13 Great New Movies You Can Watch in Theaters This Summer

2023 was THE summer for movies. Not only did we get the year's biggest blockbuster Barbie, but the eventual Best Picture winner Oppenheimer debuted on the same day. Plus, there was the indie darling Past Lives, the delightful teen comedy Bottoms, Wes Anderson's whimsical Asteroid City and Jennifer Lawrence's raunchy No Hard Feelings. 2023 was an astoundingly good year for movies and so far 2024 has been doing its best to keep up. Already this year we've got Dune: Part Two, Challengers, Monkey Man and never forget Madame Web.

Hopefully we'll keep those good vibes going into summer as 2024 boasts an impressive lineup of movies heading to theaters and streaming platforms. From some big budget, highly publicized sequels and buzzy Netflix titles to international indies and gruesome horror flicks, the summer 2024 lineup looks stacked.

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In order to aid you in your summer theater-going experience, I've poured over the release calendar from Memorial Day weekend to Labor Day weekend and picked 13 movies coming out this summer that you won't want to miss.

Here are 13 Must-Watch New Summer Movies for 2024:

1. Solo (May 24)

Ever since Solo burst onto the scene at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival, where it won Best Canadian Feature Film, fans (myself included) have been begging for the French Canadian romance to make its way to the US. Now Sophie Dupuis's drag queen drama is finally arriving and just in time for summer. Théodore Pellerin gives one of the year's best performances as a drag queen who falls into a toxic relationship with a fellow queen. The lip sync numbers are so well shot it makes you wonder what RuPaul is doing with that budget.

2. Hit Man (June 7)

Glen Powell's next star vehicle on the tails of Anyone But You and Top Gun: Maverick is this Netflix caper. The movie originally played the 2023 fall festival circuit before being snatched up by the streamer for a summer 2024 release. Based on a true story, Powell plays an average Joe who gets roped into playing undercover hitmen for police sting operations only to get drawn into his cases a bit too far. Stay tuned for some incredible makeup transformations and an extra large dose of Powell's charisma.

3. Inside Out 2 (June 14)

Inside Out is nearly nine years old and that means that Riley, the girl whose mind is at the center of the original, is now older and entering puberty. With puberty comes plenty of new emotions and joining the original five are a cast of new characters including those voiced by Maya Hawke, Ayo Edebiri, Adele Exarchopoulos and Paul Walter Hauser.

Related: The Best Movies of 2024 (So Far) 

4. Kinds of Kindness (June 21)

Coming straight off a series of Oscar nominations and wins for Poor Things, the Yorgos Lanthimos x Emma Stone combo are returning less than a year later for Kinds of Kindness. A "triptych fable," this movie does seem like an oddity in Lanthimos's already odd lineup, but I could not be more excited. The cast includes Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Mamoudou Athie and Hunter Schafer. WHAT A LINEUP.

5. A Quiet Place: Day One (June 28)

While we saw bits of the alien invasion in A Quiet Place Part II, we're now getting the prequel everyone's been asking for. Lupita Nyong'o, Joseph Quinn and Alex Wolff star in this film about the first moments of the invasion and how humans attempted to fight back against the creatures with impressive hearing. I imagine it will be another "don't munch on your popcorn too loud" affair.

6. Last Summer (June 28)

I'd be doing a disservice to you all not to include at least one international film on this list. You are, after all, going to want to impress your friends by discussing French cinema at your 4th of July barbecue. Last Summer is an erotic drama in which a married lawyer starts having an affair with her 17-year-old step son, which obviously goes VERY POORLY. A train wreck you can't stop watching.

7. Maxxxine (July 5)

First Mia Goth's Pearl murdered a whole crop of porn actors in her barn in X, then she started chopping up family members on her Texas ranch in Pearl. Now Goth is back as the final girl Maxine from X, pursuing her career as an actress in 1980s Los Angeles to complete the trilogy. Only this time instead of Pearl doing the killing, the Night Stalker will be carving up victims. The supporting cast of soon-to-be corpses includes Elizabeth Debicki, Michelle Monaghan, Bobby Cannavale, Halsey, Lily Collins, Giancarlo Esposito and Kevin Bacon.

8. Sing Sing (July 12)

Coming out of the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival, Sing Sing was one of the most buzzed about movie and was snatched up by A24. Now the Colman Domingo vehicle is finally getting a theatrical release. The movie follows Domingo, Paul Raci and a cast of real, formerly incarcerated individuals playing inmates of Sing Sing Correctional Facility as they try to stage a musical production. Perhaps we could see Domingo snagging his second Oscar nomination in a row.

9. Longlegs (July 12)

Maika Monroe and Nicolas Cage star in this horror film about a police officer investigating a serial killer only to realize that she might have a connection to the case. The trailer is trippy as hell and clearly there is more going on than meets the eye. Fingers crossed that it's the next indie horror masterpiece. Cage has become quite the star of the genre as of late.

10. Twisters (July 19)

Nearly 30 years after the 1996 movie Twister, starring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton, we're getting a sequel about a new set of storm chasers. Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell and Anthony Ramos helm a star-studded cast that also includes Brandon Perea, Daryl McCormack, Maura Tierney and Kiernan Shipka.

11. Trap (Aug. 9)

As with any M. Night Shyamalan movie, its nearly impossible to tell what its actually about until the film has been released, especially since this one was written, directed and produced by the famed director. Josh Hartnett, Shayamalan's daughter Saleka and the original Parent Trap's Hayley Mills star, and it appears to be about a serial killer (Hartnett) attending a concert with his daughter. But could the plot ever be so simple? Probably not.

12. Cuckoo (Aug. 9)

Euphoria's Hunter Schafer stars in this horror movie about a teen who leaves America to live with her father and his new family at a resort in Germany, where things start to go wrong. Dan Stevens plays her father and Jessica Henwick also pops up. We've been waiting for Schafer to have her moment since arrive as Jules and this looks like the star vehicle we've been anticipating.

13. Alien: Romulus (Aug. 16)

We don't know much about the upcoming Alien film other than it's a standalone movie set in between Alien and Aliens. Priscilla's Cailee Spaeny will be playing the lead role with Isabela Merced, David Jonsson and Archie Renaux filling out the cast. TBD if you'll be able to hear any of them screaming in space.

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