Enola Holmes 3 Gets First Look as Netflix Confirms Bright Creatures Release Date
A week into the new year, you may find yourself starved for exciting diversions now that the holiday festivities are behind us. Fortunately, Netflix is poised to help alleviate such tedium – and not just for the rest of this month. On Jan. 7, the streaming giant released a sizable list of its own upcoming movies for the entirety of 2026, from those that are just about to hit the platform to those slated for streaming in December. Squarely in the middle of the year will be a sequel to one of Netflix’s most popular film series.
Coming This Summer – The Third Adventure of Netflix’s Victorian Detective
The series in question is “Enola Holmes,” which is set in 19th-century England and centers around the escapades of Enola Holmes (Millie Bobby Brown), a young amateur detective who happens to be the sister of a particularly famous and brilliant sleuth from Victorian fiction. (I’ll let you deduce from the surname who he is). It’s an adaptation of the “The Enola Holmes Mysteries” book series by Nancy Springer. Thus far, Netflix has made two “Enola Holmes” films, the first released in 2020 and the second in 2022.
“Enola Holmes 3,” which is slated for release this summer, will see Brown’s teenage investigator traveling to Malta, where, according to a Tudum article also published on Jan. 7, she “is flung into a nest of vipers… in a case more tangled and treacherous than any she has faced before.” The article reveals admirably little else of the sequel’s story, except that Enola will also be dealing with “the next stages of her relationship with Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge),” her love interest from the previous films.
Several more cast members from the first two “Enola Holmes” films will also be returning, including Himesh Patel as Watson, Helena Bonham Carter as the Holmes’s mother, and Henry Cavill as Enola’s aforementioned brother. Sharon Duncan-Brewster will reprise her role as Mira Troy, who will no longer be a Lord’s secretary and will have a prominent villainous role. “Enola Holmes 3” will be directed by Phillip Barantini, who also created last year’s crime-drama miniseries “Adolescence” for Netflix.
It Will Have Interesting Company
The other Jan. 7 Tudum article, titled “New Movies on Netflix: The Ultimate Guide to What’s Coming in 2026,” lists two other movies slated for the summer. “72 Hours,” will be a midlife-crisis comedy starring Kevin Hart; “The Whisper Man,” which is an adaptation of a novel by Alex North, will be a kidnapped-child crime thriller starring Robert de Niro, Michelle Monaghan, Adam Scott, and Owen Teague.
The month preceding summer will see the release of an even more intriguing film: “Remarkably Bright Creatures,” an animal-human bonding film in which Sally Field forms a connection with Earth’s brightest non-vertebrate creature – an octopus – during a trip to an aquarium. The film, which is based on the 2022 bestselling debut novel by Shelby Van Pelt, will also star Lewis Pullman as “a wayward young man who comes to town in search of a family” and who also grows close to Field’s character.
“Remarkably Bright Creatures” will also star Colm Meaney, Joan Chen, Kathy Baker, Beth Grant, and Sofia Black D’Elia, and is directed and co-written by Olivia Newman (“Where the Crawdads Sing”). It will be released on Netflix on May 8.
Some Other Choice Picks, and January News
April offers two more promising films concerned with the human relationship to the natural world. “A Gorilla Story: Told by David Attenborough,” scheduled for release on April 17, will be a documentary chronicling the legendary wildlife presenter’s first interaction with a baby gorilla named Pablo, which subsequently grew up to become an alpha male and a father. Meanwhile, “Apex,” coming April 24, won’t prominently feature any mesmerizing animals; rather, it will be an edge-of-your-seat survival thriller in which Charlize Theron must brave the wilds of Australia while being hunted by “a ruthless [human] predator.”
Now, if you’re wondering what will make your Netflix subscription worthwhile in the immediate future, Tudum’s list testifies that you’ll have four choices for the rest of January: the nuanced semi-romance flick “People We Meet on Vacation,” coming this Friday; the corrupt-cops thriller “The Rip,” a week later; the harrowing true-crime documentary “Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart” on January 21, and the animated musical fantasy “Cosmic Princess Kaguya!” (a modern adaptation of a classic Japanese folktale) on the 22nd.
Conclusion – A Stacked and Diverse Year at Netflix
Of course, these are only a handful of the films on Netflix’s 2026 lineup. There’ll be plenty more to look forward to year-round, from the March premiere of Patrick Hughes’s sci-fi action flick “War Machine” to Greta Gerwig’s end-of-the-year adaptation of “Narnia.” Whatever kind of movie you’re hoping to put on your watchlist, the chances are that you’ll find it at some point this year.
