Netflix is off to a hot start in 2026 when it comes to its big original movies. Starting with the acclaimed Emily Henry rom-com adaptation, People We Meet on Vacation, critics and audiences have both mostly been on board for what the streamer is serving up of late, from the Matt Damon and Ben Affleck heist thriller The Rip to Alan Ritchson‘s gritty sci-fi thriller War Machine, and the Peaky Blinders sequel film, The Immortal Man. This month will look to keep the success going with a new giant shark disaster flick, Thrash, and the tense survival thriller Apex, led by Charlize Theron and Eric Bana. It’s in May, however, when one of the platform’s most anticipated features will finally swim onto screens.
Remarkably Bright Creatures is slated to swim onto Netflix exactly one month from now with a cast anchored by Sally Field, Lewis Pullman, and Alfred Molina. However, only two of those three will be appearing on-screen. Field leads the trio as Tova, a widow spending her days cleaning the local aquarium during off-hours, when she meets a couple of unexpected friends in the form of a young man seeking family, played by Pullman, and a cantankerous octopus, voiced by Molina. The story is adapted from Shelby Van Pelt‘s debut novel of the same name, which burst onto the scene in 2022 and became an overwhelming success through word of mouth, with over 3.5 million copies sold to this day and a staggering run of over 65 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. In anticipation of the film’s arrival, a new trailer has been released, teasing the heartfelt journey between the trio as they rediscover their sense of wonder together.
Much of the footage is narrated by Marcellus the octopus, who, for the most part, isn’t fond of humans from what little of their lives he’s seen from his tank. However, he experiences more appreciation for Tova than any of them, and he takes an interest in her budding bond with the wayward Cameron (Pullman). Initially, they don’t start on the right foot, given that Cameron is positioned as her replacement at the aquarium. With time, though, they each discover there’s more to each other’s stories. Tova uses the aquarium as a place of respite after not just losing her husband, but also her son, while Cameron is merely seeking work while he tries to find his long-lost dad. Marcellus is smart enough to deduce that they’re both suffering from a similar void in their lives, yet, perhaps, they’re the perfect people to fill it for each other. They slowly become the found family they both lack, pushing each other outside their respective bubbles, with a little assistance from their slimy eight-armed pal.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
‘Remarkably Bright Creatures’ Cast Brought Heart and Levity to the Story
Where the Crawdads sing director Olivia Newman directed Remarkably Bright Creatures and co-wrote the screenplay with John Whittington. In front of the screen, Newman had a bounty to work with in addition to the starry main trio, including Colm Meaney, Joan Chen, Kathy Baker, Beth Grant, and Sofia Black D’Elia. In an interview for Collider’s Exclusive Spring Preview series, however, she attested that the Norma Rae and Thunderbolts stars were some of her personal favorites for how they meshed together and managed to bring surprising humor to the very heartfelt story of loss, grief, and finding connection.
“Working with Sally and Lewis was a career highlight for me. They are both so present and open as actors and had this incredibly organic chemistry that made every scene come to life in the most unexpected ways. They are both deeply committed actors, willing to go to their most vulnerable places, but also to find joy and humor at any moment. I don’t think I have laughed as much every day as I did working on this film with the two of them!”
Remarkably Bright Creatures swims onto Netflix on May 8. Check out the new trailer in the player above.
