Jon Watts Takes the Next Star Wars Film, Endgame's Encore Leads a Crowded Weekend, and Hollywood's Sept. 21-27
Jon Watts will direct the next Star Wars saga film, Avengers: Endgame's re-release leads a weekend four films crowd, and awards season opens with an R-rated Godzilla and a Mike Leigh win at San Sebastián.
The week of Sept. 21-27 brought four films within a few million dollars of each other at the box office, a new director for the next Star Wars saga film, and the opening moves of awards season.
| Story | Lane | What changed |
|---|---|---|
| Avengers: Endgame: Encore | Box office | The 2019 blockbuster's re-release leads a weekend four films crowd. |
| Reacher | Streaming | A fifth straight week above a billion viewing minutes. |
| Star Wars | Film | Jon Watts will direct the next Skywalker Saga film. |
| Godzilla Minus Zero | Film | A New York Film Festival premiere, with the franchise's first R rating. |
| Fred Astaire biopic | Film | Margaret Qualley and Sabrina Carpenter join Tom Holland. |
| The Last of Us | TV | John Goodman joins season 3 as HBO casts the Seraphites. |
| Saturday Night Live | TV | Season 52 opens with Jalen Brunson and the Knicks. |
| San Sebastián | Awards | Mike Leigh's Tender Loving Care takes the Golden Shell. |
| Helen Mirren | Awards | Bleecker Street campaigns her for lead actress. |
| Reba McEntire | Celebrity | She reveals she missed a call from Dolly Parton. |
| Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery | Industry | Twelve state attorneys general and the WGA settle their suits. |
| Disney | Industry | Legal staff are warned of cuts as AI reshapes the department. |
Box office and streaming
1. Endgame's Encore leads a weekend four films crowd
Disney and Marvel's re-release of Avengers: Endgame is eyeing $24 million-$26 million from 3,060 theaters, which would put the 2019 blockbuster at No. 1 in a weekend where four films crowd the $20 million mark. Sony's Resident Evil is tracking $23.5 million in its second frame, down 61%, for a ten-day domestic total near $103.6 million.
Paramount's Brad Pitt survival drama Heart of the Beast and A24's Primetime are close behind at roughly $20 million each. The whole weekend should land near $123 million, the second-best late-September frame on record behind 2015's $137.8 million, and the domestic box office is on the verge of crossing $8 billion for the year, a mark it did not reach until December in 2025. The figures are Saturday estimates.
2. Reacher clears a billion minutes for a fifth straight week
Prime Video's Reacher drew 1.18 billion viewing minutes in the week of Sept. 7-13, topping Nielsen's overall streaming chart for the fourth time in five weeks and clearing a billion minutes for the fifth week in a row.
Netflix's The Gentlemen rose 22% in its second week to 881 million minutes, while The Big Bang Theory stayed second overall at 971 million. Major Crimes, a spinoff added to Netflix on Sept. 3, entered the chart at 906 million minutes. Nielsen counts U.S. viewing on TV sets only.
Film and TV
3. Star Wars hands the next saga film to Jon Watts
Lucasfilm has attached Jon Watts to direct the first installment of Simon Kinberg's new trilogy, which is meant to continue the Skywalker Saga as Episode X. Watts directed the three Tom Holland Spider-Man films and co-created the series Skeleton Crew.
Daisy Ridley's Rey is expected to appear in some capacity, but the project has not been greenlit by Disney. The franchise returns to theaters first with Starfighter, directed by Shawn Levy and starring Ryan Gosling, on May 27, 2027, the 50th anniversary of the original film.
4. Godzilla Minus Zero premieres with the franchise's first R rating
Takashi Yamazaki's Godzilla Minus Zero had its world premiere at the New York Film Festival on Friday, and it arrives as the first film in the franchise's 72-year history to carry an R rating. The sequel to 2023's Oscar-winning Godzilla Minus One brings back stars Ryunosuke Kamiki and Minami Hamabe and pits Godzilla against King Ghidorah. GKIDS opens it in U.S. theaters Nov. 6.
5. Margaret Qualley and Sabrina Carpenter join Tom Holland's Fred Astaire biopic
Sony's untitled Fred Astaire biopic has cast Margaret Qualley as Adele Astaire, Fred's sister and first stage partner, and Sabrina Carpenter as Ginger Rogers, the dance partner who made him a screen star. Tom Holland plays Astaire, with Paul King directing from a script he wrote with Steven Levenson based on Kathleen Riley's book The Astaires: Fred & Adele. Ava Astaire McKenzie, the dancer's daughter, supports the project.
6. The Last of Us casts John Goodman for season 3
HBO has added John Goodman, Ian Alexander and Laura Bailey to season 3 of The Last of Us, which is expected to follow Abby Anderson's arc and the Seraphites.
Goodman plays Joey and Alexander plays Paco, a pair who call themselves "Heroes of the Highway," while Bailey plays Elizabeth, one of the sect's leaders; Alexander and Bailey previously voiced Lev and Abby in the video games. Craig Mazin is running the season alone, and HBO content chief Casey Bloys has said he believes Mazin planned it as the show's last. It is scheduled to premiere in 2027.
7. SNL opens season 52 with Jalen Brunson and the Knicks
Saturday Night Live began its 52nd season on Saturday with Knicks guard Jalen Brunson hosting and KATSEYE as the musical guest. Teammates Karl-Anthony Towns, Josh Hart, OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges joined Brunson during his opening monologue.
The cold open put Ramy Youssef's Mayor Zohran Mamdani opposite James Austin Johnson's Donald Trump, and Weekend Update went after Paramount+, Spider-Man, The Odyssey and Obsession. Viewers in much of the country saw the start late, after the Oregon-USC football game ran about 15 minutes over.
Awards and festivals
8. Mike Leigh's Tender Loving Care sweeps San Sebastián
Tender Loving Care, which Mike Leigh has suggested may be the last film he makes, won the Golden Shell at the San Sebastián Film Festival along with best screenplay. Its star Kate O'Flynn shared the Silver Shell for best leading performance with Asta Kamma August of Growth of the Soil.
Leigh stayed in New York, where the film is having its U.S. premiere, and sent a video message to Spain. Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi's La bola negra took the audience award, and the documentary NAZA won the audience prize for best European film.
9. Helen Mirren returns to the Oscar race as Patricia Highsmith
Bleecker Street and LD Entertainment will campaign Helen Mirren for lead actress at the 99th Academy Awards for A Talent for Murder, in which she plays the crime novelist Patricia Highsmith. Alden Ehrenreich will be campaigned for lead actor and Olivia Cooke for supporting actress. The film, directed by Anton Corbijn, stages a fictional 1995 meeting in which a frail Highsmith agrees to help a publisher's emissary invent the perfect murder, and it opens in theaters Oct. 23. Mirren won lead actress for 2006's The Queen.
Celebrity and industry
10. Reba McEntire on the Dolly Parton call she missed
Reba McEntire told Entertainment Tonight that she missed a call from Dolly Parton in late July and never got back in touch before Parton died on Aug. 25 after a brief battle with cancer. "I tried to get back in touch with her and I couldn't; never made connection," McEntire said in the interview published Sept. 25, Dolly Parton Day. "I'll never know why she called me." The two recorded a version of "Does He Love You" together in 2021 and co-hosted the CMA Awards in 2019.
11. Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery settle with the states and the WGA
Twelve state attorneys general, led by California's Rob Bonta, settled their antitrust suit over Paramount's bid for Warner Bros. Discovery on Monday, and the Writers Guild settled its own case the same day, winning a five-year ban on writer layoffs at CBS News plus $17.5 million for its health fund and legal fees.
The agreement commits the combined company to release 30 films a year for two years and 32 a year for the next three, with at least $500 million more a year in production spending, and it carries a $30 million penalty if the company misses those targets. Bonta called the deal "the opposite of Disney-Fox." Opponents of the merger filed Friday asking a judge to reject the settlement anyway.
12. Disney warns its legal department to expect deep cuts
Disney's chief legal and global affairs officer, Horacio Gutierrez, told the department on Sept. 18 that it "will be a much smaller organization than it is today" as the company automates workflows, moves to self-service and outsources work. A week later Disney posted a job opening for a director of AI enablement and legal engineering, whose remit is to redesign legal work with AI and to decide whether Disney should build those systems or buy them. Chief financial officer Hugh Johnston told investors in May that Disney is "using technology to fundamentally change how work gets done," a month after the company cut about 1,000 jobs across studio and TV units. Disney declined to comment.
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