With only a week to go before we flip the calendar page from August to September, the month is closing out with a surprisingly packed slate of new releases. There’s nothing too massive or high-profile here, but there is plenty of variety, with theaters making room for a mix of lower- and mid-budget films across just about every genre. And on the TV side, things aren’t exactly slowing down either, with a solid mix of new and returning shows arriving this week.
Like always, we’ve compiled this week’s major releases, because keeping track of everything arriving across theaters, streaming, VOD, and television has only gotten harder. That’s why we’re here: to sort through the clutter and make it a little easier for moviegoers and TV fans to figure out what’s actually coming out this week.
🎥 In Theaters This Week
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🎥 Ghost: 2 Big To Rig
(Wed, Aug 26th and Thurs, Aug 27th — limited IMAX engagement)
Swedish arena rock band Ghost brings its Skeletour tour to the big screen in this concert film from director Amir Chamdin. Shot during two sold-out September 2025 shows at Mexico City’s Palacio de los Deportes, the film captures Tobias Forge as his stage alter ego, Papa V Perpetua, leading Ghost through the elaborate staging, masked pageantry, and arena-sized rock that have defined this chapter of the band’s touring history.
🎥 American Martyr: The Stanley Rother Story
(Wed, Aug 26th & Fri, Aug 28th — limited engagement)
Martin Sheen narrates this feature-length documentary about Father Stanley Rother, an Oklahoma-born priest who devoted his life to serving the Indigenous Tz’utujil community of Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala. As civil war and violence spread around him, Rother chose to remain with the people he served, despite the growing danger to his own life. The film follows a life shaped by faith, courage, sacrifice, and a deep sense of responsibility to others.
🎥 The Dog Stars
(Fri, Aug 28th — wide release)
Jacob Elordi follows his Oscar-nominated turn as Frankenstein’s Monster by facing the end of the world in Ridley Scott’s post-apocalyptic survival drama. Here, Elordi plays Hig, a young pilot living alongside Josh Brolin’s hardened survivalist, Bangley. When a mysterious radio transmission suggests there may be life beyond their isolated homestead, Hig ventures into a ruined world filled with dangerous scavengers. With Margaret Qualley, Allison Janney, Benedict Wong, and Guy Pearce, this adaptation of Peter Heller’s novel asks what makes survival worth fighting for.
🎥 Coyote vs. ACME
(Fri, Aug 28th — wide release)
After a lifetime of defective rockets, collapsing traps, and one Road Runner he still can’t catch, Wile E. Coyote finally takes ACME to court. Will Forte stars as the struggling attorney who takes his case, only to face John Cena as the lawyer defending the corporation behind all those malfunctioning gadgets. Built around decades of classic Looney Tunes destruction, Dave Green directs this live-action/animated legal comedy that was once scrapped by Warner Bros. but has now been given a second life.
🎥 Buddy
(Fri, Aug 28th — wide release)
From Casper Kelly, creator of the warped ’80s sitcom spoof / viral short Too Many Cooks, comes a new twisted comedy about a children’s show where happiness is mandatory and refusing to smile has deadly consequences. In the relentlessly cheerful world of It’s Buddy!, young performers sing, dance, and follow the rules until one child refuses to play along with the show’s bright orange unicorn host, Buddy. Delaney Quinn leads a cast including Cristin Milioti, Topher Grace, Keegan-Michael Key, Michael Shannon, and Patton Oswalt in this darkly satirical take on 1990s children’s television.
🎥 Idiots
(Fri, Aug 28th — wide release)
Dave Franco and O’Shea Jackson Jr. play two guys who barely have their own lives together but somehow get hired to transport a wealthy teenager (Mason Thames) to rehab. What should be a straightforward drive quickly goes off the rails when their passenger pulls them into drugs, crime, and increasingly dangerous trouble with a cast of oddball characters (Peter Dinklage, Nicholas Braun, Kiernan Shipka). Actor-filmmaker Macon Blair (The Toxic Avenger) writes and directs this chaotic road comedy about three people spectacularly unqualified to make good decisions.
🎥 Finding Emily
(Fri, Aug 28th — wide release)
Love can be maddening... especially when you’re texting the wrong person. Musician Owen (Spike Fearn) teams up with psychology student Sami (Angourie Rice) to track down the girl he believes is his soulmate after a phone-number mix-up. Their campus-wide search soon becomes a viral story of unrequited love, while unexpected feelings begin growing between Owen and Sami, proving the heart rarely follows a straight line in this British rom-com.
🎥 It Ends
(Fri, Aug 21st — expands)
One wrong turn can sometimes last forever. In this existential horror thriller, Phinehas Yoon, Akira Jackson, Noah Toth, and Mitchell Cole play four recent college graduates whose late-night food run lands them on an endless two-lane road, where the surrounding woods hide otherworldly threats. They soon realize they’re trapped on a road to nowhere... one that may never end.
🎥 Colony
(Fri, Aug 28th — limited release)
From Train to Busan filmmaker Yeon Sang-ho comes another relentless outbreak thriller, this time set inside a sealed conference facility where a mutating virus is turning people into something faster, smarter, and harder to escape. Gianna Jun stars as a biotechnology professor trapped inside as quarantine collapses and survival becomes increasingly desperate. This new zombie horror asks one terrifying question: what happens when the infected start learning faster than the living can survive?
🎥 Just Play Dead
(Fri, Aug 28th — limited releases; in select theaters)
Samuel L. Jackson and Eva Green play a married couple whose insurance scam turns into a battle over who gets to survive it. Jack (Jackson) plans to fake his murder, collect $30 million, and frame his wife’s lover. Nora (Green) has another idea: kill Jack for real and keep the money herself. Casino Royale director Martin Campbell turns their competing schemes into a twisty crime caper fueled by betrayal, deception, and one very dangerous marriage.
🎥 The Sun Never Sets
(Fri, Aug 28th — limited releases)
There comes a point in adulthood when the future we imagined starts to feel less certain. Joe Swanberg’s latest relationship drama explores that uncertainty, with Dakota Fanning as a woman reconsidering the life she thought she wanted. When her long-term boyfriend (Jake Johnson) asks for space, she returns home and reconnects with a former flame (Cory Michael Smith), creating a complicated love triangle between the future she was building and the past she thought she had left behind.
🎥 Beyond Belief
(Fri, Aug 28th — limited release)
Carson Lueders stars as Andy, a teenage rocker chasing dreams of music stardom while still dealing with the loss of his father. Set in the 1980s, this faith-driven coming-of-age drama follows Andy after a mysterious voice tells him to run, sending his life in an unexpected direction. As his ambitions give way to bigger questions about faith and purpose, he must decide whether the future he wants is really the one he’s meant to follow.
🎥 The Salt Path
(Fri, Aug 28th — limited release)
Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs star as a husband and wife who lose their home and make the impulsive decision to walk 630 miles along England’s rugged South West Coast. Directed by acclaimed theater director Marianne Elliott (War Horse), this husband-and-wife road drama follows the couple through exhaustion, storms, and uncertainty as their journey becomes a search for dignity, endurance, and a new understanding of what home means after nearly everything has been taken away.
🎥 Legend of the White Dragon
(Fri, Aug 28th — limited release)
The late actor and mixed martial artist Jason David Frank, best known for Power Rangers, stars in this action-fantasy adventure as a fugitive warrior trying to clear his name and find his way back to his family. Mark Dacascos, Jason Faunt, Rachele Brooke Smith, Andrew Bachelor, David Ramsey, and the late Michael Madsen join him for one final dragon-sized battle, where redemption may be the hardest fight of all. When the city needs a hero, hiding is no longer an option.
🎥 Filipiñana
(Fri, Aug 28th — limited release)
Paradise looks a little different when you’re the one keeping it pristine while everyone else gets to enjoy it. Rafael Manuel’s Sundance-winning debut follows Isabel, a 17-year-old from rural Philippines who takes a job at an exclusive country club outside Manila, where every chore reveals a rigid social order. Executive produced by acclaimed filmmaker Jia Zhangke (A Touch of Sin) and shot by cinematographer Xenia Patricia (100 Nights of Hero), this quietly unsettling drama turns a manicured resort into a sharp study of class, control, and privilege.
🎥 Hanging by a Wire
(Fri, Aug 28th — limited release)
A routine school commute turns into a fight for survival when a cable car carrying eight passengers, including six schoolboys, is left dangling above a ravine in northern Pakistan. Mohammed Ali Naqvi’s documentary reconstructs the 2023 Battagram rescue through firsthand accounts, news footage, drone imagery, and reenactments as local rescuers and authorities race to bring everyone to safety before the remaining cable gives way.
🎥 Boorman and the Devil
(Fri, Aug 28th — limited release; in NY)
Some films fail so loudly they become legends. David Kittredge’s documentary revisits John Boorman’s Exorcist II: The Heretic, the critically savaged sequel that nearly derailed his career. Boorman joins Linda Blair, Joe Dante, Mike Flanagan, Karyn Kusama, and others to unpack the production, backlash, and cult reputation that followed. More than a defense of a notorious misfire, the film asks whether some movies simply need decades before audiences are ready to look again and reconsider what they once dismissed.
🎥 Dead Janitors Club
(Fri, Aug 28th — limited theaters)
Crime doesn’t clean itself. Felix Merback stars as Jeff, a broke porn shop worker who takes a better-paying job with a shady crime-scene cleanup crew operating outside the law. What starts as easy money quickly gets messier as Jeff and his coworkers are pulled deeper into the crimes they’re supposed to erase. Directed by Kenny Gage and Devon Downs, with Jake Busey and Gary Busey co-starring, this horror-crime comedy turns cleanup work into a dangerous side hustle.
🎥 Butthole Surfers: The Hole Truth And Nothing Butt
(Fri, Aug 28th — limited theaters)
Few bands wore their freak flag louder than the Butthole Surfers. Their name alone gives you a pretty good idea of just how unorthodox they’ve always been. Tom Stern’s documentary follows the San Antonio art-punk legends from their 1980s underground beginnings through cult fame and mainstream recognition with the ’90s hit “Pepper.” Using archival footage, interviews, animation, and surreal reenactments, the film captures the reckless creativity of a band that pushed artistic boundaries and influenced generations.
🎥 Gandahar: 4K restoration
(Fri, Aug 28th — re-release)
Legendary French animator René Laloux’s (Fantastic Planet) final feature follows Sylvain, a young warrior investigating an army of automata turning Gandahar’s people to stone. His search leads to abandoned mutants called the Deformed and a massive living brain tied to the invasion across centuries. With Philippe Caza’s surreal designs and Gabriel Yared’s score, this newly 4K-restored animated science-fantasy blends time travel, ecological collapse, and political guilt into a cosmic warning about the future that feels strangely relevant today.
🎥 Terminator 2: Judgment Day — 35th Anniversary
(Fri, Aug 28th thru Wed, Sept 2nd — re-release)
Thirty-five years later, it remains one of those rare sequels that didn’t just go bigger... it made everything matter more. James Cameron expanded the mythology while transforming Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor into a hardened survivor and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800 into an unlikely father figure for Edward Furlong’s John Connor. Beneath the killer cyborgs and blockbuster spectacle is a surprisingly human story about compassion, sacrifice, and choosing a better future. Now back in theaters this weekend, T2 remains proof that great sequels don’t have to repeat the original... they can redefine it into something even more memorable.
🎦 Streaming This Week
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🎦 Untold: The Testimony of Vince Young
(Tues, Aug 25th — premiering on Netflix)
Quarterback Vince Young went from one of the most memorable performances in Rose Bowl history to being hailed as the NFL’s next big star. But the highlights only tell part of what happened. In this standalone Untold documentary, Young looks back at the injuries, conflict, personal loss, and pressure that shaped his professional career, giving his own account of what happened when his once-promising football future stopped going according to plan.
🎦 The Last Sunrise
(Wed, Aug 26th — premiering on Prime Video)
Beautiful vistas, nightclubs, and the Mediterranean coastline make Mallorca look like the perfect summer escape. Maia Reficco stars as Ry, a college student living with a chronic illness who travels there with her overly protective mother (Eva Longoria), only to fall for local Julián (Fernando Lindez). As Ry’s health worsens and family secrets begin to surface, the carefree getaway takes on a new urgency in this sun-soaked romance about falling in love when tomorrow is never guaranteed.
🎦 The Whisper Man
(Fri, Aug 28th — premiering on Netflix)
Adam Scott and Robert De Niro face a serial-killer mystery in this twisty Netflix thriller based on Alex North’s bestselling novel. Scott plays a widowed crime writer whose eight-year-old son is abducted using methods linked to the so-called “Whisper Man,” a notorious serial killer his estranged father (De Niro) supposedly caught 30 years earlier. Their search reopens old wounds and a case that may never have been finished, while Michelle Monaghan co-stars as the detective investigating the kidnapping.
🎦 The Secret Woman
(Fri, Aug 28th — premiering on Netflix)
Natalie Madueño plays an amnesiac woman whose quiet life in Norway begins to unravel when a stranger claims she is actually a Danish woman who disappeared three years earlier. Suddenly faced with a husband, a young son, and a wealthy family she has no memory of, she returns to Denmark looking for answers. Claes Bang and Pål Sverre Hagen co-star in this psychological mystery about a seemingly perfect past that may be hiding something much darker once the memories start coming back.
🎦 Penny Lane Is Dead
(Fri, Aug 28th — premiering on Shudder)
A wild getaway with friends turns into a bloody disaster in this darkly comic Australian horror from filmmaker Mia’Kate Russell. A group heads to an isolated beach house for a celebration, but a prank involving drug-laced cupcakes quickly sends the night off the rails. When uninvited guests crash the party, reckless fun gives way to brutal mayhem. Alexandra Jensen, Ben O’Toole, and Steve Le Marquand star in this Shudder exclusive where one bad idea ruins everything.
🎦 Desert Warrior
(Fri, Aug 28th — streaming on Hulu / Disney+)
Anthony Mackie trades his shield and wings for daggers and horses, playing a legendary Arabian bandit protecting a runaway princess (Aiysha Hart) from a tyrannical emperor (Ben Kingsley) in director Rupert Wyatt’s sweeping historical epic. As alliances shift and a relentless mercenary (Sharlto Copley) closes in, rebellion begins to spread... and even the mightiest armies may not be enough to stop a people united against a rising empire.
✅ On VOD This Week
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✅ Motor City
(Tues, Aug 25th — On VOD/Digital)
Reacher star Alan Ritchson goes full ’70s revenge machine in this gritty Detroit crime thriller, playing a working-class man framed by a ruthless gangster (Ben Foster) and robbed of years behind bars. Once he’s free, he tears through the Motor City to reunite with the woman he loves (Shailene Woodley) and settle the score. Directed by Old Henry filmmaker Potsy Ponciroli, this payback story keeps the pedal down and a shotgun riding passenger.
✅ Hadestown: The Musical
(Tues, Aug 25th — On VOD/Digital)
The road to Hell gets the movie treatment, with the original principal Broadway cast reunited for this live West End capture. Reeve Carney, Eva Noblezada, André De Shields, Amber Gray, and Patrick Page return for Anaïs Mitchell’s folk-and-jazz retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice, where love descends into an industrial underworld ruled by Hades and Persephone... and hope may be the most dangerous song of all.
✅ Her Private Hell
(Tues, Aug 25th — On VOD/Digital)
Sophie Thatcher enters Nicolas Winding Refn’s futuristic metropolis as Elle, a troubled young woman searching for her missing father while a mysterious mist carries something deadly through the streets. Her path crosses with Charles Melton’s Private K, an American GI trying to rescue his daughter from Hell, drawing both of them deeper into a neon-soaked sci-fi horror where the city itself seems to be slipping into the underworld.
✅ Above & Below
(Tues, Aug 25th — On VOD/Digital)
There’s a shark below, armed criminals above, and not much oxygen in between. Laura Marano and Antonio Banderas star in this ocean thriller about a dream diving vacation hijacked by criminals who force a group of friends beneath the surface. Staying underwater means running out of air, but coming up puts them directly in the path of their captors. With a shark circling nearby, survival comes down to choosing which danger they’re willing to face.
✅ Batman: Knightfall Part 1: Knightfall
(Tues, Aug 25th — On VOD/Digital)
Bane doesn’t need to beat Batman first. He just needs to wear him down. After Arkham Asylum is destroyed and Gotham’s inmates spill into the streets, the Dark Knight (voiced by Anson Mount) is forced through one brutal challenge after another, pushing him toward physical and mental collapse. Michael Mando voices Bane, with Pablo Schreiber as Jean-Paul Valley / Azrael, in the first installment of this epic three-part animated adaptation of DC’s classic Knightfall storyline.
✅ The Deb
(Tues, Aug 25th — On VOD/Digital)
The ball is formal. The feelings are anything but. Natalie Abbott and Charlotte MacInnes star as teenage cousins Taylah and Maeve, whose hunt for dates to a country-town debutante ball becomes a bigger question of identity and belonging. Pitch Perfect star Rebel Wilson makes her feature directing debut and co-stars in this Australian musical comedy about tradition getting a much-needed push forward.
✅ Turning Point
(Tues, Aug 25th — On VOD/Digital)
Breaking into the wrong house is bad enough. Breaking into one where the homeowner is turning into a zombie is worse. Jillian Lee Garner stars as Margot, whose simple heist becomes a fight for survival when she and her partner are trapped inside. Their best chance of escape may be Casper (DJ Qualls), a strange neighbor who knows more about the undead than he probably should. Joshua Wagner writes and directs this twisted home-invasion thriller.
✅ Olmo
(Fri, Aug 28th — On VOD/Digital)
Growing up gets complicated when freedom starts running up against family responsibility. Newcomer Aivan Uttapa stars as Olmo, a 14-year-old Mexican American in 1979 New Mexico who sneaks away from caring for his bedridden father (Gustavo Sánchez Parra) to attend a party with his next-door crush (Melanie Frometa). Directed by Mexican filmmaker Fernando Eimbcke (Duck Season), this bittersweet coming-of-age comedy-drama follows one reckless night of mischief and consequences as Olmo begins to realize the home he wants to escape may also be the place where he finally starts to understand himself.
✅ Dead Janitors Club
(Fri, Aug 28th — On VOD/Digital)
Crime doesn’t clean itself. Felix Merback stars as Jeff, a broke porn shop worker who takes a better-paying job with a shady crime-scene cleanup crew operating outside the law. What starts as easy money quickly gets messier as Jeff and his coworkers are pulled deeper into the crimes they’re supposed to erase. Directed by Kenny Gage and Devon Downs, with Jake Busey and Gary Busey co-starring, this horror-crime comedy turns cleanup work into a dangerous side hustle.
📺 On TV This Week
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📺 Death of the Pastor’s Wife
(Wed, Aug 26th — On Netflix)
Mica Miller’s death drew national attention, but this three-episode docuseries looks beyond the headlines to the life she was living beforehand. Friends and family revisit her marriage to Myrtle Beach pastor John-Paul Miller, allegations of control and manipulation, and the events leading up to her death. Directors Julia Willoughby Nason and Mike Gasparro use firsthand accounts and previously unseen footage to examine the case and her family’s ongoing search for answers.
📺 One Hundred Years of Solitude: Grand Finale
(Wed, Aug 26th — On Netflix; special finale episode)
Macondo is running out of time. As progress gives way to decay, the Buendía family reaches the final chapter of a fate that has followed seven generations through love, war, memory, and loss. Claudio Cataño and Marleyda Soto lead the ensemble in this nearly feature-length finale, directed by Laura Mora, bringing Netflix’s adaptation of Gabriel García Márquez’s landmark novel to its conclusion.
📺 Adults: Season 2
(Thurs, Aug 27th — On FXX on Hulu / Disney+)
Adulthood is hard... especially when you share a roof with people who are just as lost as you are. Season two of this Nick Kroll-produced comedy brings Samir (Malik Elassal), Billie (Lucy Freyer), Paul (Jack Innanen), Issa (Amita Rao), and Anton (Owen Thiele) back together as they stumble through jobs, relationships, loyalty, and responsibility. Created by Ben Kronengold and Rebecca Shaw, the series finds its roommates getting older without necessarily getting any better at being adults.
📺 The Undeclared War: Season 2
(Thurs, Aug 27th — Peacock, U.S.)
The most dangerous breach may already be inside the room. After surviving a major Russian cyberattack, the GCHQ Malware Department discovers someone within its own ranks could be helping an even larger operation. Hannah Khalique-Brown, Simon Pegg, Siân Brooke, Alex Jennings, and Danny Sapani return as suspicion grows and loyalties begin to crack. The code may reveal the truth, but trusting the wrong person could bring everything down.
📺 Leanne: Season 2
(Thurs, Aug 27th — On Netflix)
Leanne Morgan’s fresh start is still a work in progress. After rebuilding her life following the end of her 33-year marriage, Leanne heads into Season 2 with sister Carol (Kristen Johnston) by her side and plenty of new family complications. This Southern comedy finds humor in changing roles, old habits, and figuring out what comes next when life refuses to settle down.
📺 Tyler Perry’s Beauty in Black: Season 3
(Thurs, Aug 27th — On Netflix)
Kimmie fought her way to the top of the Bellarie empire, but staying there may be even harder. With Horace’s wrath sending family members to jail, shifting alliances and hidden agendas threaten her new position. Taylor Polidore Williams and Crystle Stewart return for six more episodes of Tyler Perry’s drama, where blackmail, betrayal, and family warfare are still very much part of the business.
📺 Dalliance
(Thurs, Aug 27th — On Paramount+)
Hugo Weaving stars as retired cameraman Billy, whose unexpected connection with chef Dani (Heather Mitchell) sends ripples through their close-knit circle of Sydney friends. As marriages crack, old wounds reopen, and new relationships take hold, everyone begins questioning the choices that brought them here. This six-part Paramount+ drama proves that desire, regret, and second chances don’t disappear with age... they just get more complicated.
📺 Dark Matter: Season 2
(Fri, Aug 28th — On Apple TV)
Joel Edgerton returns as Jason Dessen, whose attempt to rebuild a quiet life with his love Daniela (Jennifer Connelly) unravels as multiple realities (and multiple versions of himself) begin converging around him. Apple TV’s multiverse thriller returns for Season 2 with Jason pulled deeper into the Box, forcing him to protect the family he fought to get back while confronting the possibility that he may now be part of the danger.
📺 Graveyard: Season 3
(Fri, Aug 28th — On Netflix)
The Graveyard team may have been disbanded, but the cases never stopped. A disturbing investigation reunites Commissioner Önem Özülkü and her specialized team, reopening old wounds and uncovering new secrets. Birce Akalay returns to lead this Turkish crime drama as the investigators once again confront violence against women, institutional resistance, and the emotional toll of chasing the truth.
📺 Mousetrap
(Fri, Aug 28th — On Netflix)
Ryu Jun-yeol stars as Mun-je, a reclusive novelist who wakes up to find that someone has stolen more than his money. A mysterious figure known as “Rat” has taken over his identity and seemingly replaced him. Desperate to prove he still exists, Mun-je turns to a ruthless loan shark (Sul Kyung-gu) in this Korean psychological crime thriller.
📺 All the Truth in My Lies
(Fri, Aug 28th — On Netflix)
A camper van, a bachelorette party, and a group of friends with far too much left unsaid. What should be the perfect getaway starts falling apart as buried feelings, romantic tensions, and secrets surface. Based on Elisabet Benavent’s novel, this Spanish limited series follows Marin, Coco, and their friends as one celebratory road trip turns into an emotional mess no itinerary could have planned for.
📺 Four Hands, Two Sonatas
(Sat, Aug 29th — On Netflix)
Song Kang and Lee Jun-young star as gifted pianists from very different backgrounds who meet at an elite music high school. Pi-o has spent his life chasing perfection, while Jeong-yo plays more by instinct. What begins as rivalry slowly grows into friendship as this Korean coming-of-age drama explores ambition, anxiety, romance, and the complicated bond between two musicians learning to share the same stage.
📺 Robot Chicken: 25th Anniversary Special
(Sun, Aug 30th — On Adult Swim; Next Day on HBO Max)
Adult Swim is turning 25, and Robot Chicken is here to wreck the party. Seth Green and Matthew Senreich’s stop-motion special throws characters from The Venture Bros., Smiling Friends, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Metalocalypse, and more onto an anniversary cruise that quickly goes sideways. With decades of late-night weirdos packed aboard, this is less a celebration than one seriously overcrowded disaster at sea.
