Spielberg’s Untitled Sci-Fi and the Case of the Missing IMAX Slot

2026 is supposed to be a science-fiction buffet, and I have already started mentally reserving seats: Project Hail Mary versus Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars in March, a new Star Wars movie in May, and Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part 3 closing his trilogy in December. But the dish I am most hungry for is Steven Spielberg’s return to big sci-fi blockbusters. It does not even have a title yet, which is either mysterious or a sign that the marketing department is still trying to spell “Koepp” correctly. It reunites Spielberg with David Koepp, his Jurassic Park and War of the Worlds screenwriter, and stars Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, Colman Domingo, and Wyatt Russell. Josh O’Connor has teased “old-school Spielberg” in the vein of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T., which is the most exciting sentence I have read since someone told me a game had no microtransactions.

Then came the plot twist. The movie is dated for June 12, and IMAX’s 2026 release look-ahead — a list of 20 of the biggest movies on next year’s calendar — apparently did not include it. I read that and made a noise like a controller disconnecting during a boss fight. This is not proof of doom. It is proof that IMAX schedules are now a spectator sport. But it is weird. A new Spielberg sci-fi movie is not the sort of thing you forget in an investor presentation unless your presentation was assembled by a caffeinated intern with a grudge against wonder.

Let me put on my detective hat. It is a very silly hat, but it fits. There are three plausible explanations, and I have ranked them with the scientific rigor of a gamer deciding which side quest to ignore first.

1. Clerical error. IMAX will show the film but left it out of the presentation. This is the least likely to me. You do not leave the highest-grossing filmmaker of all time off a sizzle reel unless your sizzle reel is allergic to money. The presentation even includes “Untitled Iñárritu/Tom Cruise,” so a project clearly does not need an official title to make the cut.

2. Delay. The film wrapped in May, but maybe it is not quite ready, or Universal is still working out where to move it. Movies get delayed like my backlog gets longer: quietly, then all at once. IMAX also does not include it in its 2027 look-ahead, but that could simply be an attempt to avoid breaking bad news early.

3. No IMAX release. Maybe it just will not play on IMAX screens. That would be a shame, but it has precedent.

Here is the June puzzle as I understand it:

The Mandalorian & Grogu is the closest release before Spielberg’s movie, and its “Filmed for IMAX” status could translate to a longer stay on those screens. That matters because Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer famously locked Barbie and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning out of IMAX for weeks. Nolan used IMAX camera technology and effectively crafted his movie for those theaters, so he got a period of exclusivity. Disney might have negotiated a similar arrangement for its own giant-screen priorities. Trying to decode the IMAX schedule is like reading a restaurant menu where the chef’s signature dish is listed as “Untitled Iñárritu/Tom Cruise” — technically informative, spiritually not.

The whole situation feels like a magician rehearsing a levitation trick and discovering the theatre booked a puppetry festival. A Spielberg sci-fi movie without a giant-screen slot is like a fireworks finale staged in a broom closet: the spectacle may still work, but the ceiling is going to have opinions. If this turns out to be more than a clerical error, it would be a real shame. If Steven Spielberg really is channeling the sci-fi classics that made him one of the genre’s greatest masters, his new movie deserves the biggest and best that theatrical exhibition has to offer. I will keep my June 12 hopes alive, but I am also preparing a Plan B: watching the trailer on my phone and pretending the screen is enormous. 😅