WIRED’s July 2026 streaming guide, written by Matt Kamen, points viewers toward a month of sci-fi, dystopia, animation and horror, because apparently the correct response to summer heat is more fictional catastrophe.
The biggest new platform arrival in the list is Project Hail Mary on Prime Video. Kamen describes the film, adapted from Andy Weir’s novel, as a survival story built around Ryland Grace, played by Ryan Gosling, a middle school science teacher who wakes up on a spacecraft with no memory and a dead crew. His job is small: work out why the sun and other stars are being consumed and find a way to keep Earth alive.
The guide says the film’s emotional center is Grace’s relationship with Rocky, voiced by James Ortiz, an alien stone-like creature with five legs who communicates through song. That is the sort of sentence that sounds like studio nonsense until a hard-sci-fi story makes it work.
Disney+ gets several entries. Avatar: Fire and Ash continues James Cameron’s Pandora saga after The Way of Water, with Jake Sully, played by Sam Worthington, and Neytiri, played by Zoe Saldaña, dealing with the death of their son Neteyam. WIRED says the sequel brings back Stephen Lang’s Miles Quaritch and introduces Oona Chaplin as Varang, leader of a fire-worshipping Na’vi tribe allied with human forces.
Also on Disney+ is Ready or Not 2: Here I Come. Kamen says returning directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett pick up after the 2019 film, sending Samara Weaving’s Grace into another lethal game, this time alongside her estranged sister Faith, played by Kathryn Newton. Sarah Michelle Gellar appears in what WIRED characterizes as an inversion of her Buffy-style persona.
The horror pile continues with They Will Kill You. The guide’s individual listing points readers to HBO Max, while its introduction also mentions Hulu. Kamen describes the film as a violent high-rise siege starring Zazie Beetz as Asia Reaves, who enters a New York building called The Virgil while searching for her missing sister, Maria, played by Myha’la. The catch, because there has to be one, is that the building houses immortal Satanic cultists preparing a human sacrifice.
Hulu’s listed entry is Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, directed by Gore Verbinski. According to WIRED, Sam Rockwell plays an unnamed man from a ruined future who bursts into a Los Angeles diner and tries to recruit customers to stop a super-intelligent AI before it exists. The story runs on a time-loop premise, with the man on his 117th attempt.
Netflix gets Archive, Gavin Rothery’s 2020 British sci-fi film. WIRED says Theo James plays George, who tries to build a robot body for the uploaded consciousness of his dead wife Jules, played by Stacy Martin. The setup includes a service that allows 200 hours of communication with the dead and a company unhappy about possible intellectual-property infringement, because grief apparently still needs a licensing department.
Pixar’s Hoppers, on Disney+, follows Mabel Tanaka, voiced by Piper Curda, after she places her mind inside a robot beaver and becomes involved in a fight over animal habitat. Bobby Moynihan voices King George, while Jon Hamm plays a mayor pushing a road project through the animals’ home.
Starz rounds out the list with The Long Walk, based on Stephen King’s 1979 novel published under the Richard Bachman name. Kamen says Francis Lawrence’s adaptation follows 50 teenage boys forced by an authoritarian America to walk without stopping, with military execution awaiting anyone who earns three warnings. Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson and Mark Hamill star.
This story draws on original reporting from WIRED.
