If the lawsuit filed by Black Widow star Scarlett Johansson suggests anything beyond the immediate specifics of the legal case, it’s the quite obvious implication that Hollywood has changed for good. That even Tinseltown surely now recognizes we live in a streaming-first world. And that the pandemic has hastened a transition away from old models and old consumption habits. And there is no going back. Accordingly, there’s now more competition than ever before for your streaming dollars as well as the most valuable asset of all — your time. Indeed, a list of the most anticipated new movies and TV shows makes abundantly clear just how much the game has changed. How stiff the competition now is. And how much quality material continues to pile up for streaming audiences.
New movies and TV shows (August 2021)
Below, you’ll find two newly prepared rundowns of the most anticipated movies and shows (including new as well as returning TV series), prepared by the team behind the TV Time app.
The charts below are broken out into the Top 5 most anticipated movies releasing in August, per TV Time’s Anticipation Report. And there’s also an Anticipation Report for the Top 5 new TV series that fans are most excited for. For good measure, that one also includes five highly anticipated returning TV shows.
The respective lists are topped by, in the #1 spot for each, Marvel’s What If …? on Disney+ as the most-anticipated new TV show coming in August, and The Suicide Squad (coming to
In case you missed our post a few weeks ago running down what that new Disney+ series entails, suffice it to say that this one is sure to be the strangest series from Marvel to-date. Loki certainly showed us what would happen if the god of mischief had escaped after the Battle of New York, but What If…? goes even further. What if Peggy Carter was Captain America? What if Killmonger saved Tony Stark’s life? And what if all of the heroes turned into zombies?
Most anticipated movies
On the movie side of the equation, meanwhile, TV Time’s Anticipation Report makes clear that director James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad has a big audience waiting for it. Insider has a good roundup of the details you need to know about this film that is not really a sequel and definitely not a reboot to the original film. Some characters, yes, are repeat characters. But there’s no through-line here that connects to the previous film, which would make this a genuine follow-up. Instead, it’s meant to stand on its own, even though (sequentially speaking) it’s a technical sequel to the original. Make sense?
Other much-anticipated moves coming in August include Netflix’s Kissing Booth 3, set for an August 11 release. From the streamer’s official synopsis:
“It’s the summer before Elle heads to college, and she’s facing the hardest decision of her life. Whether to move across the country with her dreamy boyfriend Noah or fulfill her lifelong promise to go to college with her BFF Lee. Whose heart will Elle break?”
