September tends to get overlooked. The summer blockbusters are winding down, awards season has not properly started, and the instinct is to treat the month as a gap between things that matter. This September is different. The Mandalorian and Grogu is landing on Disney+ the first week. Guy Ritchie's criminals are moving to Italy. Na Hong-jin is back with his first film in a decade. Ryan Murphy has found his most compelling Monster subject yet. And Son Ye Jin is returning to television for the first time in years. Four theatrical releases, six streaming debuts, three countries. These are the ten I am actually watching.
1. Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu -- Disney+, September 2
Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu made $345 million worldwide in its theatrical run and arrives on Disney+ on September 2. I skipped the theatrical run, and I have been quietly feeling fine about that decision ever since the streaming date was confirmed. Pedro Pascal returns as Din Djarin alongside Sigourney Weaver, directed by Jon Favreau in what functions as the culmination of everything the Disney+ series was building toward. The theatrical release gave it the scope its finale deserved. The streaming debut gives me the ending I wanted at home, which is the right place for a story that started as television. September 2 is the night I am clearing my calendar for.
2. The Gentlemen: Season 2 -- United Kingdom, September 3, Netflix
The first season of The Gentlemen did something the Guy Ritchie film could not quite manage: it gave its characters room to develop past their surface cool. I went in skeptical and finished it faster than I expected to. Theo James as Eddie and Kaya Scodelario as Susie were genuinely good together, and the show's willingness to let the comedy breathe made it more watchable than the films it descended from. Season 2 moves the operation to Italy, where Eddie and Susie push their criminal empire further while new players complicate everything. All eight episodes drop September 3. Netflix renewed it for a third season before Season 2 even premiered, which tells you something about the confidence sitting behind this one.
3. Hope -- United States, September 9, Theatrical
Na Hong-jin has made three films. The Chaser (2008), The Yellow Sea (2010), and The Wailing (2016). All three landed on serious best-of lists for their respective decades, and all three demonstrated a filmmaker with an unusual tolerance for sustained dread. The Wailing is the film I keep coming back to when someone asks what Korean cinema does that no one else does. Hope is his fourth feature, arriving ten years after The Wailing and after a decade in which a great deal of Korean cinema moved in his direction without him needing to respond. The film is set in a coastal village where a series of deaths draws police chief Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min) and officer Sung-ae (Hoyeon) into a confrontation with something they cannot immediately classify. Rotten Tomatoes named it one of the five most anticipated films of September 2026. For me it is probably the most anticipated of the month, which is not a ranking I arrived at lightly.
4. Practical Magic 2 -- United States, September 11, Theatrical
The 1998 original cost $75 million, made $46 million domestically, and got mixed reviews. Then it spent the next two decades becoming one of the most beloved cult films in a specific corner of the internet. I understand why. There is something about that film that rewards rewatching in a way its reception at the time never predicted. Now Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman are back, twenty-eight years later, with Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing returning and a new generation of Owens women played by Joey King and Maisie Williams. Director Susanne Bier adapted Alice Hoffman's 2021 sequel novel The Book of Magic. The tracking for this is around $40 to 50 million for its opening weekend, which would vindicate a very long wait. The film either delivers on the goodwill the original accumulated over decades, or it does not. September 11 will answer the question.
5. Slow Horses: Season 6 -- United Kingdom, September 16, Apple TV+
Slow Horses is the best spy drama on television right now, and I am not interested in arguing about it. Season 6 took 32% of total votes in Rotten Tomatoes' most anticipated TV of September poll, which is the kind of number that tells you the audience is genuinely devoted, not just platform traffic. Gary Oldman's Jackson Lamb is one of the great television characters of the decade: a man whose performance of incompetence and self-destruction is itself the most sophisticated act of tradecraft in the building. Jack Lowden and Kristin Scott Thomas return alongside him. Mick Herron's source novels are running out, which means the show is entering territory where it needs to sustain quality without a pre-existing blueprint. So far it has shown no signs of needing one.
6. Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story -- United States, September 17, Netflix
Ryan Murphy's Monster anthology has made its formula legible by now: a true-crime case, a filmmaker's point of view rather than a neutral retelling, and a cast that takes the material seriously. Season 4 turns to Lizzie Borden and the 1892 Fall River axe murders that resulted in one of the most discussed acquittals in American legal history. Ella Beatty plays Lizzie, with Rebecca Hall as her stepmother and Charlie Hunnam as her father Andrew. What draws me to this particular case is the same thing that makes it uncomfortable to adapt: the acquittal was not a resolution. It was a decision by a jury that could not or would not convict. The framing here is feminist and darkly comedic, which is either the right approach to a case that was always about what women were and were not permitted to do in Victorian America, or it oversimplifies something that deserves more ambiguity. The first season of Monster was one of Netflix's most-watched titles of its year. The bar is set.
7. Resident Evil -- United States, September 18, Theatrical
The previous Resident Evil film series ran for six entries and made over $1.2 billion globally. It also had essentially nothing to do with survival horror. This one does, and that distinction matters more than I expected when I first read the premise. Zach Cregger, whose Barbarian was one of the more interesting horror films of recent years, has taken the franchise back to its fundamentals: scarce ammo, typewriters for saving progress, bioengineered creatures that move like the games taught you to fear. The screenplay was co-written by Cregger and Shay Hatten, who previously wrote John Wick: Chapter 3 and Army of the Dead. Austin Abrams leads as a medical courier thrown into the Raccoon City outbreak. The first eighteen minutes screened for press generated strong early responses. Whether it holds up as a complete film is the real question.
8. The Scandal (스캔들) -- South Korea, September 18, Netflix
The Scandal is a Joseon-era adaptation of Dangerous Liaisons, which is either a premise that sounds exactly right or exactly wrong depending on your tolerance for period dramas with scheming aristocrats. It sounds exactly right to me. The draw here is Son Ye Jin, making her return to drama series after years away from television, playing Lady Cho, a noblewoman who engineers a seduction game targeting the notorious lothario Cho Won (Ji Chang Wook). The source is the 2003 Korean film Untold Scandal, which itself adapted the original French novel for a Korean historical setting. Netflix is treating this as its flagship Korean original for the quarter, and with Son Ye Jin at the center of it, I think the confidence is earned.
9. American Horror Story: 13 -- United States, September 24, FX and Hulu
The most significant fact about American Horror Story: 13 is that Jessica Lange is back. Her last season was Apocalypse in 2018, and I did not expect to see her return. Her presence signals something about Ryan Murphy's ambitions for this installment that a cast list alone would not communicate. Sarah Paulson returns as Cordelia Goode alongside Evan Peters, Emma Roberts, and Angela Bassett. The season runs thirteen half-hour episodes, with premiere week releasing three at once and two per Thursday after that, ending on October 29. The half-hour format is a deliberate change, and it suggests Murphy is working with the rhythm of the storytelling in ways the standard episode length did not allow. Premieres September 24 on FX. Streams on Hulu and internationally on Disney+.
10. Primetime -- United States, September 25, A24
Robert Pattinson plays Chris Hansen, the NBC Dateline correspondent who produced To Catch a Predator in 2006. The film follows Hansen during that production and is directed by Lance Oppenheim in his feature narrative debut. Oppenheim's documentary background suggests a grounded approach to a subject that could easily tip into either satire or hagiography. A24 is releasing it in late September with a Venice Film Festival main competition premiere, which is where you send films you expect to be part of the awards conversation. I have been watching Pattinson's career choices since The Lighthouse, and I think Primetime is exactly the kind of project only he seems to find right now.
All release dates are for the specified platforms and may vary by region. Tracking what's coming next at incoming.to.