‘Street Fighter’ Wins the Weekend, Netflix Swaps Its Content Chief, and Hollywood’s Oct. 12-18
A new No. 1 at the box office, the documentary surprise of the year, and Netflix's biggest house-cleaning in four years, in one scannable week.
The week of Oct. 12–18 gave Hollywood a new No. 1, the documentary surprise of the year, and a Netflix house-cleaning that took out the executive who ran its content. It also gave the town a Saturday night on the Academy Museum's red carpet.
| Story | Lane | What changed |
|---|---|---|
| Street Fighter | Box office | Paramount's video game reboot wins the frame with $31 million. |
| You Can See Everything | Box office | A24's Elizabeth Holmes documentary draws $12 million from 855 theaters. |
| Whalefall | Box office | A $60 million survival thriller opens to $7.5 million. |
| Wonka's The Golden Ticket | Streaming | Netflix's Willy Wonka competition series takes No. 1 on Nielsen. |
| Narnia: The Magician's Nephew | Film | Greta Gerwig's trailer lands, with Meryl Streep as Aslan. |
| True Detective | TV | Antonio Banderas joins Nicolas Cage for season five. |
| Warsaw Film Festival | Awards | What Belongs to Others takes the Grand Prix. |
| Academy Museum Gala | Awards | John Carpenter, Charlize Theron and Colman Domingo are honored. |
| Netflix layoffs | Industry | The streamer cuts about 1,000 jobs, 6 percent of staff. |
| Peter Rice | Industry | Bela Bajaria is out; Rice takes over all content Oct. 26. |
| Miley Cyrus | Celebrity | Her Hollywood Bowl show becomes a Dolly Parton tribute. |
| Harry Styles | Celebrity | An unreleased song for Liam Payne, two years on. |
Box office and streaming
1. ‘Street Fighter’ wins the weekend, short of the knockout Paramount wanted
Street Fighter opened to an estimated $31 million from 3,575 theaters, good enough for No. 1 but below what Paramount had been hoping for.
The Capcom adaptation drew a B- CinemaScore, and 45 percent of ticket buyers were over 35 — a thin showing from the families a video game movie needs.
The weekend overall landed near $101 million, up 49 percent on the same frame last year.
2. A24 turns an Elizabeth Holmes documentary into an event
You Can See Everything collected an estimated $12 million from just 855 theaters, one of the best openings a documentary has ever had.
Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim directed the three-hour film, which sits at 99 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and 4.8 on Letterboxd, the site's highest-rated title to date.
Its buyers were young: 75 percent of ticket buyers in New York and Los Angeles were under 35, and cinemas reported lines around the block.
3. ‘Whalefall’ gets swallowed
20th Century's Whalefall took in about $7.5 million from 3,065 theaters against a $60 million budget, far under the $11 million the studio had projected.
Austin Abrams plays a diver swallowed by a sperm whale in Brian Duffield's adaptation of Daniel Kraus's novel. Audiences gave it a B CinemaScore, and its male-skewing audience ran straight into Street Fighter's.
4. Netflix’s Willy Wonka competition show takes No. 1 on Nielsen
Wonka's The Golden Ticket drew 1.08 billion minutes of viewing in the week of Sept. 28–Oct. 4, a 26 percent jump that carried it from fifth to first overall.
Netflix's Steinbeck adaptation East of Eden landed third overall with 782 million minutes after premiering Oct. 1.
Apple TV's Ted Lasso slipped 11 percent to 750 million the week before its finale, and Toy Story 5 fell 55 percent but still led the movie chart at 687 million.
Nielsen measures U.S. viewing on television sets only, and the chart runs about two weeks behind the calendar.
Film and TV
5. The first ‘Narnia’ trailer has Led Zeppelin and Meryl Streep as a lion
Netflix released the first trailer for Greta Gerwig's Narnia: The Magician's Nephew on Tuesday, a modernized take on C.S. Lewis's origin story that builds to Aslan rising out of cosmic dust.
Daniel Craig plays Uncle Andrew, Emma Mackey is the White Witch, and Meryl Streep voices Aslan, all of it scored to "Stairway to Heaven."
The film opens in theaters Feb. 12 and reaches Netflix April 2.
6. Antonio Banderas joins Nicolas Cage in ‘True Detective’ season five
HBO has added Antonio Banderas to the fifth season of True Detective, a week after Nicolas Cage confirmed at New York Comic-Con that he was entering the anthology.
Cage plays Henry Logan and Banderas plays Rai Garcia, in a season set in Jamaica Bay, New York, with Issa López returning as showrunner. Production starts in 2027.
Awards and festivals
7. Warsaw hands its top prize to a film about a stolen identity
Grzegorz Dębowski's What Belongs to Others won the Warsaw Grand Prix as the festival wrapped its 42nd edition this weekend.
The jury cited "precise and delicate storytelling" and a "complex portrait, devoid of judgment" of a burglar who slips into a dead stranger's life. Chinese director Cai Chengjie took best director for Suzhou Quartet.
8. The Academy Museum Gala fills the Miracle Mile
The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures held its sixth annual gala on Saturday, with Steven Spielberg, Kate Capshaw and Robert Rodriguez among the co-chairs.
The guest list ran from Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter to Jacob Elordi and Goldie Hawn. John Carpenter took the Luminary Award, Charlize Theron the Icon Award and Colman Domingo the Vantage Award.
Industry and celebrity
9. Netflix cuts about 1,000 jobs
Netflix eliminated roughly 6 percent of its staff, about 1,000 jobs, on Wednesday — its largest round of cuts in four years, with product, tech, legal and HR teams hit hardest.
The co-CEOs, Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters, told employees the business is "strong and growing" but that it requires being "disciplined about where we prioritize our people and resources."
The stock is down about 25 percent this year, and earnings land Oct. 20.
10. Bela Bajaria is out, Peter Rice is in
Netflix named former Disney television chairman Peter Rice its chief content officer on Thursday, hours after Bela Bajaria's exit was reported.
Rice, who ran Fox Searchlight and later Walt Disney Television before he was fired in 2022, starts Oct. 26 and will oversee scripted, unscripted, film and live events.
Sarandos called him "one of the most effective at-scale operators in the entertainment industry."
11. Miley Cyrus turns the Hollywood Bowl into a Dolly Parton tribute
Miley Cyrus broke down during "Jolene" at the Hollywood Bowl on Friday, the first of two nights there and a show she built around her godmother, Dolly Parton, who died in August at 80.
Cyrus told the crowd about the one time she watched Parton play the Bowl from the audience, and how Parton outed her from the stage anyway. "Me and Dolly, we are eternal," she said.
12. Harry Styles plays an unreleased song for Liam Payne
Two years to the day since Liam Payne died, Harry Styles used his Madison Square Garden residency to debut an unreleased acoustic song called "What Is Enough."
"Two years ago today, I lost one of those friends," Styles told the room before playing a song he said he wrote around that time, one lyric about burying friends "on a Wednesday night."
His 30-night MSG run ends Oct. 31.
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