Every Book-to-Screen Adaptation Coming in 2026 Military and Veterans Should Be Excited About

When it comes to highly anticipated book-to-screen adaptations, 2026 is shaping up to be a well-stocked deployment bag. The 2026 movie and TV calendar is loaded with big-name novels getting the big-screen and streaming treatment, from tight crime thrillers and Stephen King horror to high-stakes sci-fi mission stories, post-apocalypse survival, and even romances that hit like a warm MRE heater after a long day. Here’s the full rundown of the most exciting book adaptations military service members and veterans should have on their radar.

Quick Roster (so you can plan your watchlist like a training schedule)

• Jan. 9 (Netflix): People We Meet on Vacation, set to hit the streaming service.
• Feb. 13 (theaters): Crime 101, Cold Storage, Wuthering Heights
• March 11 (Prime Video): Scarpetta
• March 20 (theaters): Project Hail Mary
• July 17 (IMAX): The Odyssey, the original and oldest homecoming story.
• Aug. 28 (theaters): The Dog Stars
• Oct. 2 (theaters): Verity
• Oct. 9 (theaters): Other Mommy
• Oct. 16 (theaters): Whalefall
• Nov. 6 (theaters): The Cat in the Hat
• Nov. 20 (theaters): The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping
• Nov. 26 (IMAX): Narnia (Greta Gerwig’s first film)
• Dec. 18 (theaters): Dune: Part Three
• Jan. 18 (HBO): A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, great to add to your World of Westeros curated channel. 

Crime, Thrillers, and Horror

• Crime 101 (in theaters Feb. 13, 2026)
  • If you like cat-and-mouse stories where competence matters, this one has your name on the roster. Based on Don Winslow’s novella, it’s a heist thriller built around rules, patterns, and the kind of procedural obsession that feels adjacent to military planning: watch the routes, study the habits, anticipate the deviation.
  • Why it hits: It’s about discipline and misdirection, the same two ingredients that show up in everything from training exercises to real-world ops, just with more suits and fewer sandbags.
• Scarpetta (Prime Video, March 11, 2026)
  • Patricia Cornwell’s forensic icon finally gets a big streaming platform runway. The Prime Video series drops eight episodes at once, and it’s built around evidence, chain-of-custody thinking, and the slow grind of truth.
  • Why it hits: Military folks tend to appreciate systems that either work or expose where they break. A good procedural scratches that itch.
• Cold Storage (in theaters Feb. 13, 2026)
  • A parasitic fungus leaks out of an abandoned military base and, naturally, everything goes sideways. This adaptation (from David Koepp’s novel) is pitched as comedy-horror, which is a fancy way of saying: laugh now, scream later.
  • Why it hits: “Containment failure” is the universal language of after-action reports. Even in a heightened genre story, the premise is pure military nightmare fuel.
• Carrie (Prime Video, 2026, date TBD)
  • Mike Flanagan’s adapting Stephen King’s Carrie into an eight-episode series for Amazon.
  • Why it hits: Strip away the telekinesis, and it’s still a story about pressure, isolation, and what happens when a community decides someone is acceptable collateral damage. That theme lands differently when you’ve lived inside tight hierarchies.

• Other Mommy (in theaters Oct. 9, 2026)
  • This is the film adaptation of Josh Malerman’s Incidents Around the House, released under the title Other Mommy. Universal moved it from May to October, which is a very “we want it to haunt your fall” decision.
  • Why it hits: Military families know the strange intimacy of homes that don’t stay yours for long: base housing, rentals, temporary places that still collect your stress like dust in vents. A haunted-house story is already domestic. Add the instability of constant moves, and it gets sharper. 

Space Missions and Last-Chance Science

• Project Hail Mary (in theaters March 20, 2026)
  • Andy Weir does what he does best: throw a regular person into an impossible problem and demand competence under pressure. The film’s official materials are leaning hard into the “one chance to save everyone” stakes.
  • Why it hits: Military viewers tend to lock onto mission clarity, contingency planning, and the psychological reality of being far from home with no clean exit. Space is the ultimate remote duty station.
• Dune: Part Three (in theaters Dec. 18, 2026)
  • Villeneuve’s finale is slated for Dec. 18, 2026, and it’s headed into the part of Herbert’s saga where leadership, ideology, and consequences start collecting interest.
  • Why it hits: Dune isn’t “military” in the boots-on-ground sense, but it’s absolutely about war’s ripple effects: command decisions, propaganda, insurgency, the myth-making that turns people into symbols and then spends them. If you’ve ever watched a narrative get simplified for public consumption, this story speaks your dialect.

Post-Apocalypse Survival

• The Dog Stars (in theaters Aug. 28, 2026)
  • Ridley Scott’s adaptation is set after a catastrophic flu wipes out most of the population. A civilian pilot survives with a tough ex-marine, and their world becomes a map of scarcity, threats, and small hopes that feel enormous.
  • Why it hits: Post-apocalypse stories are often really about logistics and trust. Who’s reliable, who’s dangerous, what resources matter, and how you keep a moral compass when the rules are gone. The ex-marine character isn’t window dressing here, but is instead the spine of the survival dynamic.

Survival Stories With High Stakes

• The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping (in theaters Nov. 20, 2026)
  • This prequel heads back to Panem for the 50th Games, the Second Quarter Quell, with a young Haymitch at the center. The date is set for Nov. 20, 2026.
  • Why it hits: Beyond the spectacle, Hunger Games has always been about what systems do to bodies and minds, and how trauma gets packaged as entertainment. Military audiences who’ve lived around institutional messaging, recruitment narratives, and the tension between public story and private cost may find this one uncomfortably relevant.

“Coming Home” and Date Night Energy 

• People We Meet on Vacation (Netflix, Jan. 9, 2026)
  • Emily Henry’s rom-com lands on Netflix Jan. 9.
  • Why it hits: The military angle isn’t combat, it’s distance and time. Friendships and relationships stretched across moves, separations, and mismatched life phases. A romance that understands timing as a villain can feel oddly familiar after PCS life.
• Wuthering Heights (in theaters Feb. 13, 2026)
  • Emerald Fennell’s adaptation is dated for Feb. 13, 2026.
  • Why it hits: Not every “military audience” pick has to be tactical. Sometimes the connection is emotional weather: loyalty turning into fixation, grief curdling into identity, the way isolation can make people mythologize pain. It’s a date-night movie if your idea of romance includes lightning striking the house. 

• The Odyssey (in theatres July 17, 2026)
  • Christopher Nolan is tackling The Odyssey, which means one of the oldest “getting home” stories ever told is about to get the full IMAX-scale, big-sound, big-feelings treatment.
  • Why it hits: This is the original return-from-war narrative, minus the uniforms and plus the gods. It’s about endurance, identity, and what happens when the person who leaves isn’t the same person who comes back, while home keeps moving in your absence. If you’ve ever felt that weird gap between “I’m back” and “I’m back,” this one speaks the language.
• Practical Magic 2 (in theaters Sept. 18, 2026)
  • Warner Bros. set the sequel for Sept. 18, 2026.
  • Why it hits: Military families run on community, especially when schedules get weird, and support systems matter more than pride. The Practical Magic vibe, chosen-family plus inherited burdens, is surprisingly adjacent to the “we take care of our own” reality many service members lean on.
• Remain (listed for Oct. 23, 2026)
  • This Nicholas Sparks and M. Night Shyamalan collaboration is positioned as a supernatural romantic thriller, with industry listings placing it on Oct. 23, 2026.
  • Why it hits: Shyamalan’s stories tend to be about perception and loss. Combine that with Sparks-style devotion, and you’ve got something that could land with anyone who’s felt the weird overlap between love and dread, especially after major life change.

Fantasy, Myth, and Childhood Whimsy

• A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (HBO, Jan. 18, 2026)
  • HBO’s six-episode adaptation premieres Jan. 18, 2026.
  • Why it hits: It’s built around a knight and his squire, which is basically leadership training with swords. Competence, mentorship, reputation, and the tension between the code and the messy real world. If you’ve ever had a mentor who taught you the job while also teaching you how to survive the culture, this one’s for you.
• Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew (theatrical Nov. 26, 2026)
  • Greta Gerwig’s Narnia film is scheduled for a Thanksgiving weekend theatrical release on Nov. 26, 2026.
  • Why it hits: Origin stories are about first steps into the unknown, and Magician’s Nephew is literally that: new worlds, moral choices, and consequences that echo. It’s “adventure” on paper, but it’s also about how one decision can change the mission for everyone who comes after.

The Fun Scheduling Note:

• Feb. 13, 2026 is a choose-your-own-mission weekend: heist thriller (Crime 101), base-leak horror (Cold Storage), and gothic romance (Wuthering Heights). Pick your flavor of stress.

On Deck: Announced Book-to-Screen Adaptations for 2027+ (or Date TBD)

2027 (locked date)

• Children of Blood and Bone (Tomi Adeyemi) – Paramount, currently dated for Jan. 15, 2027.

Release date TBD (still announced and in motion)

• Carrie (Stephen King) – Prime Video limited series from Mike Flanagan (series order announced; date not set yet).
• Beautiful Ugly (Alice Feeney) – Hidden Pictures has the rights for a film adaptation (no release date announced).
• Remarkably Bright Creatures (Shelby Van Pelt) – Netflix film (Netflix has shared production updates; release date not announced).
• The Love Hypothesis (Ali Hazelwood) – film in the works at Amazon MGM Studios/MRC starring Lili Reinhart (no release date announced).
• None of This Is True (Lisa Jewell) – Netflix film in development with Eleanor Burgess writing the script (no release date announced).
• Then She Was Gone (Lisa Jewell) – feature adaptation announced (no release date announced).
• The Whisper Man (Alex North) – Netflix feature adaptation with Robert De Niro attached (no release date announced).
• More Emily Henry in the Pipeline – Beach Read, Book Lovers, Happy Place, and Funny Story are all officially in development, with dates still TBD.

Story Continues