This week marks the first week of September, and it’s already looking packed with new releases on both the big and small screens. So if you’re looking for a little breathing room after a couple of months dominated by big box-office smashes and buzzworthy shows, just know that September isn’t exactly slowing things down.
New movies, new TV shows, returning favorites, and plenty of smaller releases are all competing for our attention this week. So once again, the bigger question isn’t what to watch, it’s where to start. Luckily, we’ve jotted down a list of some of the most notable releases coming out over the next couple of days. So, whether you’re heading to the cinemas this weekend or planning to kick off your shoes, plop yourself on the couch, and watch something at home, there’s plenty to choose from. So, scroll down and let’s see what you can add to your never-ending watchlist.
🎦 Streaming This Week
✅ On VOD This Week
📺 On TV This Week
🎥 In Theaters This Week
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🎥 Fall 2: Deadpoint
(Wed, Sept 2nd — wide release)
Five thousand feet up, there’s nowhere left but down. In this sequel to 2022’s vertigo-inducing thriller, Harriet Slater stars as Jax, a grieving climber who heads to Mount Kwan with her late sister’s friend Luce (Arsema Thomas), hoping the dangerous trek will bring some kind of closure. Instead, a rockslide strands them high above the ground as the route collapses around them. Sometimes the best way to honor a recently departed loved one is simply to stay alive.
🎥 Katy Perry: The Lifetimes Tour – Live from Paris
(Wed, Sept 2nd — IMAX release)
Pop star Katy Perry brings Paris straight to the biggest screen she can find. Filmed from more than 60 camera angles across two sold-out performances at Accor Arena, this concert extravaganza captures the choreography, costume changes, crowd energy, and career-spanning hits of the Lifetimes Tour. From intimate fan moments to full-scale arena anthems, Perry turns two nights in Paris into a front-row seat built for IMAX.
🎥 Sara Bareilles: Good Grief
(Wed, Sept 2nd — limited release)
Seven years after her last studio album, Sara Bareilles heads back into the recording room with some of her closest musical collaborators. Filmed over a six-day session, Bareilles and her band work through new songs inspired by personal hardship and the long disruption of the pandemic. Rather than treating the process like a standard making-of, this music documentary focuses on the conversations, experiments, and relationships behind her new album, where sorrow and joy often sit side by side in the same song.
🎥 The Hunger Games: All Five Films
(Wed, Sept 2nd — Special Re-release Event, via Fathom Entertainment)
So, this is your chance to revisit all five Hunger Games films right before the new prequel arrives in theaters. Thanks to a special Fathom Entertainment event, the franchise is returning to the big screen this week, which will include an exclusive sneak peek at The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping. So, it’s the perfect time to return to Panem! And watch Katniss Everdeen emerge as the symbolic leader of a rebellion against the Capitol. For Hunger Games fans, the odds are in your favor.
🎥 Onslaught
(Fri, Sept 4th — wide release)
Filmmaker Adam Wingard returns to his genre-mashup roots with this gonzo action throwback starring Adria Arjona as a former military sniper battling PTSD while raising her young daughter in a desert trailer park. But when genetically engineered super soldiers escape a nearby secret military base and invade her home, she’s forced back into combat for one more deadly battle. Locked and loaded, she’s about to remind everyone that some mothers are better suited for the battlefield than the sidelines.
🎥 By Any Means
(Fri, Sept 4th — wide release)
You can’t fight fire with fire, but you can definitely fight dirty when the other side refuses to play by rules. In this historical crime drama based on true events, Mark Wahlberg stars as notorious Mafia hitman Greg Scarpa, who is recruited to work alongside a Black FBI agent (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) investigating the murders of civil-rights leaders in 1960s Mississippi. It’s an unlikely alliance, with the FBI relying on a man whose methods are anything but by the book. The film revisits a dark chapter in American history, when activists were targeted and killed, and seeking justice meant crossing lines the law normally wouldn’t.
🎥 The Sun Never Sets
(Fri, Sept 4th — expands)
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.
🎥 Tom and Jerry: Forbidden Compass
(Fri, Sept 4th — limited release)
As the Tom and Jerry franchise’s first fully computer-animated feature, this Chinese co-production sends the iconic rivals into unfamiliar territory. Tom and Jerry’s latest chase takes them farther than ever when a mysterious compass whisks the feuding duo from a museum into a fantastical world inspired by Chinese mythology. Surrounded by magical creatures and ancient lore, the longtime rivals must work together if they hope to find their way home.
🎥 Dear You
(Fri, Sept 4th — limited release)
Drowning in debt, a young Chinese man (Zheng Runqi) travels from Chaoshan to Thailand searching for the grandfather he believes abandoned his family. Instead, a trail of letters reveals years of sacrifice behind his absence. Filmmaker Lan Hongchun turns the journey into a moving drama about migration, devotion, and inheritance, where reconnecting with the past proves worth more than anything money could ever buy.
🎥 American Summer
(Fri, Sept 4th — limited release)
In this nostalgia-laden summer drama, Steve Guttenberg plays Mikey, looking back on the season when his younger self (Logan Gray) discovered baseball, friendship, and first love with Kelly, played by Mia Talerico and Christie Brinkley at different ages. Writer-director Michael W. Gray gives this coming-of-age story a bittersweet edge, looking back on those sunlit days when summers seemed endless and anything felt possible.
🎥 Ever After
(Fri, Sept 4th — limited release)
It’s a lineup of horror favorites, including Kane Hodder, Michael Berryman, and Malcolm McDowell, alongside Mark Sheppard and Bonnie Aarons. In this blood-soaked grindhouse chiller, a group of friends heads to a remote forest lodge for one last celebratory weekend, only to encounter violent fanatics who believe they’re characters from classic fairy tales. With Little Red Riding Hood, the Big Bad Wolf, an evil witch, and Prince Charming transformed into murderous villains, surviving the night means refusing to play by their twisted storybook rules.
🎥 The Girl in the River
(Fri, Sept 4th — limited release)
Devon Sawa, Maggie Grace, Tiffany Haddish, and Ralph Macchio lead the cast of this twisty crime thriller, where the murder of one child and the disappearance of her twin draw two specialists into a small town. As the case grows more disturbing, a seasoned criminologist and forensic psychologist race to find the surviving girl and uncover the killer. What begins as professional curiosity soon becomes something more personal, as solving one murder may be their only chance to stop another.
🎥 Come With Me
(Fri, Sept 4th — limited release)
Theo Rossi reunites with Sons of Anarchy co-star Ron Perlman in this indie thriller about Simon, a working-class man whose lives unravels after a deeply traumatic home invasion. While grieving his best friend and facing mounting pressure at work, Simon (Rossi) becomes consumed by the hate-filled rhetoric of a local shock-jock radio host (Perlman), eventually turning the DJ’s violent words into violent action himself... with deadly consequences.
🎥 Barbara Forever
(Fri, Sept 4th — limited release)
Experimental ’60s filmmaker Barbara Hammer left behind more than a body of work; she created an entirely new way of seeing the world. Drawing from her films, recordings, writings, and personal archives, this documentary traces the pioneering lesbian avant-garde artist’s five-decade career, exploring queer passion, aging, illness, and creativity. Guided by Hammer’s own voice and longtime collaborator Florrie Burke, the film might feel less like a biography and more like a conversation with an artist still speaking through her work.
🎥 Cocoon: One Summer of Girlhood
(Fri, Sept 4th — limited release)
A quiet island summer is shattered by war when best friends San and Mayu are taken from school and sent to care for wounded soldiers inside a cave hospital. As the casualties mount, their friendship becomes one of the few things they can still hold onto. Directed by Yukimitsu Ina and adapted from Machiko Kyo’s manga, this wartime anime drama follows two young girls as childhood gives way to the realities of conflict.
🎥 Akira: 4K Restoration
(Fri, Sept 4th — re-release)
Neo-Tokyo is calling again as Katsuhiro Otomo’s landmark anime returns to theaters in 4K. After Tetsuo is pulled into a military experiment and develops terrifying powers, Kaneda’s attempt to save him spirals into rebellion and destruction. Decades later, this cyberpunk classic still hits hard, reminding us just how much it changed what animation could be.
🎥 Cars: 20th Anniversary
(Fri, Sept 4th — re-release)
Lightning McQueen is taking another lap around the big screen. Owen Wilson voices the rookie racer whose Piston Cup dreams are interrupted when he gets stranded in Radiator Springs. There, Sally, Doc Hudson, Mater, and the rest of the town teach him there’s more to life than winning. Pixar’s road-trip favorite returns to theaters for its 20th anniversary.
🎥 The Nutty Professor: 30th Anniversary
(Fri, Sept 4th — re-release)
Eddie Murphy’s classic comedy celebrates its 30th anniversary with a return to theaters this weekend. A remake of the Jerry Lewis comedy, the film lets Murphy put his own comic spin on kind-hearted professor Sherman Klump, whose experimental weight-loss serum transforms him into the thin, wildly confident Buddy Love. But when Buddy begins taking over Sherman’s career and personal life, he must regain control before his increasingly powerful alter ego pushes him out for good.
