All Upcoming Elle Fanning Movies & TV Shows Explained, Including New Hunger Games
1 hour ago
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Published Nov 14, 2026, 5:15 PM EST
Sky Blanton is a Movie Contributor at ScreenRant with professional experience covering movies, television, and pop culture. Her published work spans news, interviews, features, and opinion pieces, with a focus on film, franchise storytelling, and the entertainment industry.
She earned her bachelor's degree in Communications with a concentration in Professional Writing and a minor in Business Writing from Southern New Hampshire University.
Elle Fanning grew up on screen, but audiences may know very different versions of her depending on where they first encountered her. In Super 8, she was the young actress whose performance briefly made her friends forget about their homemade zombie movie. In Disney’s Maleficent, she played Aurora opposite Angelina Jolie, with the princess’s affection for her supposed enemy becoming the focus of the fairy tale. Both roles made good use of her openness, though her later work would give her more opportunities to be selfish, calculating, and funny.
Hulu’s The Great was very generous on that front. Across three seasons of The Great as Catherine, Fanning played a woman who wanted to improve Russia and expected considerable appreciation for the effort. Her confidence could be admirable one moment and ridiculous the next, giving Fanning room to make Catherine’s failures as entertaining as her victories. It was a different dynamic from The Neon Demon, where her aspiring model gradually recognizes how much influence her beauty gives her. Fanning lets both women enjoy their growing influence, even when their pleasure in it makes them harder to like.
In 2026, her performance in Sentimental Value earned her first Academy Award nomination, for supporting actress. Playing an American star attempting to find her place in a Norwegian filmmaker’s deeply personal project, she explored the insecurity that can survive professional success. She also joined the dysfunctional family at the center of Karim Aïnouz’s Rosebush Pruning as Martha, an outsider preparing to marry into it. Her upcoming roles offer more chances to see the comic timing she developed in The Great alongside the uncertainty she brought to Sentimental Value.
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The Hunger Games: Sunrise On The Reaping
November 20, 2026
Elle Fanning’s Effie Trinket meets Haymitch Abernathy long before he becomes Katniss Everdeen’s reluctant mentor. In The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, she is a stylist preparing the teenage District 12 tribute, played by Joseph Zada, for the 50th Hunger Games. Fanning takes over from Elizabeth Banks, whose Effie worried about manners and outfits even as she grew attached to the children she was preparing for the arena.
Effie’s job is to make Haymitch someone the audience wants to watch, even though that audience is waiting to see whether he survives. Helping him win over viewers also feeds into the Capitol’s cycle of turning children’s deaths into entertainment. As her first styling opportunity, the assignment means something very different to Effie than it does to Haymitch. What she sees as a chance to prove herself is part of his preparation for an arena he may never leave. That difference gives their early relationship an uneasy starting point, especially for viewers who remember how protective Effie eventually becomes of Katniss and Peeta.
Francis Lawrence returns to direct the Suzanne Collins adaptation, which opens in theaters on November 20, 2026.
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The Nightingale
March 19, 2027
The Nightingale pairs Elle Fanning with her real older sister Dakota as two women who disagree over how to survive Nazi-occupied France. Elle plays Isabelle, a headstrong eighteen-year-old who joins the French Resistance, while Dakota plays Vianne, whose daughter’s safety weighs on every decision she makes. Adapted from Kristin Hannah’s novel, the film puts Isabelle’s determination to fight alongside Vianne’s fear that resistance could endanger her daughter.
In Hannah’s novel, Vianne’s husband has gone to war when a German captain takes over her home, leaving her to protect their daughter while living under his watch. Isabelle sees joining the Resistance as a way to fight back, but Vianne has to think about who else could suffer if her sister is caught. She cannot share Isabelle’s willingness to take risks without fearing for her daughter.
Opposite Dakota, Elle can show why Isabelle needs her sister’s support even when she rejects her advice. Vianne’s concern may feel like a lack of faith to Isabelle, while Isabelle’s defiance may leave Vianne feeling that her daughter’s safety has been dismissed.
Investigating your employer becomes considerably harder when the person you’re questioning also has a say in your future. In Discretion, Elle Fanning will play Lenny, a summer associate at a prestigious Dallas law firm whose discovery of a secret involving nondisclosure agreements puts her at odds with her mentor. Nicole Kidman plays Sharon, the powerful partner who makes that discovery dangerous for someone still trying to establish herself (via Paramount+).
Sharon’s position means Lenny cannot question her as an equal. She is a summer associate challenging a partner at the firm where she hopes to build her career. Even if she finds evidence, she still has to decide whom she can safely tell and whether anyone there will take her side.
Chandler Baker brings experience as a corporate lawyer to the adaptation of her own short story. The eight-episode A24 series also has WandaVision director Matt Shakman directing the pilot and three additional episodes. Discretion is in production for a 2027 Paramount+ release, with an exact premiere date still to be announced.
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Moonsong: A Life In Seven Verses
To Be Announced
Apple TV
Margaret Wise Brown’s name may be familiar from the cover of Goodnight Moon, but Moonsong: A Life in Seven Verses follows her life before that book became a bedtime staple. Elle Fanning plays Brown in 1930s New York, where her development as a children’s writer becomes entangled with her relationships with socialite William “Big Bill” Gaston and poet Michael Strange. Josh Hartnett plays Gaston, with Julianne Moore as Strange.
The relationships give Fanning more to work with than a succession of publishing milestones. Both lovers influence Brown’s artistic voice, making it difficult to separate her discovery of what she wants to write from her feelings for the people around her. With Moore playing a fellow writer, their relationship could be particularly revealing about how Brown’s private life shaped the work readers know. The interest lies in understanding her choices without treating every experience as an explanation for Goodnight Moon.
Rebecca Miller writes and directs, drawing on Leonard S. Marcus’s biography Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened by the Moon. Emma Thompson, Sally Hawkins, Danny Huston, Robert Aramayo, and Chloe Pirrie also star. The project has announced additional casting and launched international sales, although a release date has not been announced (via IMDB).
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I Am Sybil
To Be Announced
Elle Fanning was announced as attached to play Shirley Mason opposite Sarah Paulson as psychiatrist Cornelia Wilbur in I Am Sybil in June 2023 (via Deadline). Mason’s treatment became the subject of Flora Rheta Schreiber’s 1973 book Sybil, which inspired earlier screen adaptations.
Director Mirrah Foulkes and co-writer Jen Silverman instead draw on Debbie Nathan’s Sybil Exposed, which challenges Schreiber’s account. That choice changes what viewers would be watching for in the patient-doctor relationship. Rather than accepting Wilbur’s interpretation of Mason, the film could absolutely examine how her authority helped shape the story that became public (via Advocate). For Fanning, the role would mean portraying a woman audiences may already know through accounts the film intends to question.
Fanning’s casting was announced in 2023, but there has been no confirmed filming schedule or release date in the reporting available.
Apple TV
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