Movies to watch in March, from Scream VI to John Wick: Chapter 4

The summer blockbuster season might as well start in March this year. It's set to be a major month for movie fans thanks to the return of Adonis Creed, Ghostface, Shazam, and John Wick. Plus, we're getting a movie where Adam Driver fights dinosaurs. What more could you want? These are the new films to look out for in March 2023: 

Creed III (March 3)

Jonathan Majors just stole the show in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, but fans don't have to wait long to see him deliver another knockout. Michael B. Jordan returns in this third installment of the Rocky spinoff series, in which Adonis Creed's childhood best friend, Damian Anderson (Majors), gets out of prison after 18 years and seeks to take him on in the ring. Returning cast members for Creed III include Tessa Thompson and Wood Harris. But Sylvester Stallone notably isn't back, making this the first film in the Rocky franchise without Rocky himself. He told The Hollywood Reporter "that's a regretful situation" because the franchise has been "taken in a direction that is quite different than I would've taken it." Jordan is getting behind the camera this time in addition to starring, so this is his feature directorial debut. See it opening weekend and there's a good chance you'll find Nicole Kidman in the audience proclaiming that our heroes feel like the best part of us.

Scream VI (March 10)

For a franchise that once had a character declare that "sequels suck," the Scream series has remained remarkably consistent, with arguably no bad films in the bunch. So will the streak continue with Scream VI? Melissa Barrera, Jenna Ortega, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Mason Gooding, and Courteney Cox return for the follow-up to last year's excellent "requel." It sees the survivors of the previous Ghostface massacre head to New York City, where a new killer dons the mask. Hayden Panettiere is also back from Scream 4, though this is the series' first film without Sidney Prescott, as Neve Campbell declined to return due to a salary dispute. 2022's Scream sought to closely emulate the original, but Scream VI looks like it will go off in its own direction. The New York setting promises to shake things up, though the trailer indicates that this Ghostface is obsessed with the prior killers and even has a shrine to them, allowing for many Easter eggs for longtime fans to savor. If that other time an iconic horror franchise went to New York is anything to go by, expect the first hour to inexplicably take place on a boat.

65 (March 10)

Adam Driver is taking Kylo Ren's "kill the past" mantra literally in his new film. The actor stars in the sci-fi thriller 65 as a pilot who crash lands on a mysterious planet, only to discover he's on Earth and has somehow been transported 65 million years into the past, meaning he must find a way to survive against dinosaurs. The only other survivor of the crash is a young girl, so this is essentially Driver's own The Last of Us or The Mandalorian as he seeks to protect the kid. 65 was directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who wrote the original A Quiet Place and directed the fun 2019 haunted house slasher Haunt, so there's reason to believe they can make something great out of that juicy hook. Plus, horror mastermind Sam Raimi is producing. If it's a hit, maybe we can finally get another great dinosaur franchise that isn't Jurassic Park, though hopefully Beck and Woods don't pull a Jurassic World Dominion by having Driver face off against giant bugs in the final chapter.

Shazam! Fury of the Gods (March 17)

A new era has begun at DC … though first, a few films from the old era still have to be released. Zachary Levi returns in this sequel as Billy Batson, a young boy who transforms into an adult superhero every time he shouts the word "shazam." But he's got some superpowered friends now, as the first movie ended with his foster siblings also gaining similar superpowers, so they'll fight together this time around. Fury of the Gods sees them forced to take on the Daughters of Atlas, a "vengeful trio of ancient gods," who "arrive on Earth in search of the magic stolen from them long ago," per DC.com. Helen Mirren, Lucy Liu, and Rachel Zegler play the Daughters of Atlas. This will be the first DC film released since James Gunn took over at the studio and began moving the franchise in a new direction. But it was made before his tenure, so it's possible this could be our final time seeing all these characters — especially if Levi doesn't stop tweeting.

John Wick: Chapter 4 (March 24)

Yeah, we're thinking he's back. Keanu Reeves returns for this fourth installment of the hit action franchise, in which John Wick "uncovers a path to defeating the High Table," the group of crime lords from the previous films. "But before he can earn his freedom, Wick must face off against a new enemy with powerful alliances across the globe and forces that turn old friends into foes," the official synopsis says. Bill Skarsgård makes his franchise debut as the villain, and he described the character to Total Film as "the new sheriff set out to rid the world of John Wick once and for all." Ip Man star Donnie Yen has also joined the cast as a blind assassin (another blind character for him after Rogue One), and Laurence Fishburne and Ian McShane return from previous films. This isn't expected to be the last John Wick, but it's still going full Avengers: Endgame with a reported eye-popping runtime of 2 hours and 49 minutes, which would only really make sense if a bunch of Na'vi come in to take over the second act.

A Good Person (March 24)

Don't worry, Florence Pugh is following up Don't Worry Darling with a project that couldn't possibly attract any interest from the tabloids: a film she made with her ex-boyfriend. Pugh stars in A Good Person a woman whose life is derailed after she's involved in a car accident that kills her fiancé's sister. In the aftermath, she forms an unlikely relationship with the woman's dad, the man who was going to be her father-in-law, played by Morgan Freeman. Molly Shannon also stars. A Good Person was written and directed by Scrubs star Zach Braff, whose previous directing credits include 2004's Garden State, but he hasn't gotten behind the camera for a movie since Going in Style in 2017. Pugh and Braff also dated for a while, and while they broke up in 2022, by all accounts, they've remained friends and there's no drama between them — though there's still time to manufacture some in hopes of attracting Don't Worry Darling levels of attention.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (March 31)

Attempts to make Dungeons & Dragons into a movie have never really worked out before, but Paramount has decided to roll the dice anyway. Chris Pine stars in this fantasy adventure based on the tabletop role-playing game, in which a group of "unlikely adventurers undertake an epic heist to retrieve a lost relic, but things go dangerously awry when they run afoul of the wrong people," per the plot synopsis. Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis, and Hugh Grant also star. Various studios have been trying to make a new Dungeons & Dragons movie for about 10 years now following a disastrous attempt in 2000. But this is the version of the project that finally moved forward, and Paramount is betting it will work considering a Dungeons & Dragons TV series is also already in development at Paramount+. There's one big reason to expect good things this time, as the film was directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, who brought us the hilarious 2018 comedy Game Night. Can they produce a critical hit?

Murder Mystery 2 (March 31)

Move aside, Benoit Blanc. This time, the Sandman is on the case. Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston return for this sequel to their 2019 Netflix comedy, in which they starred as a married couple who get involved in a murder mystery on a yacht. Four years later, they're now full-time detectives in the sequel and are "struggling to get their private eye agency off the ground when they're invited to celebrate" their friend's wedding on a private island, only for the groom to be kidnapped for ransom, per Netflix's synopsis. That's right, it's another Netflix murder mystery sequel set on a private island after Glass Onion. The same writer (who also happens to have co-written Scream VI) is back from the original film, but new additions to the cast include Mark Strong and Jodie Turner-Smith. The first film was one of Netflix's biggest movies ever, so don't be surprised if it turns into a trilogy, in which case perhaps the third chapter can solve the mystery of why Sandler wasn't nominated for an Oscar for Uncut Gems.

Tetris (March 31)

Now that The Last of Us is a hit on HBO, is it finally time for the gritty, R-rated Tetris adaptation? Well, not exactly. Taron Egerton stars in this Cold War-era thriller from Apple TV+, but it's not really based on the video game, but on the story of the dramatic effort to secure the rights to it. Egerton plays video game designer Henk Rogers, who is completely blown away after learning about Tetris, which was created by a Soviet engineer, in the 1980s. So he sets out to get the rights to distribute the game, which turns out to be surprisingly complicated and even dangerous as he travels to the Soviet Union and the KGB gets involved. The film was produced by Kingsman director Matthew Vaughn, who described it as "The Big Short meets Bridge of Spies." This is separate from a previous, failed effort to adapt Tetris itself into a sci-fi trilogy. It remains to be seen if the pieces fall into place this time, though if they do, we can expect portions of the film to disappear from existence.

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