This Mysterious Dinosaur Film Could Be One of the Best Sci-Fi Movies of 2026

2026 is going to be an extremely notable year for science fiction. On the franchise front, Avengers: Doomsday, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Dune: Part Three, and The Mandalorian & Grogu are all but certain to break out. Supergirl is a bit more of a wildcard, but it too can be expected to excel given the overall positive response to James Gunn’s Superman. Speaking of wildcards, The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping could play to a fairly muted response (compared to the mainline franchise installments), but it’s really looking like it’s going to do much better. Then there are those outside of big franchises, like Project Hail Mary, Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars, and Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day. But there’s one potentially big sci-fi flick that is shrouded in mystery yet very much exciting.

That would be Flowervale Street (title subject and perhaps likely to change). Why is this one so exciting? Let’s unpack what we do know about it at this point in time.

Just What Is Flowervale Street?

Flowervale Street is an intriguing project if only for who is in front of and behind the camera. As to the former, the cast is headlined by Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor, who have both found success in sci-fi via, respectively, Interstellar and the Star Wars franchise. Then there’s who is behind the camera. Namely, J. J. Abrams is serving as one of its producers.

As one might expect, this has led to some online chatter about it being a secret Cloverfield movie, considering that franchise has always been on the secretive side. The trailers for the first film barely told the audience what it was, the second film wasn’t announced long before it hit theaters, and we didn’t even know the regrettable third movie’s title until its ad during Super Bowl LII, which also announced that it would start streaming right after that very game.

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Admittedly, there would be some quasi-synchronicity to that. A secret Cloverfield movie with Ewan McGregor after his wife, the great Mary Elizabeth Winstead, also starred in a secret Cloverfield movie? But, let’s face it, Abrams has produced several sci-fi movies that had absolutely nothing to do with Cloverfield. For instance, he wrote and produced Super 8, which many thought was also a Cloverfield movie running up to release.

Lastly, as far as who is involved goes, there’s director David Robert Mitchell, who directed two excellent A24 films in It Follows and Under the Silver Lake (starring Andrew Garfield and Riley Keough). The budget isn’t known for Flowervale Street, but it’s certainly going to be higher than his previous movies, indicating that Mitchell is on his way up the ranks of directors that studios trust with a tentpole.

So, just what is this thing about? What’s known is that it takes place in the ’80s (not unlike Super 8) and follows a family that begins witnessing strange occurrences in their little slice of suburbia. But it only gets weirder when a storm rips them out of the ’80s and places them in the prehistoric era. So, we have a Spielbergian ’80s nuclear family focus (e.g. in Poltergeist and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial), time travel, and dinosaurs. It’s just a wonder that Spielberg himself isn’t attached to this thing.

We still have a while yet until Flowervale Street‘s August 14th release date, but we’ll keep you posted on what we learn about the movie as we learn it.