One Of 2026's Best Movies May Be Overshadowed At The Box Office This Weekend (But You Should See It)

It's an extremely busy weekend for pop culture enthusiasts. At home, people can watch the first episodes of "VisionQuest," "The Lowdown" Season 2, and the "Friday the 13th" prequel show "Crystal Lake," all of which debuted this week. In theaters, new releases like "Street Fighter," "Whalefall," and the mesmerizing documentary "You Can See Everything" are drawing a lot of attention, while a restoration of Ken Russell's provocative 1970s film "The Devils" is back in theaters for a limited time.

Also being released into that media maelstrom is a film that's far less flashy than its box office competitors but still absolutely worthy of your time. The newest iteration of "Sense and Sensibility" is tracking for somewhere between a $4 million and $7 million domestic box office opening, which means that even though it may end up being profitable (it only has a $25 million budget, and those tracking numbers don't factor in international grosses), it has the potential to get somewhat lost in the conversation this weekend.

I'm here to try to make sure that doesn't happen.

That Jane Austen sure could spin a yarn, eh? I've never read the original book, but I loved Ang Lee's spectacular 1995 "Sense and Sensibility" movie adaptation when I finally caught up with it. Director Georgia Oakley's new version, arriving 31 years after Lee's film, wisely does not try to modernize the work, nor does it take Emerald Fennell's approach to "Wuthering Heights," where she essentially dramatized her memory of the novel. Here, Oakley and screenwriter Diana Reid fully embrace Austen's wonderful story and showcase just how relatable its themes still are in 2026. I won't recap the plot here, but the tale is funny, charming, sweet, and full of suppressed yearning. If you like Greta Gerwig's 2019 film adaptation of "Little Women," you'll find a lot to like here as well.

Visually, the movie is gorgeous to behold. Arnaud Potier's cinematography eschews overly complex camera moves in favor of creating lush tapestries for the characters to inhabit, whether they be interiors featuring Francesca Di Mottola's exquisite production design or wild, natural surroundings that mirror the characters' untamed spirits. This version puts more of a focus on the sisterly relationship between Elinor (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Marianne (Esmé Creed-Miles), highlighting how they grow with one another and learn from each other amid their elaborate romantic entanglements, but the rest of the cast is terrific as well, including a scene-stealing Fiona Shaw. 

In this challenging Hollywood era, I assign great value to original films that make it through the gauntlet and emerge in theaters. But there's also something special about a handsomely executed adaptation of a classic story, and when the story is as romantic as "Sense and Sensibility," I'm as liable to swoon at it as the Dashwood girls are to swoon at eligible bachelors.