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| Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat II, and Return to Silent Hill headline IMDb’s most anticipated movies of 2026 through a gaming lens. |
By Juli Scarr
IMDb’s list of the most anticipated movies of 2026 looks, at first glance, like a snapshot of mainstream blockbuster culture. Spend a bit more time with it though, and it starts to feel unusually familiar if you’re someone who grew up with a controller in hand.
From Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat II to Return to Silent Hill, a large portion of IMDb’s most-anticipated slate pulls directly from worlds that were built in games long before they ever reached the big screen. This isn’t nostalgia bait or a one-off trend. It reflects how central games have become to modern entertainment planning.
For gamers, these aren’t just upcoming movies. They’re extensions of worlds that already feel lived in.
Game Worlds Are Now Proven Franchises
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| Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat II, and Return to Silent Hill are all on IMDb’s most anticipated movies list for 2026. |
The clearest example is the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie, which reshaped Nintendo’s colourful platforming world into a darker sci-fi setting that felt disconnected from what fans actually loved. It wasn’t an isolated misstep. It reflected the long history of studios misunderstanding game audiences, where familiar names were borrowed but the people who cared about them were rarely trusted.
Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat aren’t being revisited because Hollywood suddenly rediscovered fighting games. They’re coming back because these franchises already function like long-running series. They have established characters, tone, and fan expectations. Studios no longer need to explain why these worlds matter. Gamers already did that work over decades.
Silent Hill’s return is especially telling. It isn’t chasing mass appeal in the way a superhero film might. It focuses on atmosphere, psychological horror, and a slow, deliberate sense of unease. The fact that it still ranks among the most anticipated releases shows how much confidence now exists in game-born identities.
Familiar Worlds Carry More Weight Than Reinvention
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| Big shared-universe brands follow the same rules gamers already know. |
These are worlds, not standalone stories. You don’t enter them cold. You arrive with context, expectations, and attachment. That’s the same reason long-running game series rarely reset themselves entirely. Familiar systems, characters, and settings lower the barrier to entry and make discovery easier.
In an industry flooded with content, recognizable worlds aren’t a shortcut. They’re how attention is earned.
The Discovery Problem Feels Very Familiar to Gamers
Gamers have been navigating discovery overload for years. Subscription libraries keep expanding. Digital storefronts refresh constantly. New releases compete for attention every week. Film and TV are now dealing with the same pressure.
IMDb’s anticipation rankings are driven by page views, not surveys or curated hype. The fact that game-adjacent titles dominate the list suggests something important. When choice becomes overwhelming, people gravitate toward worlds they already understand.
That behaviour mirrors how you decide what to download, stream, or revisit. Familiar IP cuts through noise faster than originality on its own.
Games Don’t Need Validation From Film Anymore
The most telling thing about IMDb’s 2026 list isn’t that games are being adapted. It’s how routine that has become.
Video games no longer rely on film and TV adaptations to feel legitimate. Instead, movies and series increasingly draw on gaming’s cultural footprint to stay relevant. The direction of influence has flipped. Games aren’t borrowing credibility from Hollywood. Hollywood is borrowing stability from games.
For gamers, this shift feels natural. You’ve already been moving between consoles, cloud libraries, handhelds, and TVs without thinking about the boundaries. IMDb’s most anticipated movies of 2026 simply reinforce what gaming has been proving for years. The worlds that last are the ones people already know how to spend time in.
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