’s The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, Lionsgate and director Francis Lawrence adapting Suzanne Collins’ next prequel novel, Sunrise on the Reaping, is a smart bet. Set some four decades after Songbirds & Snakes, and just 24 years before the events of The Hunger Games (2012), this film stars Joseph Zada as a young Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson in the original movies) as he competes and (no spoiler) wins in the 50th Hunger Games. Yet the trials and tragedies he faces along the way have made this novel a fan favorite since its publication. Once again, the story’s young tributes will be supported by all-star veterans, including Jesse Plemons, Ralph Fiennes, Kieran Culkin, Elle Fanning, and Glenn Close. Meanwhile, Mckenna Grace plays Maysilee Donner, a young tribute who has captured the minds of millions of readers.

Avengers: Doomsday

December 18

This is it: high noon for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This is the one that features the return of Infinity War/Endgame directors Anthony and Joe Russo, Robert Downey Jr. coming back not as Iron Man but Doctor Doom, the inclusion of the OG Fox X-Men cast, the rumored appearance of everyone from Chris Evans to Ryan Reynolds… and it all adds up to either a Hail Mary pass of titanic proportions or a glorious relaunch to box office dominance. Don’t let the reports of an unfinished script or extended reshoots fool you; Marvel can pull this off—they’ve done so in the past—but the question is whether the Avengers brand still has the power to bring the MCU back from its recent decline.

WB

Dune: Part Three

December 18

Denis Villeneuve’s first two Dune movies were arguably the most epic, visionary genre releases since Peter Jackson bestowed The Lord of the Rings on us 20 years earlier. But concluding a trilogy has been the downfall of many a filmmaker, and Villeneuve faces a formidable task here. The movie will ostensibly be based on Frank Herbert’s Dune Messiah, a very different story from the original and in many ways a more difficult one to imagine as a film. But if Villeneuve keeps the core of the novel—the willful self-destruction of Paul Atreides—intact, he can stick this landing like a breaking Shai-Hulud. We’re rooting for him all the way.

Focus Features

Werwulf

December 25

With his four previous movies, writer/director Robert Eggers has proven himself as the master of grim, atmospheric period horror (yes, even The Northman was a horror story in its own way). He immerses us in barbaric worlds of the past like no other filmmaker currently working. Having conquered the most seminal of vampire tales with Nosferatu, he’s now turning his attention to lycanthropy with what he himself calls “the darkest thing I have ever written,” an original werewolf story set in 13th-century England. Blood, gore, mud, and disease? Sounds like Eggers is going to have us howling in terror when this thing crawls toward holiday theaters.

The post Upcoming Movies in 2026: The Most Anticipated Films of Next Year appeared first on Den of Geek.

December 10, 2025
Designing for the Unexpected
I’m not sure when I first heard this quote, but it’s something that has stayed with me over the years. How do you create services for situations you can’t imagine? Or design products that work on devices yet to be invented?

Flash, Photoshop, and responsive design

When I first started designing websites, my go-to software was Photoshop. I created a 960px canvas and set about creating a layout that I would later drop content in. The development phase was about attaining pixel-perfect accuracy using fixed widths, fixed heights, and absolute positioning.

Ethan Marcotte’s talk at An Event Apart and subsequent article “Responsive Web Design” in A List Apart in 2010 changed all this. I was sold on responsive design as soon as I heard about it, but I was also terrified. The pixel-perfect designs full of magic numbers that I had previously prided myself on producing were no longer good enough.

The fear wasn’t helped by my first experience with responsive design. My first project was to take an existing fixed-width website and make it responsive. What I learned the hard way was that you can’t just add responsiveness at the end of a project. To create fluid layouts, you need to plan throughout the design phase.

A new way to design

Designing responsive or fluid sites has always been about removing limitations, producing content that can be viewed on any device. It relies on the use of percentage-based layouts, which I initially achieved with native CSS and utility classes:
```
.column-span-6 {
  width: 49%;
  float: left;
  margin-right: 0.5%;
  margin-left: 0.5%;
}


.column-span-4 {
  width: 32%;
  float: left;
  margin-right: 0.5%;
  margin-left: 0.5%;
}

.column-span-3 {
  width: 24%;
  float: left;
  margin-right: 0.5%;
  margin-left: 0.5%;
}
```
Then with Sass so I could take advantage of @includes to re-use repeated blocks of code and move back to more semantic markup:
```
.logo {
  @include colSpan(6);
}

.search {
  @include colSpan(3);
}

.social-share {
  @include colSpan(3);
}
```
Media queries

The second ingredient for responsive design is media queries. Without them, content would shrink to fit the available space regardless of whether that content remained readable (The exact opposite problem occurred with the introduction of a mobile-first approach).

Media queries prevented this by allowing us to add breakpoints where the design could adapt. Like most people, I started out with three breakpoints: one for desktop, one for tablets, and one for mobile. Over the years, I added more and more for phablets, wide screens, and so on.

For years, I happily worked this way and improved both my design and front-end skills in the process. The only problem I encountered was making changes to content, since with our Sass grid system in place, there was no way for the site owners to add content without amending the markup—something a small business owner might struggle with. This is because each row in the grid was defined using a div as a container. Adding content meant creating new row markup, which requires a level of HTML knowledge.

Row markup was a staple of early responsive design, present in all the widely used frameworks like Bootstrap and Skeleton.
```
  1 of 7
  2 of 7
  3 of 7



  4 of 7
  5 of 7
  6 of 7



  7 of 7
```
Another problem arose as I moved from a design agency building websites for small- to medium-sized businesses, to larger in-house teams where I worked across a suite of related sites. In those roles I started to work much more with reusable components.

Our reliance on media queries resulted in components that were tied to common viewport sizes. If the goal of component libraries is reuse, then this is a real problem because you can only use these components if the devices you’re designing for correspond to the viewport sizes used in the pattern library—in the process not really hitting that “devices that don’t yet exist” goal.

Then there’s the problem of space. Media queries allow components to adapt based on the viewport size, but what if I put a component into a sidebar, like in the figure below?

Container queries: our savior or a false dawn?

Container queries have long been touted as an improvement upon media queries, but at the time of writing are unsupported in most browsers. There are JavaScript workarounds, but they can create dependency and compatibility issues. The basic theory underlying container queries is that elements should change based on the size of their parent container and not the viewport width, as seen in the following illustrations.

One of the biggest arguments in favor of container queries is that they help us create components or design patterns that are truly reusable because they can be picked up and placed anywhere in a layout. This is an important step in moving toward a form of component-based design that works at any size on any device.

In other words, responsive components to replace responsive layouts.

Container queries will help us move from designing pages that respond to the browser or device size to designing components that can be placed in a sidebar or in the main content, and respond accordingly.

My concern is that we are still using layout to determine when a design needs to adapt. This approach will always be restrictive, as we will still need pre-defined breakpoints. For this reason, my main question with container queries is, How would we decide when to change the CSS used by a component?

A component library removed from context and real content is probably not the best place for that decision.

As the diagrams below illustrate, we can use container queries to create designs for specific container widths, but what if I want to change the design based on the image size or ratio?

In this example, the dimensions of the container are not what should dictate the design; rather, the image is.

It’s hard to say for sure whether container queries will be a success story until we have solid cross-browser support for them. Responsive component libraries would definitely evolve how we design and would improve the possibilities for reuse and design at scale. But maybe we will always need to adjust these components to suit our content.

CSS is changing

Whilst the container query debate rumbles on, there have been numerous advances in CSS that change the way we think about design. The days of fixed-width elements measured in pixels and floated div elements used to cobble layouts together are long gone, consigned to history along with table layouts. Flexbox and CSS Grid have revolutionized layouts for the web. We can now create elements that wrap onto new rows when they run out of space, not when the device changes.
```
.wrapper {
  display: grid;
  grid-template-columns: repeat(auto-fit, 450px);
  gap: 10px;
}
```
The repeat() function paired with auto-fit or auto-fill allows us to specify how much space each column should use while leaving it up to the browser to decide when to spill the columns onto a new line. Similar things can be achieved with Flexbox, as elements can wrap over multiple rows and “flex” to fill available space.
```
.wrapper {
  display: flex;
  flex-wrap: wrap;
  justify-content: space-between;
}

.child {
  flex-basis: 32%;
  margin-bottom: 20px;
}
```
The biggest benefit of all this is you don’t need to wrap elements in container rows. Without rows, content isn’t tied to page markup in quite the same way, allowing for removals or additions of content without additional development.

This is a big step forward when it comes to creating designs that allow for evolving content, but the real game changer for flexible designs is CSS Subgrid.

Remember the days of crafting perfectly aligned interfaces, only for the customer to add an unbelievably long header almost as soon as they’re given CMS access, like the illustration below?

Subgrid allows elements to respond to adjustments in their own content and in the content of sibling elements, helping us create designs more resilient to change.
```
.wrapper {
  display: grid;
  grid-template-columns: repeat(auto-fit, minmax(150px, 1fr));
     grid-template-rows: auto 1fr auto;
  gap: 10px;
}

.sub-grid {
  display: grid;
  grid-row: span 3;
  grid-template-rows: subgrid; /* sets rows to parent grid */
}
```
CSS Grid allows us to separate layout and content, thereby enabling flexible designs. Meanwhile, Subgrid allows us to create designs that can adapt in order to suit morphing content. Subgrid at the time of writing is only supported in Firefox but the above code can be implemented behind an @supports feature query.

Intrinsic layouts

I’d be remiss not to mention intrinsic layouts, the term created by Jen Simmons to describe a mixture of new and old CSS features used to create layouts that respond to available space.

Responsive layouts have flexible columns using percentages. Intrinsic layouts, on the other hand, use the fr unit to create flexible columns that won’t ever shrink so much that they render the content illegible.

fr units is a way to say I want you to distribute the extra space in this way, but…don’t ever make it smaller than the content that’s inside of it.

—Jen Simmons, “Designing Intrinsic Layouts”

Intrinsic layouts can also utilize a mixture of fixed and flexible units, allowing the content to dictate the space it takes up.

What makes intrinsic design stand out is that it not only creates designs that can withstand future devices but also helps scale design without losing flexibility. Components and patterns can be lifted and reused without the prerequisite of having the same breakpoints or the same amount of content as in the previous implementation.

We can now create designs that adapt to the space they have, the content within them, and the content around them. With an intrinsic approach, we can construct responsive components without depending on container queries.

Another 2010 moment?

This intrinsic approach should in my view be every bit as groundbreaking as responsive web design was ten years ago. For me, it’s another “everything changed” moment.

But it doesn’t seem to be moving quite as fast; I haven’t yet had that same career-changing moment I had with responsive design, despite the widely shared and brilliant talk that brought it to my attention.

One reason for that could be that I now work in a large organization, which is quite different from the design agency role I had in 2010. In my agency days, every new project was a clean slate, a chance to try something new. Nowadays, projects use existing tools and frameworks and are often improvements to existing websites with an existing codebase.

Another could be that I feel more prepared for change now. In 2010 I was new to design in general; the shift was frightening and required a lot of learning. Also, an intrinsic approach isn’t exactly all-new; it’s about using existing skills and existing CSS knowledge in a different way.

You can’t framework your way out of a content problem

Another reason for the slightly slower adoption of intrinsic design could be the lack of quick-fix framework solutions available to kick-start the change.

Responsive grid systems were all over the place ten years ago. With a framework like Bootstrap or Skeleton, you had a responsive design template at your fingertips.

Intrinsic design and frameworks do not go hand in hand quite so well because the benefit of having a selection of units is a hindrance when it comes to creating layout templates. The beauty of intrinsic design is combining different units and experimenting with techniques to get the best for your content.

And then there are design tools. We probably all, at some point in our careers, used Photoshop templates for desktop, tablet, and mobile devices to drop designs in and show how the site would look at all three stages.

How do you do that now, with each component responding to content and layouts flexing as and when they need to? This type of design must happen in the browser, which personally I’m a big fan of.

The debate about “whether designers should code” is another that has rumbled on for years. When designing a digital product, we should, at the very least, design for a best- and worst-case scenario when it comes to content. To do this in a graphics-based software package is far from ideal. In code, we can add longer sentences, more radio buttons, and extra tabs, and watch in real time as the design adapts. Does it still work? Is the design too reliant on the current content?

Personally, I look forward to the day intrinsic design is the standard for design, when a design component can be truly flexible and adapt to both its space and content with no reliance on device or container dimensions.

Content first

Content is not constant. After all, to design for the unknown or unexpected we need to account for content changes like our earlier Subgrid card example that allowed the cards to respond to adjustments to their own content and the content of sibling elements.

Thankfully, there’s more to CSS than layout, and plenty of properties and values can help us put content first. Subgrid and pseudo-elements like ::first-line and ::first-letter help to separate design from markup so we can create designs that allow for changes.

Instead of old markup hacks like this—
```
  First line of text with different styling...
```
—we can target content based on where it appears.
```
.element::first-line {
  font-size: 1.4em;
}

.element::first-letter {
  color: red;
}
```
Much bigger additions to CSS include logical properties, which change the way we construct designs using logical dimensions (start and end) instead of physical ones (left and right), something CSS Grid also does with functions like min(), max(), and clamp().

This flexibility allows for directional changes according to content, a common requirement when we need to present content in multiple languages. In the past, this was often achieved with Sass mixins but was often limited to switching from left-to-right to right-to-left orientation.

In the Sass version, directional variables need to be set.
```
$direction: rtl;
$opposite-direction: ltr;

$start-direction: right;
$end-direction: left;
```
These variables can be used as values—
```
body {
  direction: $direction;
  text-align: $start-direction;
}
```
—or as properties.
```
margin-#{$end-direction}: 10px;
padding-#{$start-direction}: 10px;
```
However, now we have native logical properties, removing the reliance on both Sass (or a similar tool) and pre-planning that necessitated using variables throughout a codebase. These properties also start to break apart the tight coupling between a design and strict physical dimensions, creating more flexibility for changes in language and in direction.
```
margin-block-end: 10px;
padding-block-start: 10px;
```
There are also native start and end values for properties like text-align, which means we can replace text-align: right with text-align: start.

Like the earlier examples, these properties help to build out designs that aren’t constrained to one language; the design will reflect the content’s needs.

Fixed and fluid

We briefly covered the power of combining fixed widths with fluid widths with intrinsic layouts. The min() and max() functions are a similar concept, allowing you to specify a fixed value with a flexible alternative.

For min() this means setting a fluid minimum value and a maximum fixed value.
```
.element {
  width: min(50%, 300px);
}
```
The element in the figure above will be 50% of its container as long as the element’s width doesn’t exceed 300px.

For max() we can set a flexible max value and a minimum fixed value.
```
.element {
  width: max(50%, 300px);
}
```
Now the element will be 50% of its container as long as the element’s width is at least 300px. This means we can set limits but allow content to react to the available space.

The clamp() function builds on this by allowing us to set a preferred value with a third parameter. Now we can allow the element to shrink or grow if it needs to without getting to a point where it becomes unusable.
```
.element {
  width: clamp(300px, 50%, 600px);
}
```
This time, the element’s width will be 50% (the preferred value) of its container but never less than 300px and never more than 600px.

With these techniques, we have a content-first approach to responsive design. We can separate content from markup, meaning the changes users make will not affect the design. We can start to future-proof designs by planning for unexpected changes in language or direction. And we can increase flexibility by setting desired dimensions alongside flexible alternatives, allowing for more or less content to be displayed correctly.

Situation first

Thanks to what we’ve discussed so far, we can cover device flexibility by changing our approach, designing around content and space instead of catering to devices. But what about that last bit of Jeffrey Zeldman’s quote, “…situations you haven’t imagined”?

It’s a very different thing to design for someone seated at a desktop computer as opposed to someone using a mobile phone and moving through a crowded street in glaring sunshine. Situations and environments are hard to plan for or predict because they change as people react to their own unique challenges and tasks.

This is why choice is so important. One size never fits all, so we need to design for multiple scenarios to create equal experiences for all our users.

Thankfully, there is a lot we can do to provide choice.

Responsible design

“There are parts of the world where mobile data is prohibitively expensive, and where there is little or no broadband infrastructure.”
“I Used the Web for a Day on a 50 MB Budget”
Chris Ashton

One of the biggest assumptions we make is that people interacting with our designs have a good wifi connection and a wide screen monitor. But in the real world, our users may be commuters traveling on trains or other forms of transport using smaller mobile devices that can experience drops in connectivity. There is nothing more frustrating than a web page that won’t load, but there are ways we can help users use less data or deal with sporadic connectivity.

The srcset attribute allows the browser to decide which image to serve. This means we can create smaller ‘cropped’ images to display on mobile devices in turn using less bandwidth and less data.
The preload attribute can also help us to think about how and when media is downloaded. It can be used to tell a browser about any critical assets that need to be downloaded with high priority, improving perceived performance and the user experience.
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There’s also native lazy loading, which indicates assets that should only be downloaded when they are needed.
With srcset, preload, and lazy loading, we can start to tailor a user’s experience based on the situation they find themselves in. What none of this does, however, is allow the user themselves to decide what they want downloaded, as the decision is usually the browser’s to make.

So how can we put users in control?

The return of media queries

Media queries have always been about much more than device sizes. They allow content to adapt to different situations, with screen size being just one of them.

We’ve long been able to check for media types like print and speech and features such as hover, resolution, and color. These checks allow us to provide options that suit more than one scenario; it’s less about one-size-fits-all and more about serving adaptable content.

As of this writing, the Media Queries Level 5 spec is still under development. It introduces some really exciting queries that in the future will help us design for multiple other unexpected situations.

For example, there’s a light-level feature that allows you to modify styles if a user is in sunlight or darkness. Paired with custom properties, these features allow us to quickly create designs or themes for specific environments.
```
@media (light-level: normal) {
  --background-color: #fff;
  --text-color: #0b0c0c;  
}

@media (light-level: dim) {
  --background-color: #efd226;
  --text-color: #0b0c0c;
}
```
Another key feature of the Level 5 spec is personalization. Instead of creating designs that are the same for everyone, users can choose what works for them. This is achieved by using features like prefers-reduced-data, prefers-color-scheme, and prefers-reduced-motion, the latter two of which already enjoy broad browser support. These features tap into preferences set via the operating system or browser so people don’t have to spend time making each site they visit more usable.

Media queries like this go beyond choices made by a browser to grant more control to the user.

Expect the unexpected

In the end, the one thing we should always expect is for things to change. Devices in particular change faster than we can keep up, with foldable screens already on the market.

We can’t design the same way we have for this ever-changing landscape, but we can design for content. By putting content first and allowing that content to adapt to whatever space surrounds it, we can create more robust, flexible designs that increase the longevity of our products.

A lot of the CSS discussed here is about moving away from layouts and putting content at the heart of design. From responsive components to fixed and fluid units, there is so much more we can do to take a more intrinsic approach. Even better, we can test these techniques during the design phase by designing in-browser and watching how our designs adapt in real-time.

When it comes to unexpected situations, we need to make sure our products are usable when people need them, whenever and wherever that might be. We can move closer to achieving this by involving users in our design decisions, by creating choice via browsers, and by giving control to our users with user-preference-based media queries.

Good design for the unexpected should allow for change, provide choice, and give control to those we serve: our users themselves.
December 9, 2025
Voice Content and Usability
We’ve been having conversations for thousands of years. Whether to convey information, conduct transactions, or simply to check in on one another, people have yammered away, chattering and gesticulating, through spoken conversation for countless generations. Only in the last few millennia have we begun to commit our conversations to writing, and only in the last few decades have we begun to outsource them to the computer, a machine that shows much more affinity for written correspondence than for the slangy vagaries of spoken language.

Computers have trouble because between spoken and written language, speech is more primordial. To have successful conversations with us, machines must grapple with the messiness of human speech: the disfluencies and pauses, the gestures and body language, and the variations in word choice and spoken dialect that can stymie even the most carefully crafted human-computer interaction. In the human-to-human scenario, spoken language also has the privilege of face-to-face contact, where we can readily interpret nonverbal social cues.

In contrast, written language immediately concretizes as we commit it to record and retains usages long after they become obsolete in spoken communication (the salutation “To whom it may concern,” for example), generating its own fossil record of outdated terms and phrases. Because it tends to be more consistent, polished, and formal, written text is fundamentally much easier for machines to parse and understand.

Spoken language has no such luxury. Besides the nonverbal cues that decorate conversations with emphasis and emotional context, there are also verbal cues and vocal behaviors that modulate conversation in nuanced ways: how something is said, not what. Whether rapid-fire, low-pitched, or high-decibel, whether sarcastic, stilted, or sighing, our spoken language conveys much more than the written word could ever muster. So when it comes to voice interfaces—the machines we conduct spoken conversations with—we face exciting challenges as designers and content strategists.

Voice Interactions

We interact with voice interfaces for a variety of reasons, but according to Michael McTear, Zoraida Callejas, and David Griol in The Conversational Interface, those motivations by and large mirror the reasons we initiate conversations with other people, too (). Generally, we start up a conversation because:
- we need something done (such as a transaction),
- we want to know something (information of some sort), or
- we are social beings and want someone to talk to (conversation for conversation’s sake).
These three categories—which I call transactional, informational, and prosocial—also characterize essentially every voice interaction: a single conversation from beginning to end that realizes some outcome for the user, starting with the voice interface’s first greeting and ending with the user exiting the interface. Note here that a conversation in our human sense—a chat between people that leads to some result and lasts an arbitrary length of time—could encompass multiple transactional, informational, and prosocial voice interactions in succession. In other words, a voice interaction is a conversation, but a conversation is not necessarily a single voice interaction.

Purely prosocial conversations are more gimmicky than captivating in most voice interfaces, because machines don’t yet have the capacity to really want to know how we’re doing and to do the sort of glad-handing humans crave. There’s also ongoing debate as to whether users actually prefer the sort of organic human conversation that begins with a prosocial voice interaction and shifts seamlessly into other types. In fact, in Voice User Interface Design, Michael Cohen, James Giangola, and Jennifer Balogh recommend sticking to users’ expectations by mimicking how they interact with other voice interfaces rather than trying too hard to be human—potentially alienating them in the process ().

That leaves two genres of conversations we can have with one another that a voice interface can easily have with us, too: a transactional voice interaction realizing some outcome (“buy iced tea”) and an informational voice interaction teaching us something new (“discuss a musical”).

Transactional voice interactions

Unless you’re tapping buttons on a food delivery app, you’re generally having a conversation—and therefore a voice interaction—when you order a Hawaiian pizza with extra pineapple. Even when we walk up to the counter and place an order, the conversation quickly pivots from an initial smattering of neighborly small talk to the real mission at hand: ordering a pizza (generously topped with pineapple, as it should be).

Alison: Hey, how’s it going?
Burhan: Hi, welcome to Crust Deluxe! It’s cold out there. How can I help you?
Alison: Can I get a Hawaiian pizza with extra pineapple?
Burhan: Sure, what size?
Alison: Large.
Burhan: Anything else?
Alison: No thanks, that’s it.
Burhan: Something to drink?
Alison: I’ll have a bottle of Coke.
Burhan: You got it. That’ll be $13.55 and about fifteen minutes.

Each progressive disclosure in this transactional conversation reveals more and more of the desired outcome of the transaction: a service rendered or a product delivered. Transactional conversations have certain key traits: they’re direct, to the point, and economical. They quickly dispense with pleasantries.

Informational voice interactions

Meanwhile, some conversations are primarily about obtaining information. Though Alison might visit Crust Deluxe with the sole purpose of placing an order, she might not actually want to walk out with a pizza at all. She might be just as interested in whether they serve halal or kosher dishes, gluten-free options, or something else. Here, though we again have a prosocial mini-conversation at the beginning to establish politeness, we’re after much more.

Alison: Hey, how’s it going?
Burhan: Hi, welcome to Crust Deluxe! It’s cold out there. How can I help you?
Alison: Can I ask a few questions?
Burhan: Of course! Go right ahead.
Alison: Do you have any halal options on the menu?
Burhan: Absolutely! We can make any pie halal by request. We also have lots of vegetarian, ovo-lacto, and vegan options. Are you thinking about any other dietary restrictions?
Alison: What about gluten-free pizzas?
Burhan: We can definitely do a gluten-free crust for you, no problem, for both our deep-dish and thin-crust pizzas. Anything else I can answer for you?
Alison: That’s it for now. Good to know. Thanks!
Burhan: Anytime, come back soon!

This is a very different dialogue. Here, the goal is to get a certain set of facts. Informational conversations are investigative quests for the truth—research expeditions to gather data, news, or facts. Voice interactions that are informational might be more long-winded than transactional conversations by necessity. Responses tend to be lengthier, more informative, and carefully communicated so the customer understands the key takeaways.

Voice Interfaces

At their core, voice interfaces employ speech to support users in reaching their goals. But simply because an interface has a voice component doesn’t mean that every user interaction with it is mediated through voice. Because multimodal voice interfaces can lean on visual components like screens as crutches, we’re most concerned in this book with pure voice interfaces, which depend entirely on spoken conversation, lack any visual component whatsoever, and are therefore much more nuanced and challenging to tackle.

Though voice interfaces have long been integral to the imagined future of humanity in science fiction, only recently have those lofty visions become fully realized in genuine voice interfaces.

Interactive voice response (IVR) systems

Though written conversational interfaces have been fixtures of computing for many decades, voice interfaces first emerged in the early 1990s with text-to-speech (TTS) dictation programs that recited written text aloud, as well as speech-enabled in-car systems that gave directions to a user-provided address. With the advent of interactive voice response (IVR) systems, intended as an alternative to overburdened customer service representatives, we became acquainted with the first true voice interfaces that engaged in authentic conversation.

IVR systems allowed organizations to reduce their reliance on call centers but soon became notorious for their clunkiness. Commonplace in the corporate world, these systems were primarily designed as metaphorical switchboards to guide customers to a real phone agent (“Say Reservations to book a flight or check an itinerary”); chances are you will enter a conversation with one when you call an airline or hotel conglomerate. Despite their functional issues and users’ frustration with their inability to speak to an actual human right away, IVR systems proliferated in the early 1990s across a variety of industries (, PDF).

While IVR systems are great for highly repetitive, monotonous conversations that generally don’t veer from a single format, they have a reputation for less scintillating conversation than we’re used to in real life (or even in science fiction).

Screen readers

Parallel to the evolution of IVR systems was the invention of the screen reader, a tool that transcribes visual content into synthesized speech. For Blind or visually impaired website users, it’s the predominant method of interacting with text, multimedia, or form elements. Screen readers represent perhaps the closest equivalent we have today to an out-of-the-box implementation of content delivered through voice.

Among the first screen readers known by that moniker was the Screen Reader for the BBC Micro and NEEC Portable developed by the Research Centre for the Education of the Visually Handicapped (RCEVH) at the University of Birmingham in 1986 (). That same year, Jim Thatcher created the first IBM Screen Reader for text-based computers, later recreated for computers with graphical user interfaces (GUIs) ().

With the rapid growth of the web in the 1990s, the demand for accessible tools for websites exploded. Thanks to the introduction of semantic HTML and especially ARIA roles beginning in 2008, screen readers started facilitating speedy interactions with web pages that ostensibly allow disabled users to traverse the page as an aural and temporal space rather than a visual and physical one. In other words, screen readers for the web “provide mechanisms that translate visual design constructs—proximity, proportion, etc.—into useful information,” writes Aaron Gustafson in A List Apart. “At least they do when documents are authored thoughtfully” ().

Though deeply instructive for voice interface designers, there’s one significant problem with screen readers: they’re difficult to use and unremittingly verbose. The visual structures of websites and web navigation don’t translate well to screen readers, sometimes resulting in unwieldy pronouncements that name every manipulable HTML element and announce every formatting change. For many screen reader users, working with web-based interfaces exacts a cognitive toll.

In Wired, accessibility advocate and voice engineer Chris Maury considers why the screen reader experience is ill-suited to users relying on voice:

From the beginning, I hated the way that Screen Readers work. Why are they designed the way they are? It makes no sense to present information visually and then, and only then, translate that into audio. All of the time and energy that goes into creating the perfect user experience for an app is wasted, or even worse, adversely impacting the experience for blind users. ()

In many cases, well-designed voice interfaces can speed users to their destination better than long-winded screen reader monologues. After all, visual interface users have the benefit of darting around the viewport freely to find information, ignoring areas irrelevant to them. Blind users, meanwhile, are obligated to listen to every utterance synthesized into speech and therefore prize brevity and efficiency. Disabled users who have long had no choice but to employ clunky screen readers may find that voice interfaces, particularly more modern voice assistants, offer a more streamlined experience.

Voice assistants

When we think of voice assistants (the subset of voice interfaces now commonplace in living rooms, smart homes, and offices), many of us immediately picture HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey or hear Majel Barrett’s voice as the omniscient computer in Star Trek. Voice assistants are akin to personal concierges that can answer questions, schedule appointments, conduct searches, and perform other common day-to-day tasks. And they’re rapidly gaining more attention from accessibility advocates for their assistive potential.

Before the earliest IVR systems found success in the enterprise, Apple published a demonstration video in 1987 depicting the Knowledge Navigator, a voice assistant that could transcribe spoken words and recognize human speech to a great degree of accuracy. Then, in 2001, Tim Berners-Lee and others formulated their vision for a Semantic Web “agent” that would perform typical errands like “checking calendars, making appointments, and finding locations” (, behind paywall). It wasn’t until 2011 that Apple’s Siri finally entered the picture, making voice assistants a tangible reality for consumers.

Thanks to the plethora of voice assistants available today, there is considerable variation in how programmable and customizable certain voice assistants are over others (Fig 1.1). At one extreme, everything except vendor-provided features is locked down; for example, at the time of their release, the core functionality of Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana couldn’t be extended beyond their existing capabilities. Even today, it isn’t possible to program Siri to perform arbitrary functions, because there’s no means by which developers can interact with Siri at a low level, apart from predefined categories of tasks like sending messages, hailing rideshares, making restaurant reservations, and certain others.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, voice assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Home offer a core foundation on which developers can build custom voice interfaces. For this reason, programmable voice assistants that lend themselves to customization and extensibility are becoming increasingly popular for developers who feel stifled by the limitations of Siri and Cortana. Amazon offers the Alexa Skills Kit, a developer framework for building custom voice interfaces for Amazon Alexa, while Google Home offers the ability to program arbitrary Google Assistant skills. Today, users can choose from among thousands of custom-built skills within both the Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant ecosystems.

As corporations like Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Google continue to stake their territory, they’re also selling and open-sourcing an unprecedented array of tools and frameworks for designers and developers that aim to make building voice interfaces as easy as possible, even without code.

Often by necessity, voice assistants like Amazon Alexa tend to be monochannel—they’re tightly coupled to a device and can’t be accessed on a computer or smartphone instead. By contrast, many development platforms like Google’s Dialogflow have introduced omnichannel capabilities so users can build a single conversational interface that then manifests as a voice interface, textual chatbot, and IVR system upon deployment. I don’t prescribe any specific implementation approaches in this design-focused book, but in Chapter 4 we’ll get into some of the implications these variables might have on the way you build out your design artifacts.

Voice Content

Simply put, voice content is content delivered through voice. To preserve what makes human conversation so compelling in the first place, voice content needs to be free-flowing and organic, contextless and concise—everything written content isn’t.

Our world is replete with voice content in various forms: screen readers reciting website content, voice assistants rattling off a weather forecast, and automated phone hotline responses governed by IVR systems. In this book, we’re most concerned with content delivered auditorily—not as an option, but as a necessity.

For many of us, our first foray into informational voice interfaces will be to deliver content to users. There’s only one problem: any content we already have isn’t in any way ready for this new habitat. So how do we make the content trapped on our websites more conversational? And how do we write new copy that lends itself to voice interactions?

Lately, we’ve begun slicing and dicing our content in unprecedented ways. Websites are, in many respects, colossal vaults of what I call macrocontent: lengthy prose that can extend for infinitely scrollable miles in a browser window, like microfilm viewers of newspaper archives. Back in 2002, well before the present-day ubiquity of voice assistants, technologist Anil Dash defined microcontent as permalinked pieces of content that stay legible regardless of environment, such as email or text messages:

A day’s weather forcast [sic], the arrival and departure times for an airplane flight, an abstract from a long publication, or a single instant message can all be examples of microcontent. ()

I’d update Dash’s definition of microcontent to include all examples of bite-sized content that go well beyond written communiqués. After all, today we encounter microcontent in interfaces where a small snippet of copy is displayed alone, unmoored from the browser, like a textbot confirmation of a restaurant reservation. Microcontent offers the best opportunity to gauge how your content can be stretched to the very edges of its capabilities, informing delivery channels both established and novel.

As microcontent, voice content is unique because it’s an example of how content is experienced in time rather than in space. We can glance at a digital sign underground for an instant and know when the next train is arriving, but voice interfaces hold our attention captive for periods of time that we can’t easily escape or skip, something screen reader users are all too familiar with.

Because microcontent is fundamentally made up of isolated blobs with no relation to the channels where they’ll eventually end up, we need to ensure that our microcontent truly performs well as voice content—and that means focusing on the two most important traits of robust voice content: voice content legibility and voice content discoverability.

Fundamentally, the legibility and discoverability of our voice content both have to do with how voice content manifests in perceived time and space.
December 9, 2025
Sustainable Web Design, An Excerpt
In the 1950s, many in the elite running community had begun to believe it wasn’t possible to run a mile in less than four minutes. Runners had been attempting it since the late 19th century and were beginning to draw the conclusion that the human body simply wasn’t built for the task.

But on May 6, 1956, Roger Bannister took everyone by surprise. It was a cold, wet day in Oxford, England—conditions no one expected to lend themselves to record-setting—and yet Bannister did just that, running a mile in 3:59.4 and becoming the first person in the record books to run a mile in under four minutes.

This shift in the benchmark had profound effects; the world now knew that the four-minute mile was possible. Bannister’s record lasted only forty-six days, when it was snatched away by Australian runner John Landy. Then a year later, three runners all beat the four-minute barrier together in the same race. Since then, over 1,400 runners have officially run a mile in under four minutes; the current record is 3:43.13, held by Moroccan athlete Hicham El Guerrouj.

We achieve far more when we believe that something is possible, and we will believe it’s possible only when we see someone else has already done it—and as with human running speed, so it is with what we believe are the hard limits for how a website needs to perform.

Establishing standards for a sustainable web

In most major industries, the key metrics of environmental performance are fairly well established, such as miles per gallon for cars or energy per square meter for homes. The tools and methods for calculating those metrics are standardized as well, which keeps everyone on the same page when doing environmental assessments. In the world of websites and apps, however, we aren’t held to any particular environmental standards, and only recently have gained the tools and methods we need to even make an environmental assessment.

The primary goal in sustainable web design is to reduce carbon emissions. However, it’s almost impossible to actually measure the amount of CO₂ produced by a web product. We can’t measure the fumes coming out of the exhaust pipes on our laptops. The emissions of our websites are far away, out of sight and out of mind, coming out of power stations burning coal and gas. We have no way to trace the electrons from a website or app back to the power station where the electricity is being generated and actually know the exact amount of greenhouse gas produced. So what do we do?

If we can’t measure the actual carbon emissions, then we need to find what we can measure. The primary factors that could be used as indicators of carbon emissions are:
1. Data transfer
2. Carbon intensity of electricity
Let’s take a look at how we can use these metrics to quantify the energy consumption, and in turn the carbon footprint, of the websites and web apps we create.

Data transfer

Most researchers use kilowatt-hours per gigabyte (kWh/GB) as a metric of energy efficiency when measuring the amount of data transferred over the internet when a website or application is used. This provides a great reference point for energy consumption and carbon emissions. As a rule of thumb, the more data transferred, the more energy used in the data center, telecoms networks, and end user devices.

For web pages, data transfer for a single visit can be most easily estimated by measuring the page weight, meaning the transfer size of the page in kilobytes the first time someone visits the page. It’s fairly easy to measure using the developer tools in any modern web browser. Often your web hosting account will include statistics for the total data transfer of any web application (Fig 2.1).

The nice thing about page weight as a metric is that it allows us to compare the efficiency of web pages on a level playing field without confusing the issue with constantly changing traffic volumes.

Reducing page weight requires a large scope. By early 2020, the median page weight was 1.97 MB for setups the HTTP Archive classifies as “desktop” and 1.77 MB for “mobile,” with desktop increasing 36 percent since January 2016 and mobile page weights nearly doubling in the same period (Fig 2.2). Roughly half of this data transfer is image files, making images the single biggest source of carbon emissions on the average website.

History clearly shows us that our web pages can be smaller, if only we set our minds to it. While most technologies become ever more energy efficient, including the underlying technology of the web such as data centers and transmission networks, websites themselves are a technology that becomes less efficient as time goes on.

You might be familiar with the concept of performance budgeting as a way of focusing a project team on creating faster user experiences. For example, we might specify that the website must load in a maximum of one second on a broadband connection and three seconds on a 3G connection. Much like speed limits while driving, performance budgets are upper limits rather than vague suggestions, so the goal should always be to come in under budget.

Designing for fast performance does often lead to reduced data transfer and emissions, but it isn’t always the case. Web performance is often more about the subjective perception of load times than it is about the true efficiency of the underlying system, whereas page weight and transfer size are more objective measures and more reliable benchmarks for sustainable web design.

We can set a page weight budget in reference to a benchmark of industry averages, using data from sources like HTTP Archive. We can also benchmark page weight against competitors or the old version of the website we’re replacing. For example, we might set a maximum page weight budget as equal to our most efficient competitor, or we could set the benchmark lower to guarantee we are best in class.

If we want to take it to the next level, then we could also start looking at the transfer size of our web pages for repeat visitors. Although page weight for the first time someone visits is the easiest thing to measure, and easy to compare on a like-for-like basis, we can learn even more if we start looking at transfer size in other scenarios too. For example, visitors who load the same page multiple times will likely have a high percentage of the files cached in their browser, meaning they don’t need to transfer all of the files on subsequent visits. Likewise, a visitor who navigates to new pages on the same website will likely not need to load the full page each time, as some global assets from areas like the header and footer may already be cached in their browser. Measuring transfer size at this next level of detail can help us learn even more about how we can optimize efficiency for users who regularly visit our pages, and enable us to set page weight budgets for additional scenarios beyond the first visit.

Page weight budgets are easy to track throughout a design and development process. Although they don’t actually tell us carbon emission and energy consumption analytics directly, they give us a clear indication of efficiency relative to other websites. And as transfer size is an effective analog for energy consumption, we can actually use it to estimate energy consumption too.

In summary, reduced data transfer translates to energy efficiency, a key factor to reducing carbon emissions of web products. The more efficient our products, the less electricity they use, and the less fossil fuels need to be burned to produce the electricity to power them. But as we’ll see next, since all web products demand some power, it’s important to consider the source of that electricity, too.

Carbon intensity of electricity

Regardless of energy efficiency, the level of pollution caused by digital products depends on the carbon intensity of the energy being used to power them. Carbon intensity is a term used to define the grams of CO₂ produced for every kilowatt-hour of electricity (gCO₂/kWh). This varies widely, with renewable energy sources and nuclear having an extremely low carbon intensity of less than 10 gCO₂/kWh (even when factoring in their construction); whereas fossil fuels have very high carbon intensity of approximately 200–400 gCO₂/kWh.

Most electricity comes from national or state grids, where energy from a variety of different sources is mixed together with varying levels of carbon intensity. The distributed nature of the internet means that a single user of a website or app might be using energy from multiple different grids simultaneously; a website user in Paris uses electricity from the French national grid to power their home internet and devices, but the website’s data center could be in Dallas, USA, pulling electricity from the Texas grid, while the telecoms networks use energy from everywhere between Dallas and Paris.

We don’t have control over the full energy supply of web services, but we do have some control over where we host our projects. With a data center using a significant proportion of the energy of any website, locating the data center in an area with low carbon energy will tangibly reduce its carbon emissions. Danish startup Tomorrow reports and maps this user-contributed data, and a glance at their map shows how, for example, choosing a data center in France will have significantly lower carbon emissions than a data center in the Netherlands (Fig 2.3).

That said, we don’t want to locate our servers too far away from our users; it takes energy to transmit data through the telecom’s networks, and the further the data travels, the more energy is consumed. Just like food miles, we can think of the distance from the data center to the website’s core user base as “megabyte miles”—and we want it to be as small as possible.

Using the distance itself as a benchmark, we can use website analytics to identify the country, state, or even city where our core user group is located and measure the distance from that location to the data center used by our hosting company. This will be a somewhat fuzzy metric as we don’t know the precise center of mass of our users or the exact location of a data center, but we can at least get a rough idea.

For example, if a website is hosted in London but the primary user base is on the West Coast of the USA, then we could look up the distance from London to San Francisco, which is 5,300 miles. That’s a long way! We can see that hosting it somewhere in North America, ideally on the West Coast, would significantly reduce the distance and thus the energy used to transmit the data. In addition, locating our servers closer to our visitors helps reduce latency and delivers better user experience, so it’s a win-win.

Converting it back to carbon emissions

If we combine carbon intensity with a calculation for energy consumption, we can calculate the carbon emissions of our websites and apps. A tool my team created does this by measuring the data transfer over the wire when loading a web page, calculating the amount of electricity associated, and then converting that into a figure for CO₂ (Fig 2.4). It also factors in whether or not the web hosting is powered by renewable energy.

If you want to take it to the next level and tailor the data more accurately to the unique aspects of your project, the Energy and Emissions Worksheet accompanying this book shows you how.

With the ability to calculate carbon emissions for our projects, we could actually take a page weight budget one step further and set carbon budgets as well. CO₂ is not a metric commonly used in web projects; we’re more familiar with kilobytes and megabytes, and can fairly easily look at design options and files to assess how big they are. Translating that into carbon adds a layer of abstraction that isn’t as intuitive—but carbon budgets do focus our minds on the primary thing we’re trying to reduce, and support the core objective of sustainable web design: reducing carbon emissions.

Browser Energy

Data transfer might be the simplest and most complete analog for energy consumption in our digital projects, but by giving us one number to represent the energy used in the data center, the telecoms networks, and the end user’s devices, it can’t offer us insights into the efficiency in any specific part of the system.

One part of the system we can look at in more detail is the energy used by end users’ devices. As front-end web technologies become more advanced, the computational load is increasingly moving from the data center to users’ devices, whether they be phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, or even smart TVs. Modern web browsers allow us to implement more complex styling and animation on the fly using CSS and JavaScript. Furthermore, JavaScript libraries such as Angular and React allow us to create applications where the “thinking” work is done partly or entirely in the browser.

All of these advances are exciting and open up new possibilities for what the web can do to serve society and create positive experiences. However, more computation in the user’s web browser means more energy used by their devices. This has implications not just environmentally, but also for user experience and inclusivity. Applications that put a heavy processing load on the user’s device can inadvertently exclude users with older, slower devices and cause batteries on phones and laptops to drain faster. Furthermore, if we build web applications that require the user to have up-to-date, powerful devices, people throw away old devices much more frequently. This isn’t just bad for the environment, but it puts a disproportionate financial burden on the poorest in society.

In part because the tools are limited, and partly because there are so many different models of devices, it’s difficult to measure website energy consumption on end users’ devices. One tool we do currently have is the Energy Impact monitor inside the developer console of the Safari browser (Fig 2.5).

You know when you load a website and your computer’s cooling fans start spinning so frantically you think it might actually take off? That’s essentially what this tool is measuring.

It shows us the percentage of CPU used and the duration of CPU usage when loading the web page, and uses these figures to generate an energy impact rating. It doesn’t give us precise data for the amount of electricity used in kilowatts, but the information it does provide can be used to benchmark how efficiently your websites use energy and set targets for improvement.
December 9, 2025