October is going full literary this year, and I’m here for it. Jenna Ortega plays a companion android, and Olivia Colman commissions a husband made of wicker. Carey Mulligan lends her voice to a stop-motion fantasy, Jane Austen gets another turn, and a diver gets swallowed by a whale.
The book-to-screen pipeline has had a complicated relationship with source material for years. This month has me thinking that’s finally turning around. Here is my ranking, from five to one.
5. Klara and the Sun
Release Date: October 23, 2026
Director: Taika Waititi
Cast: Jenna Ortega, Amy Adams
Genre: Sci-Fi, Drama
Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 novel was always going to be hard to adapt, because so much of it lives inside Klara’s head. She is an Artificial Friend who watches the world through a shop window and understands people better than they understand themselves.
Waititi directs and co-wrote the script with Dahvi Waller, which strikes me as either the most unexpected choice or the most inspired one, depending on how you feel about Thor: Love and Thunder. He has called it his most dramatic and challenging work to date. The film wrapped in April 2024 and sat on the shelf until Sony set this release date.
Ortega plays Klara, a solar-powered android bought by Amy Adams’ character as a companion for her ailing daughter Josie, played by Mia Tharia. The book has one of the more quietly devastating endings in recent literary fiction, so the film has to earn it. That final stretch is what I’ll be watching most closely.
4. Whalefall
Release Date: October 16, 2026
Director: Brian Duffield
Cast: Austin Abrams
Genre: Survival Thriller
The premise of Daniel Kraus’s novel is exactly as wild as wild as it sounds. A young diver named Jay Gardiner searches the California coast for his late father’s remains and gets swallowed by a sperm whale. He has roughly an hour of oxygen to find a way out.
Brian Duffield directs and co-wrote the script with Kraus himself. That reassures me, because No One Will Save You proved he can sustain tension with almost no dialogue. Austin Abrams, whom I know from Euphoria and Weapons, leads the film right after Resident Evil.
Early reviews single out Abrams’ physical performance. Some also flag pacing issues and heavy CG, so I’m keeping my expectations in check. Josh Brolin appears as Jay’s father in flashbacks.
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3. Wildwood
Release Date: October 23, 2026
Director: Travis Knight
Voice Cast: Carey Mulligan, Mahershala Ali, Awkwafina
Genre: Animated Fantasy Adventure
Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis’s Wildwood has been in development at Laika since 2011, and it finally arrives as the studio’s sixth feature. Travis Knight directs from a script by Chris Butler. The story follows Prue, who ventures into an enchanted forest to rescue her baby brother after he is carried off by crows.
It is Laika’s first release in seven years, and Coraline, ParaNorman and The Boxtrolls all earned Oscar nominations. The studio’s commitment to handcrafted stop-motion in a CG-saturated market makes every release feel like an event to me.
Peyton Elizabeth Lee voices Prue and Jacob Tremblay voices Curtis, with Mulligan, Ali and Awkwafina in the ensemble. Mulligan plays Alexandra. I’m curious to see how closely the finished film matches Ellis’s illustrations.
2. Wicker
Release Date: October 30, 2026
Director: Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson
Cast: Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgård, Peter Dinklage
Genre: Fantasy, Romantic Comedy
Olivia Colman can do no wrong in my book, so casting her as an ostracized fisherwoman is an easy sell. She commissions the local basketmaker, played by Peter Dinklage, to weave her a husband out of wicker. Alexander Skarsgård plays that husband in a fully practical wicker suit built with Wētā Workshop.
The film is based on Ursula Wills-Jones’s short story The Wicker Husband. Fischer and Wilson adapted it and also direct, following their earlier film Save Yourselves! Wicker premiered at Sundance in January to strong reviews.
The trailer looks funny to me, with something tender underneath. That is the balance this kind of material needs. It opens in limited release October 23 before going wide October 30.
1. Sense and Sensibility
Release Date: October 16, 2026
Director: Georgia Oakley
Cast: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Esmé Creed-Miles
Genre: Period Romance, Drama
Jane Austen adaptations never stop coming, and I’m glad, because every generation deserves its own Elinor and Marianne. Georgia Oakley directs from a screenplay by Diana Reid. Oakley’s debut Blue Jean won an audience award at Venice, which makes me want to see what she does with a period setting.
Reid is best known as a novelist, so this adaptation is the part I’m most curious about. Daisy Edgar-Jones as Elinor and Esmé Creed-Miles as Marianne feels like considered casting rather than commercial casting. The film reached UK theaters on September 25 and arrives in US theaters October 16.
It’s my most anticipated adaptation of the month.
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