Wild Horse Nine Locks In Release Date as Martin McDonagh Unleashes His Next Thriller
Searchlight Pictures has locked a November 2026 release for Martin McDonagh’s next film, the follow-up to The Banshees of Inisherin.
Martin McDonagh is back with a new one, and he is aiming it squarely at awards season. The writer-director behind Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri has lined up a fall slot for his next film, Wild Horse Nine, and the package checks a lot of boxes: starry ensemble, period spy story, and a release date designed to catch Academy voters on their way to the ballot.
The film
Wild Horse Nine lands in theaters on November 6, 2026, via Searchlight Pictures, with McDonagh pulling double duty as writer and director. Set in 1973, the story follows two CIA agents on a trust-testing trek across Chile, traveling from Santiago all the way to Easter Island. Production ran March through April 2025.
- John Malkovich (Burn After Reading)
- Sam Rockwell (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri)
- Steve Buscemi (Reservoir Dogs)
- Mariana di Girolamo (Ema)
- Ailín Salas (The Black Frost)
- Tom Waits (Bram Stoker's Dracula)
- Parker Posey (Beau is Afraid)
The release chessboard
That November 6 date is busy. As of now, Wild Horse Nine opens opposite Warner Bros. Pictures' The Cat in the Hat, Columbia Pictures' Archangel, Burns and Company's Jimmy (a Jimmy Stewart biopic), and Toho's Godzilla: Minus Zero. First week of November has become prime positioning for prestige fare, and McDonagh has history here: his last two Searchlight collaborations, The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), both went the distance to Best Picture nominations.
Where it fits in Searchlight's 2026 plan
Searchlight's calendar is filling in. Andrew Stanton's sci-fi film In the Blink of an Eye hits Hulu on February 27, 2026. Ready or Not 2: Here I Come reaches theaters March 20. Broken Lizard's Super Troopers 3 is set for August 7. Wild Horse Nine looks like the fall flagship, the one they will push in the way they rode recent awards darlings like Poor Things and A Complete Unknown. That kind of run would help erase the sting of 2025's slate missing out on the 98th Academy Awards, including Is This Thing On?, The Testament of Ann Lee, and Rental Family.
Festival playbook
Expect a festival premiere. McDonagh tends to debut on the circuit: In Bruges bowed at Sundance in 2008, Seven Psychopaths launched at TIFF in 2012, and both Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and The Banshees of Inisherin premiered at Venice in 2017 and 2022. Venice 2026 runs September 2–12, a neat on-ramp for Wild Horse Nine to build momentum ahead of the November rollout.
Short version: a McDonagh espionage road movie with that cast, parked in prime awards real estate, and likely hitting festivals first. Feels like he is loading the dice for another serious run.