For about as long as cinema has been around, and even well before people came to understand it as a true storytelling medium and a full-on art form, fantasy has been one of the most prolific ways of making films. From classics as old as the shorts of Georges Méliès to masterpieces as modern as Wildwood, fantasy has delivered several of the greatest movies that history has ever seen. This year so far has been no exception, and far more likely than not, the coming few years will continue the tradition of delivering at least a solid number of fantasy masterpieces every year.
Whether we're talking about a project that's still so far in the future that we don't know much about it yet, such as Game of Thrones: Aegon's Conquest; or films that are just around the corner, such as Narnia: The Magician's Nephew, there are plenty of upcoming fantasy movies that are worth being not just excited, but immensely hyped about. We're talking about projects surrounded by such buzz, made by such elite talent, and so extensively advertised as future masterpieces that excitement here simply won't suffice. These are the sorts of movies that will populate fantasy film fans' dreams for years to come.
Even though they were massive pop-cultural sensations and absolutely revolutionary at the time, George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire books were transformed into bona fide cultural juggernauts with the success of the HBO show adaptation Game of Thrones. Since then, the world of Westeros and the stories of those who inhabit it have turned into one of the biggest multimedia franchises in the realm of current-day fantasy, with shows like House of the Dragon and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms carrying the torch beautifully after Game of Thrones' underwhelming conclusion. In three years (tentatively), the World of Westeros franchise will be treated to its first-ever film: Aegon's Conquest.
Set a century before the events of House of the Dragon, one of the most nearly-perfect HBO shows to date.
Directed by Knight of the Seven Kingdoms' Owen Harris and written by Little Fish's Mattson Tomlin and Andor's Beau Willimon, Aegon's Conquest is bound to be a hit. Set a century before the events of House of the Dragon, one of the most nearly-perfect HBO shows to date, the movie will follow the exploits of Aegon the First, who conquered Westeros with his sister wives and their dragons. Plans for an Aegon prequel had been in the works since around 2017, and by 2029, the world should be getting to see if Westeros deserves a place on the big screen as big as the one it has earned on the small screen.
Published in three volumes between 1954 and 1955, J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is the greatest fantasy novel of the 20th century, and easily the most important and influential. As such, it's all the more admirable that Peter Jackson's film adaptation trilogy ended up delivering an experience every bit as magical and timeless. It has been unsurprising to watch the Middle-earth franchise expand over recent years, and next year, it will expand yet again with the release of Andy Serkis' The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, about Gandalf (Ian McKellen) sending Aragorn (Jamie Dornan) to hunt for Gollum (Serkis).
The first in a planned series of live-action films based on Tolkien's appendices, The Hunt for Gollum seems like an immensely exciting project not only for those who already love the source material, but even for those who just tend to enjoy fantasy films in general. Some fans are skeptical that the project could end up being little more than a cash-grab, but with so many important members of the original Lord of the Rings trilogy crew returning, Hunt for Gollum really does feel like a terribly hype-worthy passion project.
Andrew Adamson's modern family classic The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was a huge hit, though the performance of its sequels declined, leaving the Chronicles of Narnia franchise lying dormant. In 2018, Netflix and eOne made a multi-year deal with the C.S. Lewis Company to produce films and shows based on Lewis' foundational fantasy masterpieces, starting with two movies written and directed by Greta Gerwig. Fresh off of the unprecedented success of Barbie, Gerwig should be more than able to deliver in Narnia: The Magician's Nephew yet another incredibly creative and passionate hit.
Not all purist fans of the source material have been fans of the promotional material that has been shown so far, since Gerwig appears to be taking some creative license with the material. But if there's anything that the director has proven over the course of her career as a filmmaker, it's that she isn't one to take safe roads or avoid creative risks, which is why this is one of the most anticipated fantasy movies of the coming years. As long as it's as colorful, vibrant, and incredibly creative as it seems to be, fans of inventive and bold fantasy movies should be perfectly satisfied.
Four worlds and four completely different ideas of what a good life looks like. This is where you belong, what it would ask of you, and what you would get back in return.
You belong somewhere old enough that the mountains have names and somebody can still tell you who gave them. Middle-earth is for people who think the right thing is worth doing even when it will not be finished in their lifetime.
You want the sea, a crew, and absolutely nobody telling you where you are allowed to go. The Grand Line is the world for people whose main ambition in life is finding out what is over there.
You would rather be feared and useful than liked and useless. The Continent is a world where the monsters are the straightforward part of the job and the people are where it all gets complicated.
You want the myths to be real and loose in the actual world, and you want to find out at about thirteen that you were never anywhere near as ordinary as everybody kept telling you.
After the award-winning success of her 2004 debut novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, a debilitating chronic illness made it so that it took Susanna Clarke another 15 years for her to publish her sophomore effort. Thankfully, that sophomore effort is one of the most amazing books of the 2020s so far: Piranesi. In 2024, it was announced that Laika, the studio that has been reigning as Hollywood's leading stop-motion animation studio for years, had bought the rights to adapt the novel into a stop-motion feature film directed by Travis Knight. Laika's latest, Wildwood, hasn't been particularly successful financially, but critics and audiences alike have expressed nothing but admiration for it.
Laika seems to be the kind of studio that only goes bigger and bolder with each subsequent project, and that should be immensely exciting.
Indeed, Laika seems to be the kind of studio that only goes bigger and bolder with each subsequent project, and that should be immensely exciting even for those who haven't read Piranesi—but especially for those who have. Surreal, atmospheric, mysterious, and visually impressive to the core, Clarke's masterful fantasy novel seems like it was tailor-made for a Laika adaptation. With Dave Kajganich of Bones and All and Suspiria fame writing the script, everything points to this cinematic version of Piranesi being just as dark, psychologically complex, and deeply impressive of a masterpiece as Wildwood.
With the incredible dark fantasy RPG masterpiece Demon's Souls, FromSoftware gave birth to the Soulslike, a subgenre of action-adventure RPGs defined by a particularly challenging mix of combat, exploration, and constant death. The studio themselves completely revolutionized the genre in 2022 with Elden Ring, one of the best video game masterpieces of the last decade, directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki and with world-building by George R. R. Martin himself. Two years from now, Alex Garland will be writing and directing a cinematic version of Elden Ring, produced by Martin and distributed in the United States by A24.
Pitched as one of the goriest fantasy movies in mainstream Hollywood history, Elden Ring has all the elements to be an absolute generation-defining masterpiece, including a star-studded cast that includes the likes of Kit Connor, Cailee Spaeny, and Ben Whishaw. Garland has already demonstrated time and time again that he can deliver some incredible big-screen stories as both a director and as a writer, and with him taking on what's easily one of the most widely-celebrated video games of the last decade, fans can only be incredibly hyped for whatever is in store here.
The Legend of Zelda has been one of Nintendo's flagship franchises since the NES days, easily one of the greatest and most influential video game franchises in the medium's history. From the original to Ocarina of Time to Tears of the Kingdom, the series has offered banger after banger over the decades, but Nintendo had been reluctant to allow any kind of cinematic adaptation of it after past failed adaptations (including the iconically bad 1989 Legend of Zelda animated TV show). However, after the tremendous success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, it became far less surprising when Nintendo announced a Legend of Zelda live-action feature film directed by Wes Ball and written by T. S. Nowlin.
If done right, the Zelda movie could not only kickstart a franchise that could be a metaphorical gold mine for fans for years to come (and a literal gold mine for Nintendo and movie studios), but also itself become one of the greatest fantasy blockbusters of the 2020s. Starring Benjamin Evan Ainsworth as Link and Bo Bragason as Princess Zelda, the film still hasn't let fans know many details about its story or what kind of adaptation it will be, but one thing is certain: There is no upcoming film that die-hard fantasy fans are more hyped for.
