Upcoming Sci-Fi Sequels We Can't Wait To See In Theaters

Like horror, science fiction lends itself well to serialization. Fans of the genre love the chance to explore fantastical worlds far from our own, and once storytellers have developed a brand-new universe, those fans love having a reason to come back. From "Star Trek" to "Star Wars" (which are quite similar), from "The Terminator" to "The Thing," sci-fi franchises can spawn from anything given a strong enough premise.

Moviemaking takes time, though, and we also live in a world where projects are announced many years in advance. (Or, if you're James Cameron talking about your plans for "Avatar," more than a decade in advance ... but that man made "Avatar." He gets a pass.) This can all make it frustrating to be a fan of sci-fi, often having to wait years to be able to return to a series that you love, even though new installments are constantly dangled over your head. While we're waiting for the next great sci-fi original to spark a new franchise, we've rounded up some of the sci-fi sequels that we simply can't wait to see in theaters.

Director Fede Álvarez is behind some of the most tense films in recent memory, including "Don't Breathe" and the 2013 "Evil Dead" remake. He's a man who understands that sometimes the scariest thing imaginable is to be frozen in terror while something dangerous lurks nearby ... which is basically the entire concept of the "Alien" franchise. 

Álvarez directed "Alien: Romulus," in theaters August 16, 2024. First, it has promising cast, including "Priscilla" and "Civil War" star Cailee Spaeny, Isabela Merced (who wasn't at fault for "Madame Web"), and "Shadow and Bone" lead Archie Renaux. Secondly, while films in this franchise have varied in quality over the years, "Alien: Romulus" seems to be a return to the series's horror roots. Furthermore, Alvarez seems to be a genuine fan of "Alien" films past. "I think we all have our favorite creatures in these movies," he told IGN. "Facehuggers have always been the ones that scare me the most. The idea of what would happen if the Facehugger gets you, you'll wish for the Xenomorph." "Romulus" seems to be full of them.

After "Alien: Romulus" was previewed at CinemaCon in 2024, /Film writers Chris Evangelista and Devin Meenan described footage that included Xenomorphs and Chestbursters alike. "All of this appears to be done practically, and it looks genuinely scary," they wrote. "Here's hoping the entire film matches the intensity of this footage."

"Avatar" is the most successful film of all time at the box office, but when James Cameron waited more than a decade to make a sequel, some people wondered whether he'd be able to repeat the critical and commercial highs of that movie. At this point, it's a cliche to say that you should never bet against James Cameron. "Avatar: The Way of Water" is even better than the first film, full of wonder and spectacle in every frame, and it wound up being the third-most-successful movie ever. After all, before he moved to Pandora and never looked back, the man gave us everything from "The Terminator" to "Titanic." He understands large-scale entertainment like no one else.

That's why the next "Avatar" film can't come quickly enough. The movie was originally rumored to be titled "Avatar: The Seed Bearer," but producer Jon Landau told ComicBook.com in 2023 that they were going with a different title. The release date has shifted, too; while (after many delays) "Avatar 3" was announced for a December 2024 bow, the movie instead won't arrive until December 2025, after being delayed with various Disney and Marvel projects.

In other words, we don't really know much about what shape "Avatar 3" will take quite yet. Still, "Avatar: The Way Of Water" sets up a number of interesting potential places for the third film to go, including Spider (Jack Champion) going over to the dark side, as well as whatever's going on with Kira (Sigourney Weaver) apparently being a miraculous birth. Whenever Cameron's lonu (ready), we'll be lonu (ready).

We don't talk enough about "The Rocketeer." The 1991 film is about a stunt pilot who finds a rocket pack that lets him become, essentially, a superhero. In fact, director Joe Johnston would later go on to helm "Captain America: The First Avenger." With a cast led by Billy Campbell, Jennifer Connelly, and Alan Arkin, "The Rocketeer" beautifully suggests a 1938 Los Angeles in a way that feels warm and lived-in.

"The Rocketeer" is a sorely underrated masterpiece, and it sounds like David Oyelowo is helping develop a fresh take on the story for a new sequel, once titled "The Return of The Rocketeer." He told The Wrap, "I was a big fan of the first one. Actually had the poster up in my bedroom as a teenager. It's a beloved property over [at Disney], so to be trusted with it is a real privilege." According to Oyelowo, the reimagined Rocketeer will be a Tuskegee airman, hopefully breathing new life into the character.

The new film will be written and directed by Eugene Ashe, whose 2020 film "Sylvie's Love" was incredibly lovely and didn't get nearly enough credit. That was a period piece, too, featuring Tessa Thompson as a young woman in the 1950s who falls in love with a jazz musician. Ashe managed to lovingly render a version of the past that enhanced the romance of the story, which is a fitting match for material like "The Rocketeer." Here's hoping it works out!

From the moment she danced down that hallway in the "M3GAN" trailer, the titular A.I. doll became an instant horror icon. The movie turned out to be an enjoyable-enough time, featuring exactly the right blend of horror and dark comedy. A pitch-perfect performance from "Girls" star Allison Williams helped sell the whole thing, making "M3GAN" worthwhile even if the movie's effectiveness was somewhat undercut by its PG-13 rating. Thankfully, the gnarly "Unrated" cut of "M3GAN" added back in some of the blood and guts that were missing from the theatrical version, making M3GAN into the gleefully-gory murderer she was always supposed to be. 

M3GAN will return in "M3GAN 2.0," currently set for release in July 2025. A full year earlier, Blumhouse head Jason Blum gave fans a look at the doll's mechanics in a video posted to X, formerly Twitter. In the video, M3GAN, missing her face, looks around creepily. "Time to put M3GAN back together. We are back in production in New Zealand," Blum wrote.

Here's hoping the sequel will allow the production team to go even bigger and bolder than they did the first time around. There's a lot of potential here, especially if we get more ridiculously-bloody stuff like the ear kill from the first film. Considering "Malignant" scribe Akela Cooper will be back to write the sequel, if anybody can make things as insane as M3GAN deserves, she can.

At first, the "Jurassic World" franchise was a welcome sight after a long stretch of time without any dinosaur movies in theaters. Thanks in part to the fact that Chris Pratt felt like an exciting, relatively-new star, the film was both commercially successful and critically acclaimed. By the time "Jurassic World Dominion" hit theaters in 2022, however, the magic was gone. The "Jurassic Park" reboot franchise's third installment bordered on incoherence, introducing an antagonistic swarm of bugs rather than keeping the focus on the dinos. The movie also wasted the return of original "Jurassic Park" cast members like Jeff Goldblum, Laura Dern, and Sam Neill, sticking them in a plot that was barely related to what the next-generation characters were doing. Simply put: it's a mess.

They're creatively retooling things over in Dinosaur Land,  transitioning away from the main "Jurassic World" continuity to a new group of stories. After all, at this point dinosaurs have returned to the wild, so there's a ton of avenues these films can explore. "Godzilla" and "Rogue One" director Gareth Edwards will craft the new installment, and he's a great choice, having proven back in "Monsters" that he understands awe-inspiring scale without sacrificing a compelling story. The so-called "Jurassic World 4" is amassing an impressive cast, too, which includes Mahershala Ali, Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo. No matter how much we want to take a break from "Jurassic Park," these movies, uh, find a way to excite us again.

When "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" premiered in 2018, it felt like a breath of fresh air (and may be the best Spider-Man movie ever). For a long time, the animation industry seemed to have turned away from 2D, hand-drawn movies in favor of Pixar-like CGI films. "Spider-Verse" managed to blend traditional animation styles with stunning computer graphics, resulting in an explosion of visual energy that looked like nothing else out there. In the years since, we've had a handful of films that seem to have been inspired by the "Spider-Verse" style, including "Puss In Boots: The Last Wish" and 2023's "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem."

The latter film follows Donatello, Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael as the pizza-loving turtles first emerge from the sewers and explore the human world above. It's a lovely adventure, full of mad scientists and their glowing green ooze, and its quirky, expressive visuals are perfectly suited to the subject matter. It was a hit, too, grossing more than $180 million worldwide.

It's no surprise, then, that a sequel is in the works, set for release in 2026. Producer and actor Seth Rogen told ComicBook.com that the movie even has a title, though he declined to be specific. "But when it came up on the screen, I stood up and cheered," he said. "There's an animatic — there's a storyboarded version of the whole movie, so they're working on it right now." Sounds totally tubular, dude!

The original "TRON" came out in 1982. It was about a guy who gets sucked into a video game, and it featured then-groundbreaking visual effects that took the audience inside the digital world alongside the characters. It developed a cult following over the years, thanks in part to the kitschy way those innovative computer graphics aged, and in 2010, it spawned a sequel called "TRON: Legacy."

The second one was even better. This time, CG-assisted special effects had developed tremendously, and "TRON: Legacy" uses them to full effect, and it deserves more love than it ultimately received. Jeff Bridges returned to play Kevin Flynn again, de-aged with the help of technology; it doesn't look realistic, necessarily, but that's not a bad thing for a movie that takes place inside a video game. Thanks also in part to a pulsating, thrilling score by Daft Punk, the movie is a glitched-out digital delight that reinvigorated interest in the property.

Then everything went dormant again! By the time "TRON: Ares" comes out in 2025, it will have been 15 years since the last film. "Legacy" was worth the wait, though, so there's a good chance this one will be, too. It'll star Jared Leto, Jodie Turner-Smith, Greta Lee, and more, and Bridges will once again return to play Flynn. He told the Film Comment podcast, "The technology, I'm anxious to see what this one will be. And I hear that in a way, there's even less AI stuff in this. It's gonna be more practical sets, and they're beautiful."

In 2011, "Attack the Block" proved itself to be one of the most original creature features in sci-fi history. The film features John Boyega as a young guy trying to repel an alien invasion, joining up with friends from his housing block to battle against vicious furry aliens. In addition to boasting one of the best action scenes ever, it launched Boyega's career, leading him to "Star Wars" and beyond, the movie also featured Jodie Whittaker, who would go on to play the first woman Doctor Who.

The film could've easily launched a franchise, but as everyone involved went on to bigger things, a sequel never materialized. But that changed in 2021, with news of "Attack the Block 2" in development, and Boyega is working behind the scenes to make sure it happens. In a 2023 interview with Radio Times, he explained that the story was still being worked out. "After years and years of experience, I know myself and Joe [Cornish] have been through so much change and growth since the first movie. So tackling the story now is just so interesting and exciting," he said. "The idea of coming back to London, shooting this movie, and revisiting this character — it just fills me with joy." The idea of going back to the theater and revisiting that character fills us with joy, too, so here's hoping they get 'Attack the Block 2' off the ground soon!

Few sci-fi movies have been as influential as "The Matrix." The 1999 film came just as we were starting to live more of our lives online, and it tapped into a primal fear around giving our identities over to the digital world. Add in revolutionary filmmaking techniques like "bullet time," and you have the recipe for an iconic event film. Two sequels followed in quick succession, and though they weren't as well-received as their predecessor, there's still a lot to admire about the way the Wachowskis chose to explore the world they'd created.

In 2021, Lana Wachowski solo-directed a fourth film, "The Matrix Resurrections." It's the second-best "Matrix" film, turning the idea of a studio-mandated "Matrix" sequel into an exploration of the potential for human connection to change the world. The Wachowskis are two of our most humanist filmmakers, fully believing in the power of the human spirit to transcend systems of oppression, and "The Matrix Resurrections" is a beautiful, heartfelt story about keeping that spirit alive in a world (and an entertainment industry) that seems determined to stamp it out.

Now, a fifth "Matrix" movie is in the works, this time helmed by "Cloverfield" director Drew Goddard. It's natural to be nervous — it doesn't necessarily feel great to see a property created by two trans women handed over to a straight guy — but there's potential here. After all, Lana Wachowski is on board as an executive producer, and if she trusts Goddard, then so do I.

Vin Diesel has played several memorable characters over the course of his career, including Dom Toretto from the "Fast and the Furious" films and Xander Cage from the "xXx" movies. Both characters have been going for decades, allowing Diesel to revisit their stories periodically as he's aged. Then there's Riddick, a character who first appeared in the 2000 film "Pitch Black." He's an alien who has the ability to see at night, having purchased special eyes for the exorbitant price of 20 menthol cigarettes.

Diesel has resurrected Riddick for two additional films, 2004's "The Chronicles of Riddick" and a 2013 film simply called "Riddick." A fourth film, "Riddick: Furya," will finally go into production in August 2024. According to the movie's official synopsis, "Riddick finally returns to his homeworld, a place he barely remembers and one he fears might be left in ruins. But there, he finds other Furyans fighting for their existence against a new monster — and some of these Furyans are more like Riddick than he could have ever imagined."

Denis Villeneuve's "Dune" films have been massive successes, racking up both critical acclaim and box office receipts. 2024's "Dune: Part Two" ended on quite the cliffhanger, as Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) seems to have finally embraced his centuries-in-the-making destiny as a leader prophesied to change the universe. It's good, but it very much feels like the second film in a trilogy, with numerous plot threads still left to play out and several themes that don't seem to have formed a complete arc. In other words, these are long movies, but there's so much of "Dune" left to explore, as fans of Frank Herbert's expansive book series will attest. 

Thankfully, the next "Dune" movie seems to only be a few years away. The Hollywood Reporter revealed in June 2024 that Villeneuve's next film is supposed to be released in late 2026, and the outlet speculated that the film might be "Dune: Messiah," the long-planned capper to the trilogy, though that's yet to be confirmed. Things are shaping up well, as the movie already has a leg up on the book: the fact that they were planning for it when they wrote "Dune: Part Two." Still, it seems that Villeneuve is eager to move on. Explaining that he has a number of other film projects in the works, Villeneuve told TIME, "'Dune: Messiah' should be the last 'Dune' movie for me."

Science fiction films don't always have to be massive spectacles that require hundreds of millions of dollars to make. Case in point: "Coherence," a sci-fi thriller from 2013 that will break your brain. For the most part, the movie consists of characters sitting around a dinner table having one long intense discussion. There's a comet overhead, and as the characters remain largely isolated, the effects of the astrological phenomenon become strange and upsetting. The movie has numerous tricks up its sleeve, leading to a riveting watch, even without special effects or aliens. It's devious and ingenious, showing that all you need are great performances and a great concept to make a sci-fi film worth watching.

Now, over a decade later, there's a "Coherence" sequel on the way.

"I've been inundated with pitches for sequels and offers for remakes ever since the film came out but nothing ever inspired us," director James Ward Byrkit told Deadline. Producer Kate Andrews sent him a pitch that apparently unlocked the story with only two words, and Byrkit was off and running. Those two words haven't been revealed yet, but hopefully we won't have to wait long to find out.