There is a particular kind of Nicole Kidman image that has followed her for years: the red-haired girl from Australia who could look almost porcelain-perfect one moment and completely unravel on screen the next. She went from Baz Luhrmann's fever-dream Paris in Moulin Rouge! to the icy ambition of To Die For, then disappeared beneath Virginia Woolf's face in The Hours and later walked into television's Monterey with Celeste Wright's bruises hidden beneath designer clothes. 

Even now, Kidman's career still seems to operate by its own strange gravity, pulling her toward characters who look polished until the cracks begin to show. And those cracks are nowhere near closing. At 59, Kidman has another remarkably busy stretch ahead.

The most immediately recognizable title on Nicole Kidman's horizon is Practical Magic 2, bringing her back as Gillian Owens alongside Sandra Bullock's Sally. The sequel returns to the moonlit world of the Owens family, where magic is all about  inheritance, sisterhood and the consequences of old curses. The official film site confirms that the story once again centers on the Owens sisters as they confront a dark threat to their family, with Joey King, Maisie Williams, Lee Pace and Xolo Maridueña joining the returning stars. 

For Kidman, the return has an especially satisfying symmetry. The original Practical Magic arrived in 1998, when her career was already beginning to stretch beyond conventional leading-lady territory. Nearly three decades later, she is not simply returning as an actress but as a producer through Blossom Films. Practical Magic 2 will open in North American theaters on September 11, 2026, with international releases beginning September 9. 

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And if Practical Magic 2 feels like Kidman revisiting one of her earlier cinematic lives, her television work is doing something very different: building new worlds around characters who carry their secrets like scars.

Nicole Kidman's Scarpetta era has already begun, with the first season premiering on Prime Video on March 11, 2026. She plays Dr. Kay Scarpetta, Patricia Cornwell's legendary forensic pathologist, alongside Jamie Lee Curtis as her complicated sister Dorothy. The eight-episode thriller moves between Scarpetta's present-day investigation and her formative years in the 1990s, linking a new murder to the case that helped define her career. 

Season 2 is already underway, following the show's initial two-season order, although Prime Video has not announced a release date. Reporting indicates that the new season continues immediately from the first season and is expected to draw from Cornwell's Cruel and Unusual and The Body Farm. For an actress whose career has repeatedly gravitated toward psychologically complicated women, Scarpetta feels almost tailor-made for the Kidman playbook: controlled on the surface, haunted underneath.

Nicole Kidman's Margo's Got Money Troubles arrived on Apple TV in April 2026, adapting Rufi Thorpe's bestselling novel under David E. Kelley's watch. Elle Fanning stars as Margo, a college dropout and aspiring writer who becomes a new mother while facing mounting bills and increasingly unconventional ways of supporting herself. Kidman appears alongside Michelle Pfeiffer, Nick Offerman and Fanning, while also serving as an executive producer. 

Apple renewed the series for a second season on May 13, ahead of the first-season finale. There is no confirmed release date yet, and Kidman's exact Season 2 screen time has not been announced. Still, her presence behind the scenes matters. Through Blossom Films, she has increasingly used television not merely as another acting platform but as a place to shepherd stories about complicated women into production.

Then there is Celeste Wright, the character that helped redefine Nicole Kidman's television career. Big Little Lies transformed her from one of the women at the center of a glamorous Monterey ensemble into the emotional nerve center of a story about abuse, survival and appearances. HBO's series has already run for two seasons, with Kidman playing Celeste opposite Reese Witherspoon, Shailene Woodley, Laura Dern and Zoë Kravitz. 

Season 3 is now moving forward alongside Liane Moriarty's forthcoming sequel novel, Big Little Truths, which is set a decade after the original story and is expected to provide the source material for the new season. The book arrives August 25, 2026, while the television adaptation is returning the women to a Monterey world that has had years to accumulate new secrets. 

There is something fitting about Kidman's next chapter looking like another reinvention. From witches to detectives to mothers and survivors, she continues to choose characters who leave fingerprints on the stories around them.

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Which upcoming Nicole Kidman project are you most excited to watch? Share your take in the comments.