Terminators, IMF agents and superheroes by the barrel full will blitz the box office this summer in what is sure to be one of the most competitive and entertaining movie bonanzas in recent memory. A lot of other big films were originally tipped for this sunny release window (Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Star Wars: The Force Awakens) but vacated for various reasons, with even films like Warner Bros. Pictures blockbuster Pan exiting the competitive summer fray right before this preview went live.
That’s not to say this slate isn’t still packed to the gills with huge tentpoles the likes of Avengers: Age of Ultron or Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation, long-awaited sequels including Mad Max: Fury Road and Jurassic World, and new, original potential franchises like Pixels or Tomorrowland. With our finger firmly on the pulse of what’s generating serious buzz, we will point out the must-sees as well as the potential sleepers, and give fair warning on a few that might not deliver. Start marking your calendar now because you will need to plan accordingly to get the most from your moviegoing dollar, so squirt on some SPF 100 and let us ease you into the hottest cinema season of 2015!
Check out our 2015 Summer Movie Preview in the gallery below! Click Full Screen to read each description.
Summer 2015 Movie Preview
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Avengers: Age of Ultron (May 1)
Joss Whedon brings the action and the quips in the follow-up to his own highest-grossing superhero movie of all-time. This time around, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) tries to create an artificial intelligence to pick up some of his slack in the do-good-ing arena, but winds up creating a monster in the form of Ultron (James Spader), and only Earth's Mightiest Heroes can take down the robotic menace. Buzz from early screenings says Marvel delivers the goods once again, although the fact that they're juggling nearly twice as many characters as last time is concerning.
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Hot Pursuit (May 8)
Reese Witherspoon is an uptight cop trying to shield loud-mouthed witness Sofia Vergara from criminals and dirty cops as they're pursued across the country. It's a female-centric spin on movies like Midnight Run or The Gauntlet, with the mismatched chemistry of its two leads a potential match made in heaven.
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Mad Max: Fury Road (May 15)
After a 30-year wait, Aussie mastermind George Miller will finally unveil his follow-up to the Mad Max trilogy, starring Mel Gibson replacement Tom Hardy as the title wasteland warrior. The staggering trailers featuring oodles of practical stuntwork and vehicular mayhem have melted the collective minds of the internet, but will the public clamor to see a two-hour car chase? The correct answer is, "OF COURSE!" because this is post-apocalyptic entertainment writ larger than ever before.
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Pitch Perfect 2 (May 15)
They're back, pitches! Anna Kendrick, Skylar Astin and Rebel Wilson once again lead the Barden Bellas, this time in a worldwide competition for a cappella supremacy. Hunger Games actress Elizabeth Banks makes her feature directorial debut after producing the original Pitch Perfect.
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Tomorrowland (May 22)
In an age of YA dystopias, genius filmmaker Brad Bird (The Incredibles, Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol) is giving us his take on utopia. George Clooney stars as a scientist, who, with the help of a young girl played by Britt Robertson, travels to the mythical title city where an aggregate of the finest minds tries to design a new, better society. Disney's big budget bet could yield an Avatar-style franchise or a John Carter-level bomb, but in the hands of Bird we expect greatness.
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Poltergeist (May 22)
It's heeeeeere. In 2006, director Gil Kenan made the brilliant animated movie Monster House, and now he's remaking the ultimate haunted house story. This time around, the family, led by Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie DeWitt, calls upon the talents of a TV ghost chaser (Jared Harris) to help rid their home of the spirits that have taken hold of their young daughter.
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Aloha (May 29)
Cameron Crowe's Hawaii-set romantic dramedy stars Bradley Cooper as a military contractor overseeing a satellite launch who falls for a high-energy Air Force watchdog (Emma Stone). The leads are at the peak of their powers, the supporting cast (Rachel McAdams, Bill Murray, Danny McBride, Alec Baldwin) is aces, but rumors of this being a problematic film have dogged it since it was initially greenlit in 2008 under the title "Deep Tiki" and starred Ben Stiller and Reese Witherspoon. Let's hope it's more Almost Famous than Elizabethtown.
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San Andreas (May 29)
From lions to Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson has fought many opponents onscreen, but in this action-adventure he goes toe-to-toe with a magnitude 9 earthquake that just might have the upper hand. Carla Gugino and Alexandra Daddario co-star for director Brad Peyton (Journey 2: The Mysterious Island).
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Entourage (June 3)
Vinnie Chase and the boys pick up where their HBO show left off. Superagent-turned-movie-producer Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven) bankrolls Vincent (Adrian Grenier) on his directorial debut to the tune of $100 million, but complications ensue when the actor takes his responsibilities a little too lightly. Kevin Connolly, Kevin Dillon and Jerry Ferrara fill out the entourage along with a host of celeb cameos, including series producer Mark Wahlberg.
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Insidious Chapter 3 (June 5)
The Insidious saga rewinds for a prequel set before the terror of the Lambert family. A still-alive Elise Rainier (Lynn Shaye) uses her psychic gifts to ward off a demon that has inhabited the body of a teenage girl, with a little help from her dynamic duo of Tucker (Angus Sampson) and Specs (Leigh Whannell). Franchise writer Whannell takes over directing duties from James Wan, who remains a producer.
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Spy (June 5)
Star Melissa McCarthy and director Paul Feig team for the third (and not the last) time after the runaway success of Bridesmaids and The Heat. McCarthy plays Susan Cooper, a CIA analyst thrust headlong into the world of international espionage in order to prevent an arms dealer (Rose Byrne) from inciting disaster. Jason Statham, Bobby Cannavale, Allison Janney and Jude Law co-star.
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Jurassic World (June 12)
"The park is open." And just like that "the worst idea in the long, sad history of bad ideas" comes true as overeager geneticists once again play God with dinosaur blood and wind up with human blood on their hands. Chris Pratt plays a surly dino wrangler who uses his raptor pack to rescue the park manager's (Bryce Dallas Howard) nephews from the newly-created hybrid bad boy Indominus Rex.
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Inside Out (June 19)
After a run of sequels, the geniuses at Pixar are back in the originality game and have thought up a movie that explores the nature of emotionality by going inside the mind of a young girl. There we find five different emotions manifested as characters: Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black) and Disgust (Mindy Kaling). The premise has amazing potential, and a lot of box office handicappers have predicted this could be one of the biggest hits of the season.
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Max (June 26)
An inspirational dog movie might be just what the doctor ordered during a season silly with sequels and superheroes. The heroic title pooch served in Afghanistan, but it is inherited by his master's family after a deadly explosion. The military dog must adjust to civilian life and the love of a young boy.
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Ted 2 (June 26)
Seth MacFarlane has us feeling fuzzy all over as he reprises his animated performance as the #1 R-rated teddy bear of all-time. Mark Wahlberg's John Bennett is back too, ready to provide sperm so Ted and his wife can have a baby, but they first have to prove the foul-mouthed stuffed animal is human in a court of law. Amanda Seyfried plays his lawyer and John's love interest, with a little Liam Neeson thrown in for good measure.
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Terminator Genisys (July 1)
Ah-nuld is back, and he's bringing a ton of confusing timeline alterations with him. The Terminator franchise has never been the most cohesive, having six (count 'em, SIX) actors portray future resistance leader John Connor over five films and a TV show, with Jason Clarke taking up the mantle this time by sending Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) to the '80s to protect Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke), only to find out that things have skewed big time. Academy Award winner J. K. Simmons, Matt Smith, Lee Byung-hun (as the T-1000) co-star.
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Magic Mike XXL (July 1)
A lot of summer movies have scope and scale, but if size truly matters then Channing Tatum is back to make your dreams come true. The title stripper and his hunky pals decide to take a road trip from Tampa to Myrtle Beach for a stripping competition, with Matt Bomer, Joe Manganiello and more returning to the grind along with always-sexy new addition Amber Heard.
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The Gallows (July 10)
Those terror mongers at Blumhouse strike again with yet another found footage scream-a-thon, this one centering on a school play that hasn't been performed since 1993 when a student died during the show. Now it's present day, and faster than you can say "Macbeth!" a group of theater geeks resurrect the play and the bad supernatural juju that accompanies it.
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Minions (July 10)
Those yellow banana-loving critters from the Despicable Me movies have branched out into their own adorable spin-off. This time it's 1968 and they're vying for the attention of master villain Scarlet Overkill (voice of Sandra Bullock) in a globetrotting animated adventure.
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Self/less (July 10)
How's this for high-concept: A wealthy dying man (Ben Kingsley) has his consciousness transferred to the body of a younger man (Ryan Reynolds), but after enjoying this newfound youth he begins to uncover the previous tenant's memories. Visual master Tarsem Singh previously dealt with a similarly cerebral subject with sci-fi thriller The Cell, and if he can deliver the goods this could be a sleeper hit.
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Ant-Man (July 17)
After Edgar Wright famously vacated the director's chair weeks before filming was due to start, longtime comic book fan Peyton Reed took over and seems to be giving the pint-sized Marvel character his own spin. In the version that makes it to the screen, Hank Pym develops a shrinking suit and hands it over to master thief Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) in order to retrieve the technology from Corey Stoll's Darren Cross, a.k.a. Yellowjacket. Expect many MCU references both past (Howard Stark and Peggy Carter) and future (Cassandra Lang).
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Trainwreck (July 17)
Amy Schumer plays a thoroughly modern girl who likes living the carefree life of one-night stands and partying until she meets an upstanding doctor (Bill Hader) that just might lure her into a real, honest to goodness relationship. This sex role reversal of the typical "bad boy reformed by a decent woman" formula is written by hot comic du jour Schumer, who no doubt hopes director Judd Apatow can launch her into the mainstream stratosphere the same way he did for Seth Rogen and Lena Dunham.
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Paper Towns (July 24)
Can young adult lightning strike twice? 20th Century Fox hopes to recapture some of that swooning romance The Fault in Our Stars author John Green generated with this adaptation of another of his YA books. Nat Wolff stars as Q, an introverted high school nerd who enjoys a wild night of prankish abandon with dreamgirl Margo Roth Spiegelman (Cara Delevingne) only for her to vanish off the face of the Earth the next day. He follows a trail of breadcrumbs that might lead him to her, adulthood, or both.
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Pixels (July 24)
Based on a viral short film, this feature-length fantasy posits that a race of aliens who have studied the 8-bit video games of the '80s (Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, et al) would use that same iconic imagery as weapons of mass destruction. The President of the United States (Kevin James) has no choice but to call in his childhood best friend/arcade champ Sam Brenner (Adam Sandler) to assemble a team of nerds to defeat the pixelated menace. Michelle Monaghan, Josh Gad and the great Peter Dinklage co-star in what Sony hopes will be a Ghostbusters-ish franchise.
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Southpaw (July 24)
Jake Gyllenhaal went through a shocking physical transformation to believably portray a middleweight boxing champion whose life falls apart after a violent tragedy. After everything in his life falls apart, he finds a new mentor in the form of a no-nonsense trainer played by Forest Whitaker, who helps him fight his demons in and out of the ring in order to win back the love of his daughter. Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, The Equalizer) directs what could very well be one of the summer's true Oscar contenders.
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The Gift (July 31)
Blumhouse Productions, the low-budget horror kings behind Insidious and The Purge, deliver a terrifying present in the form of Joel Edgerton playing the friend from hell. His character stalks a former high school buddy and his wife (Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall) in an escalating cycle… except he might not be the most dangerous person in the situation. Hot character actor Edgerton (Exodus: Gods and Kings, The Great Gatsby) also wrote and directed.
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Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation (July 31)
Tom Cruise is back to his old death-defying tricks as he returns once again as superspy Ethan Hunt, this time providing a showstopping set piece in which he actually hung for dear life from an aircraft 5000-feet in the air. Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames are also welcomed back into the fold, along with gorgeous newcomer Rebecca Ferguson as they globetrot from Vienna to Morocco to London trying to hunt down an anti-IMF force known as the Syndicate.
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Vacation (July 31)
Thought you had seen the last of the Griswold family? Think again. This time Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo take a backseat to Rusty Griswold (Ed Helms), who wants to relive memories of the 1983 classic by driving his own family on a sure-to-be-nightmarish trek across country to the Wally World theme park. Christina Applegate plays his wife Debbie and Leslie Mann is his sister Audrey, while Chris Hemsworth, Charlie Day, Keegan-Michael Key and Regina Hall also come along for the ride.
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Fantastic Four (August 7)
Despite some strange buzz being generated behind the scenes, Chronicle helmer Josh Trank's take on the flagship Marvel superhero team looks promising from the footage seen in trailers. This shiny new - and considerably younger - take on the FF finds scientific wunderkind Reed Richards (Miles Teller) employed by Government-funded think tank The Baxter Building to open a door to another dimension. When he steps through that doorway, he and his friends will be transformed forever. With a lower pricetag than usual, expect a more character-oriented summer blockbuster co-starring Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Bell, and Toby Kebbell.
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Masterminds (Aug 7)
Napoleon Dynamite maestro Jared Hess lends his absurd sensibilities to the heist genre by casting Zach Galifianakis and Kristen Wiig as armored car drivers who get mixed up in a plan by a career criminal (Owen Wilson) to steal $17 million buckaroos. They actually make off with the cash, but that's only the beginning of the lunacy, based on an actual 1997 Loomis Fargo robbery in North Carolina.
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Straight Outta Compton (August 14)
This slick biopic of notorious '80s rap group N.W.A charts their rise from the streets of Compton to the national spotlight. Jason Mitchell is Eazy-E, Corey Hawkins is Dr. Dre and Ice Cube's own son O'Shea Jackson Jr. plays his old man. In another ironic turn, F. Gary Gray directs the film after helping launch Cube's career in both music videos and the classic Friday.
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The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (August 14)
Only two-weeks after Mission: Impossible bows comes another '60s-era spy show given the big screen treatment. It's KGB and CIA teaming up for the common good as Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) and Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer) use the daughter of a kidnapped German scientist (Alicia Vikander) to track down rogue nuclear weapons. It's cheeky Cold War fun with director Guy Ritchie (Sherlock Holmes) veering more towards the outrageous satire of Kingsman: The Secret Service than his more self-serious rivals.
