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'Abigail', 'Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music ' and 'Venom: The Last Dance' are om the March menu of must-stream movies: Pictures: Supplied
The month of March signals the start of autumn – the perfect season for film buffs to get comfy on the coach and cram some buzzworthy movies into the longer evenings
Showmax boasts an impressive slate of top new movies arriving on the streaming service in March, including the edge-of-your-seat sci-fi blockbuster Venom: The Last Dance and the latest instalment of The Hunger Games.
Another must-stream March release, is the chilling religious horror Heretic, featuring Hugh Grant who was nominated for Golden Globe, Bafta and Critics Choice awards for role as the sinister Mr Reed.
Another notable title to look out for is the acclaimed HBO documentary Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music of New York artist, theatre legend and drag royal Taylor Mac’s 24-hour, one-time-only concert performed in the Big Apple in 2016.
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Streaming from Monday, 3 March.
The epic Monsterverse battle continues with the eighth biggest box office hit of 2024, Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire.
The super-sized sequel to Godzilla vs Kong pits the almighty Kong and the fearsome Godzilla against a colossal new threat hidden within our world, which challenges their very existence – and our own.
BAFTA winner Rebecca Hall, Oscar nominee Brian Tyree Henry and child star Kaylee Hottle reprise their roles from Godzilla vs Kong, with Teen Choice winner Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey) joining the cast.
Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire was up for Best Fantasy Film at The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films’ 2025 Saturn Awards, where Hottle was also up for Best Younger Actor.
It was also up for Character Animation at the Annie Awards.
First on Showmax: Stream from Monday, 31 March
Eddie and Venom are on the run in the Venom trilogy’s final instalment: The Last Dance – the #10 highest-grossing movie of 2024 globally.
Hunted by both of their worlds, the duo are forced into a devastating decision that will bring the curtain down on Venom and Eddie’s last dance.
Oscar nominee Tom Hardy (Mad Max: Fury Road, The Dark Knight) returns as Eddie/Venom.
The stacked cast also includes Oscar nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor (Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy), Emmy nominees Juno Temple (Fargo, Ted Lasso), Andy Serkis (Gollum in Lord of the Rings) and Reid Scott (Veep’s Dan Egan), BAFTA winner Rhys Ifans (House of the Dragon), and multiple BAFTA nominee Stephen Graham (Time, Boiling Point).
The Last Dance was nominated for Best Science Fiction Film at the 2025 Saturn Awards, with IndieWire hailing the film as “the greatest love story ever told about a man and his symbiotic alien goo.”
First on Showmax: Stream from Saturday, 1 March
Based on Colleen Hoover’s bestselling novel, It Ends With Us tells the story of Lily Bloom, a woman who overcomes a traumatic childhood to embark on a new life in Boston and chase her lifelong dream of opening her own flower shop.
When her first love suddenly reenters her life, her relationship with a charming but abusive neurosurgeon is upended.
People’s Choice winner Blake Lively (Gossip Girl) stars as Lily, with director-producer Justin Baldoni (Jane the Virgin) and Brandon Sklenar (1923) co-starring.
It Ends With Us was the #17 biggest film of 2024 – and Google’s sixth most-searched movie of the year, in part because of the upcoming court case between Lively and Baldoni.
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First on Showmax: Stream from Thursday, 13 March
In Heretic, two young missionaries are forced to prove their faith when they knock on the wrong door and become ensnared in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse.
Heretic has a 91% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes: their third best-reviewed horror of 2024.
Hugh Grant was nominated for the Golden Globe, BAFTA and Critics Choice awards as the diabolical Mr Reed, opposite Sophie Thatcher (Yellowjackets) and Chloe East (The Fabelmans) as Mormon sisters Barnes and Paxton.
Men’s Health hails Grant for “arguably [his] best performance from the last decade” as “one of the best horror villains we’ve seen in a while.”
Just be warned: As Empire Magazine notes, “You’ll never watch Notting Hill the same way again.”
Directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (who also wrote A Quiet Place) were up for Best Screenplay at the 2025 Film Independent Spirit Awards.
Stream from Monday, 24 March
The Hunger Games prequel The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is set 64 years before Katniss Everdeen volunteered as tribute.
Decades before he would become the tyrannical president of Panem, 18-year-old Coriolanus Snow is the last hope for his fading lineage, a once-proud family that has fallen from grace in a post-war Capitol.
With the 10th annual Hunger Games fast approaching, the young Snow is alarmed when he is assigned to mentor Lucy Gray Baird, the girls’ tribute from impoverished District 12. But Snow thinks he might be able to turn the odds in their favour…
Uniting their instincts for showmanship and newfound political savvy, Snow and Lucy’s race against time to survive will ultimately reveal who is a songbird, and who is a snake.
Led by Tom Blyth (Billy the Kid) and Golden Globe winner Rachel Zegler (West Side Story, Snow White), the film’s cast also includes Oscar winner Viola Davis (The Woman King), four-time Emmy winner Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones), Hunter Schafer (Euphoria), and Jason Schwartzman (Asteroid City).
Also look out for Kenyan-born newcomer Eike Onyambu as Tam Amber.
The fifth instalment in a multi-award-winning mega-franchise that’s grossed over $3 billion worldwide, The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes was hailed by USA Today as “the best Hunger Games movie of them all” and named The Action Movie of the Year at the 2024 People’s Choice Awards, where Zegler won Action Movie Star of the Year.
You can also binge the first four movies on Showmax.
Stream from Thursday, 20 March
Children can be such monsters…
Abigail follows a group of would-be criminals who kidnap the 12-year-old ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure.
All they have to do to collect a $50 million ransom is watch the girl overnight in an isolated mansion. But as the captors start to dwindle, one by one, they discover, to their mounting horror, that they’re locked inside with no normal little girl.
“Tossing a malicious vampire kid among squabbling, not-exactly-un-dangerous humans is a recipe for a wickedly enjoyable thrill ride,” says Empire Magazine, calling it, “One of the messiest vampire movies ever made, and winningly so.”
A #1 box office hit with an 83% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes, Abigail was nominated for five Fangoria Chainsaw Awards last year, including Best Wide-Release Film, with rising child star Alisha Weir (Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical), Critics Choice Super Award nominee Kathryn Newton (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Freaky), and Dan Stevens (Downtown Abbey) all nominated for Best Supporting Performance.
It was also up for Best Horror at The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films’ 2025 Saturn Awards, where Weir was up for Best Younger Actor – a category she also cracked a Critics Choice nomination for.
First on Showmax: Stream from Wednesday, 26 March
Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music captures a 24-hour, one-time-only concert performed in New York in 2016 by New York artist, theatre legend and drag royal Taylor Mac, accompanied by a 24-piece orchestra.
The immersive theatrical experience offered an alternative take on 240 years of US history, narrated through the popular music of each of those 24 decades.
From the Oscar-winning director-producer team of Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, the HBO documentary film has a 100% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes and won the 2024 Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Costumes for Variety, Nonfiction or Reality Programming for costume designer Machine Dazzle.
The concert itself put Mac among the finalists for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was #5 among the 50 Best Theatre Shows of the 21st Century over at The Guardian, where they called it an “explosive, spectacular, heartbreaking ‘dandy revenge’,” saying, “It took 24 hours over four nights for Mac to complete his queer retelling of American history, and it was still too short.”
First on Showmax: Stream from Wednesday, 19 March
Rachel Lee was the so-called “teenage mastermind” behind a string of headline-grabbing celebrity robberies in 2008 and 2009.
In The Ringleader: The Case of the Bling Ring, she speaks out for the first time, sharing what motivated her to rally her friends to break into celebrity homes in Hollywood to ransack and steal.
Directed by Emmy-nominated filmmaker Erin Lee Carr (Britney vs Spears), the HBO documentary has an 83% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
As The Guardian says: “Carr’s taut and textured documentary… pierces through the glamorous amorality tale without letting one of its chief perpetrators off the hook.”
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