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  • The 18 Best Movies and TV Shows to Watch This Weekend

    Clockwise from top: The Muppet Show, the Olympics, The ‘Burbs, and The Moment.
    Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Mitch Haaseth/Disney, A24/Everett Collection, Elizabeth Morris/PEACOCK, Bruce Bennett/Getty Images

    It’s time to bump that. It’s time to strobe the lights. It’s time to see The Moment at your local theater tonight. I’m pretty sure that’s basically what the Muppets sing before a show. But thankfully, there’s a new Muppets special out to verify that. I’d like to think this ushers in a new era of Muppets that actually sticks, but the newly appointed Disney CEO, Josh D’Amaro, was the parks guy in charge during the closure of Muppet*Vision 3D, so … moving right along.

    Every few years, there’s another attempt to make the Muppets mainstream, which is silly because they’re a cornerstone of American pop culture. But if it means more Muppets, why not? This time, that attempt is a special, one-shot return of this sketch-comedy show, starring Sabrina Carpenter, filmed at the original Muppet Theatre. —Roxana Hadadi 

    To commemorate the end of Brat, Charli XCX and director Aidan Zamiri teamed up to produce a strange part-mockumentary, part-satire on an alternate reality of the singer throughout Brat’s success. Charli plays herself as she deals with her upcoming tour as her label and management all suggest suffocating ways to keep brat summer going, which includes hiring an overbearing and eccentric filmmaker, Johannes (Alexander Skarsgård), for a concert film. The Moment feels more like a thought experiment than a movie, but there are bright spots — a scene between a frazzled Charli and a collected Kylie Jenner is a standout — for Angels to chew on.

    With her podcast, music, and movie work, Keke Palmer is basically everywhere at all times, but it’s been years since she starred in a TV series. She gets that opportunity in this satire about a couple who move to a pleasant town whose citizens boast about it being the safest in America. But what’s up with that abandoned mansion in Samira’s neighborhood, and why is her husband (Jack Whitehall) acting so weird? —R.H.

    Netflix’s procedural about a lawyer riding around in his Lincoln is still going strong. In its fourth season, The Lincoln Lawyer is picking up the pieces from its season three finale with Mickey Haller having to defend himself this time. Neve Campbell and Cobie Smulders also co-star this season.

    If You’re in New York or Los Angeles …

    … Or some other big city.

    The President’s Cake ➽ The Iraqi cinematic tradition, once vibrant and varied, has slowed in recent decades thanks to dictatorship, war, sanctions, the U.S. invasion and the ensuing widespread murder of civilians, and the influx of ISIS. A film like this acclaimed coming-of-age odyssey feels like an important step in rebuilding that tradition. In the 1990s, President Saddam Hussein required Iraqis to celebrate his birthday, a rule that informed filmmaker Hasan Hadi’s childhood. A child is selected by lottery to prepare a cake, and that task falls to young Lamia (Baneen Ahmed Nayyef), a tween living with her grandmother. They barely have enough food to eat; how will she gather the ingredients to figuratively honor Hussein? With her pet rooster Hindi in tow, Lamia sets off across the poverty-stricken country to find eggs, flour, and sugar. Gently told but inherently furious, The President’s Cake evokes the films of Abbas Kiarostami in how it centers an innocent child’s perspectives on corruption and lawlessness, and in how the nonfussy cinematography gives primacy and legitimacy to Lamia’s wariness of adults. Nayyef is a particular revelation. And yes, all the real chickens who played Hindi are fine. —Roxana Hadadi 

    More to See …
    ➽ Pillion, the Alexander Skarsgård–starring BDSM romance, is out in limited theaters before its wide release later this month.
    ➽ Kokuho, the Japanese film nominated for Best Makeup and Hairstyling at the Oscars, is finally available to watch in the States.
    ➽ Sirât, one of Neon’s many Cannes acquisitions and now also an Oscar nominee, is hitting limited screens.

    Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz’s cinematic style and worldview are meant to challenge his viewers, both in terms of how his movies play out (long takes, minimal camera movement, run times that count as an investment) and the themes they address (the American Dream as a myth, the impact of 2006’s Super Typhoon Durian on a village and a family, the corruptness and moral vacuity of the elite). His 2004 opus Evolution of a Filipino Family was more than ten hours long! Compared with that, Magellan is a breeze at 164 minutes, and it’s also one of the most clear-eyed and disturbing anti-colonial films to come out in years. Starring a fantastic Gael García Bernal as the Portuguese explorer, Magellan subverts the idea that he was inspired by any kind of respectable ambition. He was a soldier, a murderer, a zealot, and a maniac, and García Bernal conveys all that with a weary, exhausted performance that drives home the soul-decaying nature of international conquest. Some of Diaz’s most stunning images hold Magellan to account, like a group of women, all dressed in black, swarming him for updates about their husbands and sons (all dead because of him), and another group of men, despondent and defeated, trapped in cages by Christian slavers. As a portrait of imperial folly and destruction, it’s thorough, poetic, ruthless, and the kind of timeless that ends up feeling timely. Men who seize power and insist that God chose them, and only them, to rule in a way that oppresses and harms others … Where have I heard that before? ➽ In theaters now

    Psssst! If you don’t have Peacock, an antenna might help.

    Don’t let your newfound interest in ice hockey go to waste. This year’s games are in Northern Italy, where the U.S. will presumably be competitive in the various figure-skating and skiing events. Maybe curling? The opening ceremony kicks off today, and we plan on following the games closely. —Nicholas Quah

    Bad Bunny is coming into his Super Bowl halftime performance high off a historic Grammy win. DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS became the first Spanish-language album to win Album of the Year, he spoke out against ICE, and now, he’ll perform on one of the larger stages in the country. Oh, yeah, and the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks will be playing football before and after.

    ➽ Don’t forget to make time for the adorable Puppy Bowl XXII on HBO Max, either.

    The second season of Fallout, after starting somewhat promisingly, morphed into Westworld 2.0 with its frustrating season finale, “The Strip.” It’s yet another puzzle-box show that ends each season with a tease that actually, next season, we’ll understand what the series is really about. Walton Goggins, Ella Purnell, and Kyle MacLachlan are doing solid work, though, and for devoted fans of the games, maybe Fallout will continue to deliver some disparate charms. There’s a new kind of power armor teased in a post-credits scene, if that’s a thing you care about. For people only watching to see Goggins’s exceptional performance, well, there are other ways to get that in your life. May I suggest Justified? —R.H.

    You can host the ultimate double feature this weekend with two comedies of varying quality. There’s Splitsville, a hilarious feature on two deteriorating marriages starring Dakota Johnson, Adria Arjona, Kyle Marvin, and Michael Angelo Covino. And then there’s James L. Brooks’s head-scratcher, Ella McCay, which critic Alison Willmore dubbed “pure gas-leak cinema.” Its story of a 30-something governor from an unspecified state didn’t make much of an impact in theaters, but it did on social media.

    ➽ Best Picture nominees Hamnet and The Secret Agent arrive on digital platforms alongside Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney’s twisty thriller The Housemaid.

    Want more? Read our recommendations from the weekend of January 30.

    Savannah Salazar

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  • Netflix Shows David Zaslav the Money

    Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos and Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, as spotted at this month’s Golden Globes.
    Photo: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images

    Netflix is taking its Warner Bros. Discovery fight to Paramount. On the heels of a splashy Times interview last week meant to reassure skeptics of its theatrical intentions, the streaming giant has amended its bid for Warner Bros.’s streaming and studios business into an all-cash offer — one meant to counter Paramount’s hostile push to take over the company. Netflix’s ticket price that won the original bidding war for WBD still stands unchanged at $82.7 billion (or $27.75 per share), but the tweaked offer “provides enhanced certainty around the value WBD stockholders will receive at closing, eliminating market-based variability,” Netflix and WBD said in a joint statement.

    One of the risks of Netflix’s earlier cash-and-stock offer was that a remainder of the final payout to shareholders could fluctuate when WBD was ultimately sold. Netflix’s change eliminates that concern and brings its bid more in line with Paramount’s $108.4 billion bid (or $30 per share), which seeks to buy not just Warner’s streaming and studios business but its declining cable assets known as Discovery Global. Netflix tweaked its offer in one other way, according to a proxy statement filed to the SEC this morning by WBD: It will reduce the debt load on Discovery Global by about $260 million, “in light of the stronger than previously anticipated 2025 cash flow performance of Discovery Global.”

    Netflix is putting its money where its mouth is, in other words. The adjustment was expected after Paramount CEO David Ellison launched a hostile-takeover bid and proxy fight, suing WBD for info about how it valued the cable assets. Netflix’s amended bid landed in inboxes the morning ahead of its latest quarterly earnings report, covering the tail end of 2025, and its timing feels strategic in another way: Though any victor in this war will have to pass regulatory hurdles, WBD and Netflix’s joint statement touts a “faster path to a stockholder vote” expected by April 2026. Is it an acknowledgment that everyone’s tired of talking about this?

    Eric Vilas-Boas

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  • The 20 Best TV Shows on Apple TV Right Now

    Down Cemetery Road.
    Photo: Apple TV+

    This article is updated frequently as titles leave and enter Apple TV. *New additions are indicated with an asterisk.

    Apple TV has become known as a home for lavish, expensive miniseries, dramas, and original comedies. It has had massive success with award winners like Ted Lasso, The Morning Show, and Severance, and the streamer’s made some interesting choices along the way, like releasing lots of shows that start with the letter S. It also seems as if it has a new offering every week, trying to catch the attention of the streaming zeitgeist. But it’s getting harder to filter through Apple TV’s massive catalogue to find the best stuff — which is where we come in. These are the best shows currently on Apple TV, a list we’ll update regularly as it releases new programs worth your time.

    Don’t have Apple TV yet?

    Year: 2025
    Length: 1 season, 8 episodes
    Creator: Morwenna Banks

    Mick Herron’s Slow Horses books have already been a hit for Apple TV, so it makes sense to try and adapt another one of the British writers hit novels. In this case, it’s the story of an explosion in a quiet neighborhood that rocks the life of an ordinary woman (Ruth Wilson) and sends her into the spiral of a private investigator (Emma Thompson). It’s imperfect but the leads keep it humming, and a second season is already being planned.

    Year: 2022–present
    Length: 1 season, 8 episodes
    Creator: Christopher Miller

    One of the geniuses behind The LEGO Movie and 21 Jump Street, and a producer on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse, Christopher Miller is one of the smartest content creators currently in Hollywood. His hysterical murder mystery is like nothing else on television, taking an Agatha Christie plot and filtering it through some of the funniest voices in comedy. Tiffany Haddish plays a detective investigating a murder that is then seen through the eyes of the people attending the party at which it happened, including characters played by Sam Richardson, Ben Schwartz, Ilana Glazer, Dave Franco, Zoe Chao, and Ike Barinholtz.

    Year: 2022
    Length: 1 season, 6 episodes
    Creator: Dennis Lehane

    Developed by the writer of Shutter Island and Mystic River, Black Bird is the true story of a criminal named Jimmy Keene (Taron Egerton) who was behind bars when he was asked by the authorities to inform on someone significantly worse. Keene was in a facility with a monster named Larry Hall (a chilling Paul Walter Hauser), a killer who the cops suspected of committing multiple murders. They told Keene that he could get an early release if he could get the monster to talk. Chilling and moving, this is a phenomenal miniseries.

    Year: 2019-2021
    Length: 3 seasons, 30 episodes
    Creator: Alena Smith

    When the story of Apple TV+ is written, this show will be one of the founding fathers, a program that debuted back in 2019 and helped define the company’s early brand. Hailee Steinfeld is phenomenal as the title character, who happens to the legendary Emily Dickinson. A coming-of-age variation on a legendary author shouldn’t be this effective, but the writing and performances are sharp and funny through its entire three-season run.

    Year: 2024
    Length: 1 season, 7 episodes
    Creator: Alfonso Cuarón

    The director of Roma and Gravity comes to television with this high-budget thriller based on the hit book by Renée Knight, starring Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline, and Sacha Baron Cohen. The Blue Jasmine star plays a documentarian whose life is turned upside down when she gets sent a book that’s clearly about her, including secrets she’s tried to bury for years. Shot by two of the best cinematographers alive, Disclaimer is one of the best-looking things on any streaming service, not just Apple. It doesn’t hurt that everyone in it is at the top of their game too.

    Year: 2019–present
    Length: 4 seasons, 40 episodes
    Creators: Ronald D. Moore, Matt Wolpert, Ben Nedivi

    One of the geniuses behind the reboot of Battlestar Galactica collaborated on a very different kind of science fiction, a character-driven drama that imagines life in the United States in an alternate reality in which the Soviet Union landed on the moon before the United States. That’s just the setup for a show that has gone so many unexpected places since, incorporating figures from history like Neil Armstrong, Sally Ride, and even Wernher von Braun into a show that defies expectations. History is going to be very kind to this drama.

    Year: 2023
    Length: 1 season, 7 episodes
    Creators: George Kay, Jim Field Smith

    One of the biggest hits of the year for Apple TV+ owe a debt to old-fashioned thriller series like 24 in its realtime telling of a plane hijacking. Idris Elba steals the show as Sam Nelson, an average (as average as Elba can be) business negotiator who happens to be on a commuter plane that’s hijacked by a crew led by Neil Maskell. Over seven hours, Hijack details both the battle of wills on the plane and the political games played on the ground below.

    Year: 2020–present
    Length: 2 seasons, 16 episodes
    Creators: Lee Eisenberg, Emily V. Gordon, Kumail Nanjiani

    The anthology format is largely reserved for horror storytelling, so it’s nice to see it employed for drama and comedy in this excellent compendium of stories about what it means to be an immigrant in America in the 2020s. The scope of the dramedy is what’s so impressive, telling so many different kinds of stories so one can get a greater appreciation of the tapestry that (in ideal circumstances) makes up this country.

    Year: 2024
    Length: 1 season, 7 episodes
    Creator: Monica Beletsky

    Emmy winner Tobias Menzies does the best acting work of his career as Edwin Stanton, the man who led the hunt for John Wilkes Booth after the murder of President Abraham Lincoln. The team behind Manhunt deftly convey how much this was a turning point for history that still resonates today, a time in which everything Lincoln fought for could have disappeared, and a time when justice was essential. It’s incredibly well-made, a history lesson brought to vivid life.

    Year: 2019–present
    Length: 4 seasons, 40 episodes
    Creator: Jay Carson

    This show was the first sign that Apple was very willing to open its wallet, attracting multiple award winners to one of its launching-day dramas about a morning news show shaken not only by Me Too allegations against one of its anchors but the infighting that goes with this kind of operation in the 2020s. It mostly paid off. The Morning Show hasn’t quite found a big place in the culture, but everyone agrees that Billy Crudup’s Emmy-winning work is phenomenal, and it undeniably helped Apple develop its brand as a home for big names and big budgets.

    Year: 2025
    Length: 1 season, 5 episodes
    Creator: Rebecca Miller

    One of the best American filmmakers of all time finally gets his mini-series in this thoughtful, engaging series of conversations between the director Rebecca Miller and one Mr. Martin Scorsese. The Oscar-winning director details his upbringing, influences, and highs & lows of his incredible career. It’s a must-see for anyone who calls themselves a movie fan.

    Year: 2022–present
    Length: 2 season, 16 episodes
    Creator: Soo Hugh

    This might be the most visually striking show you’re not watching. The masterful Kogonada (After Yang) and Justin Chon (Blue Bayou) direct a generation-spanning epic about a Korean woman (played by Oscar winner Youn Yuh-jung of Minari in the present-day material) who had to fight to start a life during the Japanese occupation of her youth. It’s a moving, unpredictable drama that looks like nothing else on TV.

    Year: 2025-present
    Length: 1 season, 9 episodes
    Creator: Vince Gilligan

    The tagline for one of 2025’s best shows is a beauty: “The most miserable person on Earth must save the world from happiness.” Sure, that’s part of what’s going on in this incredible story of a woman (Rhea Seehorn) who discovers that she’s one of the only people on Earth who hasn’t been impacted by a hive-mind invasion. Everyone around her acts as one, eager to convert her into one of their own. It’s funny, terrifying, and unforgettable.

    Year: 2021–2023
    Length: 2 seasons, 12 episodes
    Creators: Cinco Paul, Ken Daurio

    Keegan-Michael Key and Cecily Strong star in this clever comedy about a couple who travel to a magical land inspired by hit musicals. The first season focused on the era of The Music Man, Carousel, and Brigadoon, but the second has shifted to the ’70s and ’80s to satirize Chicago, Cabaret, Hair, and Sweeney Todd. All in all, it’s a smart, funny show with great musical performances from Broadway legends like Alan Cumming, Kristen Chenoweth, and many more.

    Year: 2019–2023
    Length: 4 seasons, 40 episodes
    Creator: Tony Basgallop

    M. Night Shyamalan produced and sometimes directed the four seasons of this deeply underrated thriller, one of the most stylish and fascinating shows of its era. Lauren Ambrose stars as a Philadelphia reporter who has been treating a baby doll like her actual child. When she hires a nanny to take care of the toy, her husband (Toby Kebbell) is startled when the doll comes to life. And that’s just the beginning of the chaos in a show that looks filmic in ways that most television never bothers to attempt.

    Year: 2022–present
    Length: 2 seasons, 19 episodes
    Creator: Dan Erickson

    One of the most acclaimed new shows of the 2020s, Severance takes a clever concept and runs full speed with it into unexpected places. Adam Scott stars as an employee at a company that uses a revolutionary process that literally divides the work-life dynamic in a new way. What if your work self and home self had different lives, memories, and concerns? Britt Lower, Patricia Arquette, and Christopher Walken co-star in this incredibly smart and witty sci-fi drama.

    Year: 2023–present
    Length: 2 seasons, 22 episodes
    Creators: Bill Lawrence, Jason Segel, Brett Goldstein

    Some of the team behind Ted Lasso created a different kind of dramedy for another comedy actor. This time it’s Jason Segel as a therapist who decides to start getting a little too honest with his patients, much to the shock of his colleagues, played by Jessica Williams and Harrison Ford — who is doing some of the best work of his recent career.

    Year: 2023-present
    Length: 2 seasons, ongoing
    Creator: Graham Yost

    The creator of Justified has delivered the best sci-fi show yet for Apple, an adaptation of a series of books called Wool by Hugh Howey. Set in the future in which we’ve destroyed this planet, Silo refers to the large underground bunker that houses around 10k citizens deep underground. Asking questions about history, authority, and power embedded in a murder mystery investigation spearheaded by the phenomenal Rebecca Ferguson, this is one of the best shows of the 2020s. It becomes even more ambitious in season two with the addition of Steve Zahn as the lone survivor of another silo.

    Year: 2022–present
    Length: 5 seasons, 30 episodes
    Creators: Morwenna Banks, Will Smith, Jonny Stockwood, Mark Denton 

    Apple was so confident in what it had with this spy thriller that it ordered four seasons from the jump and had two shot and aired in the same year (2022). A fifth just dropped in September 2025, and some fans probably hope Slow Horses could run forever (they’ll be happy to know that a sixth season has already been filmed and a seventh is on the way too). Gary Oldman is phenomenal as the head of Slough House, a sort of halfway house for British spies who made mistakes in more prominent positions. Of course, they’re usually the ones who save the day.

    Year: 2024
    Length: 1 season, 2 episodes
    Creator: Morgan Neville

    How do you unpack the life of a performer who was creative and unpredictable as Steve Martin? In two distinct halves. Morgan Neville pulls a fun trick with this Apple series that’s really more like two feature-length documentaries. The first uses archival footage to chart Martin’s rise to the top of the stand-up comedy food chain, which he left behind when he was arguably at his most popular. The second is a more intimate piece about Martin’s life since, including his films, art, and writing. It’s a must-see for fans of one of the best to ever do what he does.

    STEVE! (martin): A Documentary in Two Pieces

    Year: 2025
    Length: 1 season, 10 episodes
    Creator: Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Peter Huyck, Alex Gregory, and Frida Perez

    One of the best shows of 2025 is this sharp dissection of the Hollywood machine and the people who keep it oiled. Co-creator Seth Rogen plays Matt Remick, the new head of a major studio behind imaginary projects like The Kool-Aid Movie! With too many cameos to count, it’s actually a love letter to Hollywood, and a reminder that the people who make blockbusters are often stumbling through their jobs as much as anyone.

    Year: 2020–2023
    Length: 3 seasons, 34 episodes
    Creators: Jason Sudeikis, Bill Lawrence, Brendan Hunt, Joe Kelly

    Shows based on ad campaigns shouldn’t be this successful. And yet here we are with Apple claiming ownership of arguably the biggest streaming comedy ever, a program that has won the Emmy for Best Comedy, Best Actor (Jason Sudeikis), and Best Supporting Actor (Brett Goldstein) two years in a row. Ted Lasso is massive. Every streamer wishes they had it.

    Brian Tallerico

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  • Jake Paul Is ‘Ready to Die’ Fighting Anthony Joshua on Netflix

    Photo: Eva Marie Uzcategu/Getty Images for Netflix

    Jake Paul is being very emo in his pre-bout trash talk. “I want him to cut me up, I want him to break my face,” he said of upcoming opponent Anthony Joshua, “but guess what, he’s gonna have to kill me to stop me, and I’m ready to die. Seriously, ready to die in the ring to win this fight.” Do you still technically win a fight if you’re dead? Sure there’s that ancient Greek wrestler, but that story seems apocryphal at best. TMZ reported the press conference, held ahead of their December 19 fight in Miami.

    Paul was originally scheduled to fight WBA lightweight champ Gervonta “Tank” Davis last Friday, but that match was called off after Davis was accused of intimate partner violence in a lawsuit. It’s a big change for Paul, who had been expecting to box against someone much smaller than him in an exhibition match. He’s now going into a sanctioned heavyweight fight against someone bigger and more experienced than him. Joshua is a former Olympic gold medalist and two-time unified heavyweight champion.

    Joshua is on-board with Paul’s plan of getting his face broken. “If I’m being honest, I’m going to break his face,” he said, “I’m going to break his body up, I’m going to stomp all over him.”

    You can watch this all-over stompage live on Netflix, by the by. The pair will face off at Kaseya Center in Miami. The live-streamed fight is scheduled for eight 3-minute rounds. Joshua’s promoter, Eddie Hearn, doesn’t like Paul’s odds. “They say be careful what you wish for, kind of feel like that’s all I need to say,” Hearn said in a statement obtained by ESPN. “Two of the biggest names in the sport will collide on Dec 19. Whilst I admire Jake’s balls, he’s going to find out the hard way in Miami.”

    Bethy Squires

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  • The Disney-YouTube TV Standoff Is Finally Over

    Jump for joy! A deal has been reached.
    Photo: Eric McCandless/Disney via Getty Images

    To quote Homer Simpson, woo-hoo! Our corporate overlords are finally getting along. Disney and YouTube TV have squashed their carriage beef, signing a deal to bring all your favorite ESPN, ABC, and Disney properties back to YouTube’s streamer. Disney Entertainment co-chairmen Alan Bergman and Dana Walden and ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro praised the deal in a joint statement obtained by The Hollywood Reporter. “We are pleased that our networks have been restored in time for fans to enjoy the many great programming options this weekend, including college football,” they wrote. “Subscribers should see channels including ABC, ESPN and FX returning to their service over the course of the day, as well as any recordings that were previously in their Library,” a spokesperson for YouTube said Friday night. “We apologize for the disruption and appreciate our subscribers’ patience as we negotiated on their behalf.”

    Disney’s channels — including ABC, ESPN, Freeform, and FX — went dark on YouTube TV October 30. It was the longest carriage dispute in recent memory, far exceeding the Charter Communications tiff in 2023. That only lasted 11 days. Reports found that this dispute was particularly bitter, with CEOs Bob Iger (Disney) and Sundar Pichai (Google) allegedly brought in to speed things along. It’s times like these one yearns for an old school antenna.

    Bethy Squires

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  • Your Frantic Questions About the Disney-YouTube Dispute, Answered

    If Timothée Chalamet goes back on College Gameday, YouTube TV subscribers might not even get to watch it.
    Photo: ESPN College Football via YouTube

    This article was originally published on October 30 and has been updated with the latest in the YouTube-Disney negotiations.

    Forget the streaming wars. How about the carriage wars? In the past year, YouTube has had heated negotiations with a number of entertainment companies, from NBCUniversal to Paramount to Univision, as it’s re-situated itself as a major streaming and pay-TV competitor. Now YouTube TV and the Walt Disney Company find themselves at a standstill as they go over renewal talks for Disney cable channels on the live-television streamer. Their contract has expired without a deal, and if you’re a YouTube TV subscriber, you’ve lost a lot of channels and are probably wondering what happens next.

    Disney provides many of its channels to YouTube TV — including ABC, ESPN, and more — but the two are having trouble renewing their carriage contract. YouTube has been butting heads with Disney over pricing. The Wall Street Journal reports that YouTube also wants shorter length deals with entertainment companies to gain more “leverage.” In a statement, YouTube said their negotiations with Disney have been “good faith” efforts to pay the company fairly for their channels on the streamer. They mention Disney’s counter-proposal includes “costly economic terms” that would raise prices for YouTube TV subscribers and would only be “benefiting Disney’s own live TV products — like Hulu + Live TV and, soon, Fubo.”

    Disney countered in a statement to Variety, saying, “This is the latest example of Google exploiting its position at the expense of their own customers,” and they request “our partners to pay fair rates.” But their current contract expires on October 30, at 11:59 p.m., and there seems to be no short-term extension in sight.

    Yes — in fact, it already has. Now that the contract has expired, YouTube TV subscribers will no longer have access to Disney-owned broadcast channels, if the two companies cannot agree on a renewal deal. So that would include ABC, ESPN, Disney Channel, Disney Junior, Nat Geo, and FX channels. YouTube claims that it would compensate its subscribers with a $20 credit if these channels remain off the service for an “extended period of time.” Twenty dollars will get you a month of Disney+ if you’re desperate for that Dancing With the Stars finale. Speaking of which…

    Exactly. Time to start bugging a friend with Hulu + Live TV instead or invest in an antenna if you want to keep watching the hottest show on TV right now.

    Well, it’s kind of a doozy. If pro football is your main concern, you’ll still have access to Sunday Night Football through NBC as well as NFL games on Fox, NFL Network, and NFL Sunday Ticket. But when it comes to Monday Night Football, you’re out of luck if you only subscribe to YouTube TV. ESPN is included in Disney’s collection of channels, so you won’t have access to any of their offerings. That includes college football (including College Gameday), the NBA, and more. Having ESPN definitely gives Disney some good leverage towards YouTube, despite it coming at the cost of your regular sports programming. Ah, streaming.

    It’s up in the air right now. YouTube has navigated similar impasses with other entertainment companies this year. In February, ahead of March Madness, YouTube and Paramount found themselves at a standstill. The two negotiated a short-term extension to continue talks and were able to prevent a blackout. NBCUniversal also received a short-term extension when their deal with YouTube expired a month ago; they reached an agreement days later so that NBC’s channels could remain for subscribers. On the other hand, YouTube proved unable to reach a deal with Univision, so its cable channels have been dark on YouTube TV since September 30, despite the displeasure of even President Trump.

    As for Disney, the company recently announced a 70 percent majority stake in Fubo TV, the pay TV company that was poised to sue Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery for the doomed Venu sports venture. The Mouse now intends to merge Fubo TV with Hulu + Live TV, a combo that could rival YouTube TV as a live television provider. This deal may be the reason Disney is challenging Google/YouTube, or at least why the company is taking its time in negotiations.

    Savannah Salazar

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  • Another Anime Movie Conquers the Box Office This Weekend

    Here’s what you need to know about Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc.
    Photo: Tatsuki Fujimoto/Sony Pictures/Everett Collection

    This article originally ran on October 24. This weekend has seen Chainsaw Man beat estimates and top the box office this weekend.

    There’s yet another action anime blockbuster based on TV series based on a manga that has torn up the American box office this weekend. This one is called Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, and the Sony/Crunchyroll movie happens to be a fitting spooky-season release. Like Demon Slayer and Attack on Titan before it, the Chainsaw Man TV series, which is streaming on Crunchyroll and Hulu, is part supernatural horror, part coming-of-age story. The film serves as the latest chapter of the TV show, which is an adaptation of creator Tatsuki Fujimoto’s original manga. That made it a must-watch theatrical event for Chainsaw fans in the States and elsewhere. It dominated this weekend’s theatrical receipts, topping newcomers like Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere and Regretting You as well the film that was expected to win this weekend, the still-hot Black Phone 2.

    So what is Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc all about, and how did it conquer the box office like prior anime and anime-inspired animated films like Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle and KPop Demon Hunters? Here’s a quick rundown of the new film’s whole deal.

    Very: Latest estimates have it coming at $17.2 million for the weekend, which is about $6 million more than was anticipated by many observers before the weekend. For comparison, the popular, Blumhouse-produced horror sequel Black Phone 2 brought in a current estimated $13 million, per Deadline, while the new Colleen Hoover adaptation Regretting You is coming in a close third at $12.8 million. Meanwhile, the Jeremy Allen White-fronted Springtsteen: Deliver Me From Home is hitting its lower-end prediction with around $9.1 million.

    For starters, it’s a very literal title. One of 2022’s most exciting debuts and produced by the animation studio MAPPA, the anime is a hodgepodge of demonic violence, crude humor, and speculative fiction. In the world of Chainsaw Man, World War II never happened and now “devils” run amok. At the start of the series, the Chainsaw Devil meets a young man named Denji, and together they become the Chainsaw Man, a superpowered tough guy with spinning chainsaws that stick out of his hands and head, and join a squad of devil-hunting cops.

    Light spoilers incoming: After a bloody battle against a demonic villain called Samurai Sword (picture Chainsaw Man, but instead of chainsaws, he has samurai swords sticking out of his hands and head), the first season ended with a mysterious young woman cryptically wondering whether Denji would prefer to be a country mouse or a city mouse. Manga fans will know that that woman is Reze, a.k.a. the Bomb Devil, a girl whom Denji will fall for romantically — a series of events complicated by his prior attraction to his fellow devil hunter Makima. The trailer tees up his infatuation rom-com style before spinning into explosive action.

    In international markets, it has already earned $68.3 million since debuting on September 19, according to the theatrical tally the Numbers. While it’s unlikely to dethrone fellow Sony-released title Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle’s record-breaking box office, anime analyst Miles Atherton told Polygon it’s still among the most popular anime titles in North America. (Crunchyroll doesn’t share viewership numbers for its series.)

    Theatrical titles like Demon Slayer, Dan da Dan, and Attack on Titan all spun TV series into box-office moments, big and small. The release model has worked before for distributors Crunchyroll and Sony Pictures Releasing, which hold the international rights to Toho’s Chainsaw Man franchise. Similarly, the anime-inspired KPop Demon Hunters managed to make back the cost of nearly its entire production budget over just one weekend with a limited singalong theatrical event, despite being released straight to Netflix months earlier. That one is coming back to theaters for Halloween because it worked so well the first time around.

    For now it’s only in theaters, but eventually, like most of the aforementioned anime titles, we can expect to see it on Crunchyroll. We can’t be certain when, though. (Remember the monthslong wait for The Boy and the Heron?) Unlike American live-action films and their now ubiquitous 30-day windows, anime titles tend to circle most of the globe internationally before they go to streaming release.

    It probably couldn’t hurt to dive deeper into the lore and relationships, but the movie is relatively self-contained. Chainsaw Man is generally pretty direct — did I mention it’s about a man with chainsaws for hands? — so if you’re worried you’ll be confused, don’t be. Or watch a YouTube recap or two beforehand. It’s worth a spin regardless.

    There is. We won’t say too much as that would risk getting too deep into the events of the film, but we will say: Don’t miss it. It doesn’t tee up the next season or anything, but it does put a nice capper on the events of the movie.

    Eric Vilas-Boas

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  • Your Favorite Streaming Service Is Only Getting More Expensive

    Four of the biggest have doubled in price since launching.
    Graphic: Vulture

    This post was originally published September 8, 2025, and has been updated to add new price increases to Disney+ and Hulu as well as HBO Max.

    If there’s one thing streaming services love more than a rebrand or a bundle, it’s a price hike. Over the past few months, Disney+, Hulu, Peacock, Apple TV+, HBO Max, and even humble BritBox have raised their subscription rates. Asking customers to shell out more each month has been a part of the streaming business going back to the early days of Netflix, when it incrementally increased prices on certain tiers on an almost annual basis, and since more services began popping up to compete with the service in the past five or six years, they’ve been predictable additions to your streaming bills, some notable exceptions aside.

    To illustrate their ubiquity, we’ve rounded up as many as we could below — focusing on the major streamers’ so-called “standard” paid monthly subscriptions with and without ads. For ease of comparison, we omitted bundles and tiers like Netflix “Premium” and Hulu + Live TV, as well as any services which haven’t been around for at least two years or haven’t had some sort of price increase. We’ll update this story with more services, too — and with the inevitable new price hikes when they roll out in a quarter or two.

    A few insights we noticed as we browsed the numbers:

    ➼ The prices for plans at Netflix, Disney+, Apple TV+, and Peacock have more than doubled since their respective launches.
    ➼ Hulu’s ad-supported rate actually dropped at one point — very much an anomaly.
    ➼ Since launching in 2019, The Criterion Channel has never raised its prices.

    Current monthly rates labeled in blue.

    • 2011: Launched at $8
    • 2014: $9
    • 2015: $10
    • 2017: $11
    • 2019: $13
    • 2020: $14
    • 2022: $15.50
    • 2025: $18

    • 2022: Launched at $7
    • 2025: $8

    Since launch, Netflix has dramatically expanded its original and licensed programming, expanded to new global markets, and introduced live sports and video games to their service, so beyond inflation, it’s had overhead to account for over the years. Users may wonder why the ad-supported price introduced in 2022 was lower than what ad-free users were paying for Netflix in 2011; that’s because Netflix reasoned that it could make more revenue per user on the ad-supported plan even if it was less than half the cost of the standard ad-free plan, and priced it accordingly. Plus, as it also started cracking down on password sharing, it wanted to make sure folks unwilling to finally pay for their own full-price account had an affordable alternative to consider before walking away completely.

    • 2015: Launched at $12
    • 2021: $13
    • 2022: $15
    • 2023: $18
    • 2024: $19

    • 2010: Launched at $8
    • 2019: $6
    • 2021: $7
    • 2023: $8
    • 2024: $10
    • 2025: $12

    Hulu’s 2019 adjustment to its ad-supported plan was a rare price drop — at the time a hedge against users rebelling that the cost of its live TV service would be going up. More recently, the $4 hike between 2022 and 2024 has been designed to prompt users to switch to the Disney Bundle, which offers both Hulu and Disney+ at a deep discount.

    • 2019: Launched at $7
    • 2021: $8
    • 2022: $11
    • 2023: $14
    • 2024: $16
    • 2025: $19

    • 2022: Launched at $8
    • 2024: $10
    • 2025: $12

    Like other services that launched the heyday of the early streaming wars, Disney+ was priced to move — a bet that $7 per month was a nice carrot for families and older fans of Star Wars and Marvel alike. Five years, one pandemic, a long Hollywood strike season, and two Bobs later, that $7 looks quaint by comparison. As for the relatively huge hikes to the cost of the ad-free plan, chalk that up to a the same thinking about the aforementioned Disney bundle, plus the industry-wide push to get people to watch ads again.

    • 2020: Launched at $15
    • 2023: $16
    • 2024: $17
    • 2025: $18.50

    • 2021: Launched at $10
    • 2025: $11

    HBO Max/Max/HBO Max’s pricing has gone up incrementally compared to its competitors in part because started out a higher price point than any other post-Netflix streamer, thanks to the HBO of it all. But in that same time, Warner Bros. Discovery and CEO David Zaslav have become known for axing content across the service, from classic HBO shows to Sesame Street. Will the departure of Discovery content (once WBD’s breakup and/or sale is finalized) drop the price? Don’t hold your breath.

    • 2016: Launched at $9
    • 2024: $12

    • 2024: Launched at $9

    Prime Video doesn’t call its “ad-free” option here another stand-alone plan, but customers can pay an additional $3 per month to remove ads. Otherwise, strikingly, Prime Video’s rate remained the same until it began rolling ads onto its platform. Of course, many folks haven’t even clocked how stable the base rate for Prime Video has remained because the most common way they get Prime Video is through Amazon’s much broader (and somewhat pricier) Prime subscription service, which offers everything from “free” package delivery to discounts on gasoline.

    • 2021: Launched at $10
    • 2023: $12
    • 2024: $13

    • 2021: Launched at $5
    • 2023: $6
    • 2023: $8

    With its 2023 hike, Paramount+ also added Showtime to its ad-free plan and did away with Showtime’s standalone streaming service. On the bright side, it hasn’t added a special surcharge for Taylor Sheridan series — yet.

    • 2020: Launched at $10
    • 2023: $12
    • 2024: $14
    • 2025: $17

    • 2021: Launched at $5
    • 2023: $6
    • 2024: $8
    • 2025: $11

    At one point, Peacock was literally giving itself away for free — sort of, anyway. That’s no longer the case of course, but it’s another streamer, like Disney+ and Apple TV+, that learned from the Covid era that it couldn’t underprice its offerings forever. What’s more: The NBA is coming to Peacock, wrested away from David Zaslav in the last rights negotiation for an annual bill of $2.45 billion. Now both of Peacock’s standard plans cost more than Netflix’s. Plus, John Tesh wasn’t going to let NBC and Peacock use “Roundball Rock” for free. Somebody had to pay up.

    • 2019: Launched at $5
    • 2022: $7
    • 2023: $10
    • 2025: $13

    A service without a robust licensed library that focuses mostly on originals would not have been appealing for $13 a month in 2019, but to be honest, it’s not too shabby in 2025. Apple has established itself with enough hits like Severance and The Morning Show and Ted Lasso to make the price point work, and even feel like a modest value compared to other major players like HBO Max or Peacock.

    • 2020: Launched at $9
    • 2024: $10

    • 2023: Launched at $5
    • 2024: $7

    You’re not just getting AMC’s programs and live feed with this service; the streamer also bundles in content from horror-rific Shudder plus indie movies from Sundance and IFC, along with a sample of stuff from sister streamer Acorn TV (see below.) If the ad-free tier still seems a bit expensive, that’s in part because cable operators would freak if AMC offered it too cheaply.

    Current monthly rates labeled in blue.

    • 2016: Launched at $6
    • 2023: $7

    • 2017: Launched at $7
    • 2019: $8

    • 2019: Launched at $10
    • 2024: $11

    • 2023: Launched at $6

    • 2017: Launched at $7
    • 2023: $9
    • 2025: $11

    • 2023: Launched at $6
    • 2024: $7

    • 2022: Launched at $9
    • 2023: $10
    • 2024: $11

    • 2013: Launched at $5
    • 2022: $7
    • 2025: $9


    See All



    Eric Vilas-Boas,Josef Adalian

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  • New on Netflix: Some of Spotify’s Biggest Podcasts

    Video podcasts are coming to Netflix — in part because everyone’s gotta compete with YouTube.
    Photo: Bill Simmons via YouTube

    What even counts as television these days, anyway? That question gets a tad thornier by the day, especially now that Netflix has announced a new partnership with Spotify to bring a curated slate of the latter’s owned video podcasts onto the streaming platform.

    It’s a sizable lineup, one that mostly draws from The Ringer, the Bill Simmons–founded network that Spotify acquired in 2020, and which in recent months has been notably embracing video. The slate coming to Netflix includes the expected sports programming like The Bill Simmons Podcast (redemption, presumably, for Any Given Wednesday) and The Zach Lowe Show, but also more culture-oriented fare like The Rewatchables, The Big Picture, and The Dave Chang Show. Beyond The Ringer, the deal brings on podcasts that had been absorbed in Spotify’s 2019 acquisition of Parcast, including the generically named True Crime and Serial Killers, both of which will likely play nicely with Netflix’s recommendation algorithm. They will become available on Netflix in the U.S. early next year, with other markets to eventually follow. More titles are expected to be added later.

    For Netflix, this move doesn’t come out of nowhere. The company has been steadily experimenting with broadening its on-platform definition of “content,” including video games and digital video programming that originated on YouTube, like the popular kids’ YouTuber Ms. Rachel. It’s also long dabbled on the periphery of podcasting, mainly producing branded company shows tied to its television projects, not unlike how HBO uses podcasts to deepen engagement with shows like The Gilded Age and The Last of Us.

    But the podcast world has changed dramatically in the past few years. The rapid rise of video-first programming has completely reshaped the medium — and Netflix’s leadership has been watching. “The lines between podcast and talk shows are getting pretty blurry,” co-CEO Ted Sarandos told investors back in April. “As the popularity of video podcasts grows, I suspect you’ll see some of them find their way to Netflix.” Around the same time, Axios reported that it was seeking a podcast chief, signaling a deeper structural move into the space.

    The Spotify podcasts heading to Netflix

    Sports
    • The Bill Simmons Podcast
    • The Zach Lowe Show
    • The McShay Show
    • Fairway Rollin’
    • The Mismatch
    • The Ringer F1 Show
    • The Ringer Fantasy Football Show
    • The Ringer NFL Show
    • The Ringer NBA Show

    Culture / Lifestyle
    • The Rewatchables
    • The Big Picture
    • The Dave Chang Show
    • The Recipe Club
    • Dissect
    • True Crime
    • Conspiracy Theories
    • Serial Killers

    For Spotify, things are a little more complicated. The deal represents both a retreat and a reframing. After spending years and billions of dollars to become the dominant podcasting player — buying Gimlet Media (now shuttered), Parcast (also largely shuttered), and The Ringer, plus signing exclusive deals with Joe Rogan and Alex Cooper (who later left for SiriusXM) — the Swedish platform had been further pivoting toward video in search of more lucrative ad dollars and a better business model for its podcast efforts. But YouTube’s sudden incursion into the podcast space, precipitated by the medium’s broader turn toward video, has effectively boxed Spotify in; it didn’t take long for audience-research reports to indicate that more podcast listeners now consider YouTube to be their top preferred platform, surpassing Spotify. By bringing its video podcasts to Netflix, Spotify can extend its shows’ reach without shouldering the cost of competing in video distribution. It’s a way of turning its original content into syndicated inventory, licensing its productions into a marketplace and audience ecosystem that’s indicated greater affinity toward visual programming.

    Both companies, of course, are reacting to the same gravitational pull: YouTube. The platform has evolved into the default center of gravity for the creator economy, swallowing categories like music, gaming, education, and now podcasts. In recent months, YouTube had been quietly reframing itself as a direct competitor to Netflix, a position further substantiated by its own claim that the platform is reaching more viewers over television sets than on phones and computers. As such, for Netflix and Spotify, this partnership is less a marriage than a kind of mutual defense pact: Netflix gets a new vein of low-cost, evergreen talk content that helps it compete in attention time against YouTube, while Spotify gets a new distribution vector that can keep its video and podcast investments relevant.

    The most intriguing question is how far Netflix is willing to go, and whether it’s considering adding what’s long thought to be the most popular podcast in the world: The Joe Rogan Experience. (Spotify doesn’t own Rogan’s show, but it holds an exclusive distribution deal.) Or, indeed, whether it will lean toward bringing on the most culturally influential podcast genre we have: politics. Given Netflix’s aversion to anything resembling news programming, there’s likely not much appetite for that. At least, not yet. But give it time — and, perhaps, a bad fiscal quarter.

    Nicholas Quah

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  • Apple TV Thinks the Plus Is a Minus

    Illustration: SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty

    Plus down, Thotiana. Apple TV has become the latest streaming service to try and rebrand its way into viewers’ hearts. As part of a press release for the streaming debut of F1: The Movie, the company said “Apple TV+ is now simply Apple TV, with a vibrant new identity.” What else does that vibrant new identity entail? Unclear!

    This is just the latest in a long list of rebrands for streamers. HBO Go became HBO Max, then just Max, then HBO Max again. IMDb Freedive became IMDb TV, then Freevee, then it became extinct. CBS All Access became Paramount+ after CBS remerged with its former studio. It has stayed Paramount+ even after the Skydance acquisition and all the political fallout it entailed. And most streamers have rebranded as more expensive. But Tubi stays Tubi, stays free, and stays full of both the fanciest and most schlocky horror movies, and for that we should all be thankful.

    Bethy Squires

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  • New on Amazon Prime Video: October 2025

    Hedda.
    Photo: Parisa Taghizadeh/MGM/Everett Collection

    Director Nia DaCosta and Tessa Thompson reunite for Hedda, an adaptation of the 19th century play Hedda Gabler. Thompson stars as Hedda, an ambitious woman who throws a party for her academic husband (Tom Bateman) and crosses paths with her ex-lover Eileen Lovborg (Nina Hoss). (Streaming October 29.)

    Noteworthy selections in bold.

    The Capture, season 1
    The Magicians, seasons 1-5
    1984
    17 Again
    A Shot in the Dark
    A View to a Kill
    A Walk Among the Tombstones
    Accepted
    Argo
    Argo: Extended Edition
    Bad Words
    Basic Instinct 2
    Beauty Shop
    Being John Malkovich
    Blazing Saddles
    Bodies Bodies Bodies
    Braveheart
    Bride of Frankenstein
    Bruce Almighty
    Bull Durham
    Candyman (1992)
    Casino Royale
    Cat People
    Crank
    Crank 2: High Voltage
    Creature From The Black Lagoon
    Curious George
    Dead Man Walking
    Death at a Funeral
    Diamonds Are Forever
    Die Another Day
    Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
    Dr. No
    Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas
    Dracula (1931)
    Easy A
    End of Days
    Erin Brockovich
    For Love of the Game
    For Your Eyes Only
    Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)
    Frankenstein (1931)
    From Russia with Love
    Ghost Story
    GoldenEye
    Goldfinger
    Hair
    Hang ‘Em High
    Holmes And Watson
    Hotel Rwanda
    House of Gucci
    Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
    Indiana Jones And the Last Crusade
    Indiana Jones and the Raiders Of The Lost Ark
    Indiana Jones and The Temple Of Doom
    It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie
    Jeepers Creepers
    Jeepers Creepers 2
    Judy
    Knight and Day
    Legends of the Fall
    Licence to Kill
    Live and Let Die
    Lucy
    Max
    Max 2: White House Hero
    Moonraker
    Moonstruck
    No Time To Die
    Octopussy
    On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
    Overboard
    Pixels
    Play Dirty
    Quantum of Solace
    Quigley Down Under
    Return To Me
    Revenge of the Pink Panther
    Scooby-Doo (2002)
    Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed
    Scoot And Kassie’s Christmas Adventure
    Skyfall
    Soul Plane
    Southpaw
    Spartacus
    Spectre
    Summer of Soul (…or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
    The Big Country
    The Boy
    The Breakfast Club
    The Change-Up
    The Commuter
    The Family Man
    The Greatest Story Ever Told
    The Invisible Man (1933)
    The Living Daylights
    The Man with the Golden Gun
    The Pink Panther (1964)
    The Pink Panther (2006)
    The Pink Panther 2
    The Pink Panther Strikes Again
    The Shack
    The Spy Who Loved Me
    The Terminator
    The World Is Not Enough
    Thelma & Louise
    Thunderball
    Tomorrow Never Dies
    Tremors
    Us
    Vacation Friends
    Vacation Friends 2
    Waterworld
    West Side Story (1961)
    You Only Live Twice

    A Star Brighter Than The Sun

    Sanda

    The Boogeyman

    Ninja vs. Gokudo

    Maintenance Required

    Saquon

    John Candy: I Like Me
    The Ballad of Wallis Island

    Culpa Nuestra
    Dracula Untold

    Hollywood Hustler: Glitz, Glam, Scam
    The Chosen Adventures

    Companion

    Harlan Coben’s Lazarus

    Allen Iv3rson
    Host

    Migration
    The Beast Within

    The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

    Hazbin Hotel, season 2
    Hedda

    Tremembé
    Dime tu nombre
    The Woman In The Yard

    For more coverage of the best movies and TV shows available on Netflix, HBO, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Showtime, check out Vulture’s What to Stream Now hub, which is updated throughout the month.

    Savannah Salazar

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  • The Scariest Horror Movies Hitting Theaters This October

    Coyotes, Frankenstein, Dracula, and Twilight.
    Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Everett Collection (Aura Entertainment, Ken Woroner/Netflix, 1-2 Special), Summit Distribution

    It’s been a scary-good year for theatrical horror, including some of the biggest hits of 2025. Sinners, Final Destination: Bloodlines, Weapons, and 28 Years Later are just a few of the films that have frightened moviegoers. And yet, despite the tear the genre has been on, and despite its now being spooky season, there aren’t as many high-profile horror titles as as you might expect there to be this October. Horror, as one of the few (mostly) reliable box-office bets, has taken over the rest of the calendar, leaving the lead-up to Halloween feeling a little bit lacking on the big screen.

    But just because there isn’t a Sinners or Weapons out ahead of All Hallows’ Eve doesn’t mean that there isn’t something waiting to scare you at the theater. There are plenty of smaller flicks, a couple of rereleases, and one studio sequel playing on big screens. Browse our full guide below, because horror always hits harder when you’re seeing it with an audience. (And don’t worry — we’ve got a guide to all the horror you can stream this month too.)

    Sage and Diego have rented a fancy house at the secluded and ominously named Bone Lake for what they hope will be a romantic getaway. However, another couple, Cin and Will, show up claiming that they booked the house too. They decide the place is big enough for all of them, but the double date soon turns into a psychological nightmare full of secrets, seduction, and twisty, pulpy, thrilling violence.

    Justin Long, who recently killed it in the 2022 horror movie Barbarian, plays a man living in the Hollywood Hills with his wife (Kate Bosworth) and daughter when a pack of extra-violent coyotes attack. “Killer animal attack” is a tried-and-true horror subgenre, and even the bad ones tend to be enjoyable in their own way, though the fact that the titular canids in this movie sure look AI-generated is a bummer.

    You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but you can make a new sort of horror movie starring a dog. Indy, a very expressive Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, is a loyal dog whose owner’s house is haunted, and Good Boy follows the pooch from his perspective as he encounters the various supernatural scares lurking in the night. (A cat would simply say, “That’s none of my business.”) Good Boy premiered at South by Southwest to good reviews.

    Elisabeth Moss plays an aging actress who tries to revitalize her fading career by changing up her look with the help of a wellness mogul (Kate Hudson). However, something sinister is going on, and there’s a monstrous secret behind the makeover. If that sounds a little familiar, consider that Shell had the misfortune of premiering at film festivals the same year as The Substance, which covers similar ground. Most reviews from the time say that the film has its own merits, however, with strong performances and a killer ending.

    Trick ‘r Treat was unceremoniously dumped straight to DVD in 2009, but the film — an anthology set on Halloween night that tells interlocking spooky tales starring Dylan Baker, Anna Paquin, and Brian Cox — managed to become a cult classic regardless. It’s finally getting a theatrical release courtesy of Fathom Entertainment. Just make sure you follow the rules of Halloween. Otherwise, Sam, the creepy trick-or-treater with a bag for a mask and a sharp lollipop, will get you.

    Scott Derrickson’s 2021 movie, The Black Phone, was a surprise box-office success, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that it’s calling back. Black Phone 2 once again stars Mason Thames as Finney. Although he became the first person to escape the child serial killer known as the Grabber (Ethan Hawke), thanks in part to the titular phone that let him speak to the murderer’s previous victims, it seems the Grabber’s not done with him yet. That’s extra scary considering the Grabber died at the end of the last movie.

    Guillermo del Toro’s take on Frankenstein will hit Netflix on November 7, but it’s alllllliiivvveeeeeee in select theaters in October. Doesn’t GDT’s production design deserve to be seen on the big screen? Oscar Isaac plays the titular doctor, Jacob Elordi plays his creation, and Mia Goth, Felix Kammerer, Charles Dance, and Christoph Waltz co-star.

    George A. Romero unleashed zombies all night, dawn, and day, but now his daughter, director Tina Romero, has found a new frontier for the living dead: a queer club. Queens of the Dead, which stars Katy O’Brian, Jaquel Spivey, Riki Lindhome, and Jack Haven, has a group of drag queens and club kids coming together to slay while they’re slaying the undead when a zombie outbreak strikes Manhattan. It’s campy, as you’d hope, but like her dad, Romero knows how to make sure her zombie movie has teeth, too.

    From Neon, Shelby Oaks follows a woman, Mia (Camille Sullivan), who is attempting to find out what happened to her sister (Sarah Durn), who went missing 12 years earlier while she was doing some paranormal investigating of an abandoned town. When Mia heads to Shelby Oaks, she encounters new horrors and uncovers demonic memories from her childhood. The movie is a finale of sorts to a YouTube Channel called Paranormal Paranoids, which also starred Durn, though one doesn’t need to have watched the four-year-old video series before seeing Shelby Oaks.

    There have been a lot of Dracula movies, most of which more or less follow the same basic beats. Romanian director Radu Jude’s Dracula is not one of those “normal” Draculas. It’s a proudly gonzo comedy horror — brilliantly vulgar, silly, and singular moviemaking.

    Is Twilight a horror movie? Or is it just scary that it’s been 20 years since the first Twilight book came out? Edward Cullen doesn’t age, but you’re getting older. Something to think about. All four movies, Twilight, Eclipse, and both parts of Breaking Dawn, will be in theaters, one night only for each, starting October 29.

    James Grebey

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  • The 11 Best Movies and TV Shows to Watch This Weekend

    Clockwise from top: The Long Walk, Only Murders in the Building, The Girlfriend, and Spinal Tap II: The End Continues.
    Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Murray Close/Lionsgate, Bleecker Street, Christopher Raphael/Prime, Patrick Harbron/Disney

    Nothing like a new Stephen King adaptation to usher in a turning season. Fall might not have technically started yet, but you can still nestle in a dark air-conditioned theater and pretend to your heart’s content with this week’s plethora of options. Alongside The Long Walk, there’s the reunion of a decades-old fake rock band, a return of a charming singing nun/babysitter, another murder in a New York, and a chance to go back in Pixar’s toy box. (A lot of returns, huh?) Plus, the Emmys!

    A Francis Lawrence movie set in a dystopian America where young people are part of a deadly competition? Sounds right. The Hunger Games director is taking a break from Panem to adapt some Stephen King. In The Long Walk, young men sign up for a walking contest where they must keep a pace of three miles per hour or be killed on the spot, and the contest only ends when there’s one person left. Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, and Charlie Plummer star as some of the young boys in this gnarly competition while Mark Hamill is the Major, the menacing officer supervising the walk.

    ➽ How far did The Long Walk make it in our ranking of every Stephen King movie adaptation? Pretty far!

    Forty-one years after This Is Spinal Tap, the fictional English rock band is putting on their final show. Rob Reiner’s mockumentary follows the band (made up of Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer) as they prep for a reunion concert. Reiner also reprises his role as Marty Dibergi, the documentarian filming Spinal Tap. The nostalgia levels go up to 11.

    If this list is the first time you’re hearing about Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba — The Movie: Infinity Castle, chances are you’re probably not going to be headed to the cinema for this one. But the film, an adaptation of the Infinity Castle arc of the manga series, which follows Tanjiro, Nezuko, and the Hashira as they enter the titular castle and battle deadly Upper Rank demons, is already a huge hit. It’s the third-highest grossing film in Japanese history. (The No. 1 highest grosser? The last one, 2020’s Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba — The Movie: Mugen Train.) —James Grebey

    In Jay Duplass’s odd, delightfully rambling film that also serves as a twisted love letter to Baltimore, a down-on-his-luck stand-up comedian and an emergency dentist spend a strangely eventful Christmas Eve together. —Bilge Ebiri

    “Attempting any kind of praxis read of The Grand Finale is a fool’s errand. Yet the film moves briskly because it’s the cinematic equivalent of great gowns, beautiful gowns.”

    (Read Roxana Hadadi’s full review here. In theaters now.)

    Summer’s not over yet, so you still have time to fit in one more sleazy, sexy series. Robin Wright stars as the wealthy and cultured Laura, whose son brings home the girlfriend from hell. Olivia Cooke’s Cherry makes out with Laura’s son in public, lies about her knowledge of art, and seems to be hiding a secret—or is Laura overprotective? The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, but until then, let the women fight. —Roxana Hadadi

    Stop me if you’ve heard this one: Someone dies in the Arconia, and Charles, Oliver, and Mabel can’t help but investigate. This time, the suspects include mobsters and billionaires, which couldn’t be more New York, actually. —R.H.

    ➽ Can Only Murders keep getting away with this formula? Maybe.

    Is it Apple’s big night? Between Severance and The Studio, the company is sure hoping for a great night. At least they’re good shows. Plus, we’ll be seeing mini-reunions of Gilmore Girls, The Good Place, and more with the large crop of presenters at the Emmys. If it’s a good night of television, we’ll send our thanks to Sal Saperstein.

    ➼ The best way to watch? With your best friend, a humble TV antenna. We tested three great ones.

    Do, a deer, Re, a drop of golden sun, Mi, a name I call myself, Fa, a long, long way to run, So, a needle pulling thread, La, a note to follow so, and … There’s a snake in my boot. This weekend, we have two childhood classics out in theaters: The Sound of Music and Toy Story. Both are exciting films to see back on the big screen, so might as well have a double feature.

    “Gladys is an instant entry into the canon of contemporary horror iconography, and for that alone, the character is worthy of commendation. But she’s also so much more than the inevitable drag shows that will immortalize her. Underneath the pounds of lipstick, eye shadow, and wig is a thrillingly committed performance from [Amy] Madigan, a character actor who has seldom gotten the kind of showcase she gets here.”

    Writer Louis Peitzman on the fantastic performance of Madigan in Weapons, now out on VOD. Read more here.

    ➽ Plus, Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland’s Warfare is on HBO Max.

    Want more? Read our recommendations from the weekend of September 5.

    Savannah Salazar

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  • What Paramount Buying Warner Bros. Could Mean for Hollywood

    Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Getty Images

    Paramount Skydance, backed by the family of CEO David Ellison, is getting ready to make a bid to take over all of Warner Bros. Discovery before the two companies can go through with their plan to split, per a new report from The Wall Street Journal. If such a deal happens, it would put networks as diverse as CBS, CNN, TCM, and MTV under one roof and result in the combination of two historic Hollywood studios, Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. There has been speculation in multiple media outlets for months about something like this happening — the idea of HBO Max and Paramount+ combining into a single app is a no-brainer — but the speed with which it could be coming together, so soon after Skydance closed its deal for Paramount, does feel a tad surprising. Deadline is also confirming the WSJ story, though it throws a bit of cold water on how much urgency there is to the bid: “Nothing new there, he’s just taking a closer look, assessing the pros and cons,” says a Paramount source quoted by the trade outlet.

    We’re probably still a long way away from such a deal actually becoming reality (if it does), and to be clear: No offer has been made. It’s also not clear how WBD management and shareholders would react — though WBD stock soared nearly 30 percent after the WSJ story broke — or whether news of this possible bid brings out other potential buyers. It’s still early days.

    That said, given how much Hollywood loves a merger these days, it’s always worth thinking about what comes next and what such a mash-up of media giants might bring — for good and (mostly ill). Some immediate questions and thoughts about the possibility of Para Bros.:

    ➼ If the Ellisons get control of WBD, they get control of CNN. Given how much Paramount has pushed CBS News rightward in the past couple weeks, it’s easy to imagine the Trump White House won’t stand in the way of the Ellisons taking over WBD. In fact, one could see it happily pushing for a deal that would put CNN in the hands of owners even more accommodating than its current overseers.

    ➼ Bari Weiss, founder of the right-wing outlet The Free Press, is rumored to be in line for a major gig at CBS News. If this deal happens, will she end up overseeing a CBS News powered by CNN — or all of a combined CNN-CBS News?

    ➼ Will the studio attrition from five major studios to a mere four accelerate moviedom’s seemingly endless doom cycle of sequels, reboots, and tired IP retreads? Coming just a half-dozen years after Disney’s $71.3 billion swallowing of 21st Century Fox, the Para Bros. merger would necessarily trigger a cascade of industry executive layoffs but also drastically reduce the number of studio suitors vying for hot, original movie projects. That would leave less room for new filmic voices and engender frictionless pushback against the kind of corporate groupthink responsible for the boring sameness behind our current multiplex malaise. (Exhibit A: This summer delivered the worst cumulative box-office returns since 1981 adjusted for inflation and discounting COVID lockouts.)

    ➼ Given the trend toward streaming consolidation (see Hulu on Disney+), importing the relatively small content offering of Paramount+ into HBO Max feels like a given under any merger scenario. That said, David Ellison has already started working to dramatically improve the tech of Paramount+ and HBO Max has had its own user-experience issues. It’s quite possible the end result of a deal would be the creation of a totally new platform with, yes, another new name. HBO Max, we hardly knew ye.

    ➼ The amount of layoffs that would result from this merger is depressing to consider. As it is, Paramount Skydance is already planning to pink-slip thousands of employees this fall. The pain will be real and deep.

    ➼ Will putting DC and Star Trek in the same corporate family give us the Star Trek–Superman crossover some Trekkers have fantasized about? Who knows, but the IP-sharing potential of a Warners/Paramount combo is huge. The same company would control The Godfather and The Sopranos, Top Gun and Barbie, I Love Lucy and Friends.

    ➼ Assuming Para Bros. stays in the cable business, would ancient enemies Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network team up to give the new entity enough IP to better take on Disney? Or would the new company care about kids and animation at all?

    ➼ And the most important question of all: Will David Zaslav, fresh off his role in the new Sphere remix of The Wizard of Oz, get himself a cameo in the next Yellowstone spinoff? Or will he ride off into the retirement sunset, having successfully added tens of millions to his net work this decade?

    Chris Lee contributed to this report.


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    Josef Adalian

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  • New on Paramount+: September 2025

    The Wedding Banquet.
    Photo: Bleecker Street Media

    Don’t have Paramount+ yet?

    For his remake of Ang Lee’s 1993 romantic comedy, director Andrew Ahn put an even queerer spin on The Wedding Banquet. Kelly Marie Tran, Lily Gladstone, Han Gi-chan, and Bowen Yang star as a two couples living together. Tran and Gladstone’s Angela and Lee are trying to have a child while Gi-chan’s Min is being asked by his grandmother (Youn Yuh-jung) to return home to Korea, which would mean leaving his boyfriend (Yang) behind. What comes next is a grand marriage scheme of mixed couplings to try and get Min a green-card and Lee and Angela more money for another round of IVF. (Streaming September 8.)

    Noteworthy selections in bold.

    Winter Spring Summer Fall, streaming premiere
    A.I. Artificial Intelligence
    Addams Family Values
    Afflicted 
    Along Came A Spider
    Angel Heart
    Approaching The Unknown
    April Fool’s Day
    Area 51
    Arrival
    Asylum
    Below
    Beneath
    Blade 
    Blade II 
    Blade: Trinity
    Body Cam
    Brick Mansions
    Burke & Hare
    Cesar Chavez
    Cloverfield
    Cursed
    Daybreakers
    Disturbia
    Dracula III: Legacy
    Face/Off
    Fatal Attraction
    Frida
    Friday the 13th
    Friday the 13th Part II 
    Friday the 13th Part III
    Friday the 13th Park IV: The Final Chapter
    Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning 
    Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives 
    Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood 
    Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan
    From Dusk Till Dawn
    From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money
    From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman’s Daughter
    Galaxy Quest 
    Gattaca
    Geostorm
    Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters
    How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days 
    I Know What You Did Last Summer 
    Jacob’s Ladder
    John Carpenter’s Escape from L.A. 
    Kiss the Girls 
    La Bamba
    Labor Day
    Life
    Like Water for Chocolate 
    Loosies
    Margaux
    Mommie Dearest
    Murder On The Orient Express
    National Lampoon’s Animal House
    Nick of Time
    Nobody’s Fool
    O (Othello) 
    Overlord 
    Patriot Games 
    Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
    Phantoms
    Piñero
    Quinceañera 
    Road to Perdition
    Safe
    Scary Movie
    Scary Movie 2
    Scary Movie 3
    Scream 4
    Seven Psychopaths
    Sleepy Hollow
    Small Soldiers
    Spell
    Spontaneous
    Student Bodies
    Super 8 
    Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
    Sweet Dreams
    Teaching Mrs. Tingle
    The Addams Family
    The Commuter
    The Crow
    The Crow: City of Angels
    The Crow: Wicked Prayer
    The Devil Inside
    The Faculty
    The Gift
    The Grifters
    The Haunting
    The Hunter
    The Island
    The Last Exorcism Part II 
    The Longest Yard
    The Loved Ones
    The Mechanic
    The Monster Squad
    The Night Clerk
    The Parallax View
    The Reckoning
    The Relic
    The Ring
    The Stepford Wives
    The Sum of All Fears
    The Terminal
    The Uninvited 
    The Woman in Black
    To Catch a Thief
    Twisted
    Universal Soldier
    Up in Smoke
    Vampire in Brooklyn
    Venom
    Vertical Limit 
    Virtuosity 
    Wes Craven Presents: Dracula 2000
    Wes Craven Presents: They
    Witness
    World War Z

    Wolves

    NCIS: Tony & Ziva, series premiere

    Old Henry
    Superhero Movie

    2025 Video Music Awards

    The Wedding Banquet, streaming premiere

    Thirst Trap: The Fame. The Fantasy. The Fallout., documentary premiere

    The Tiny Chef Show, season 3
    Personal Shopper

    The Reunion, season 1

    Primetime Emmy Awards

    Air Disasters, season 22
    The Adventures of Paddington, season 3

    Tulsa King, season 3 premiere
    A GRAMMY Salute to Earth, Wind & Fire Live: The 21st Night of September, special

    Bodyguard of Lies, documentary premiere

    Survivor, season 49

    The Amazing Race, season 38

    60 Minutes, season 58
    48 Hours, season 38


    See All



    Savannah Salazar

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  • A Spooky Guide to All the New Horror Streaming in October

    A Spooky Guide to All the New Horror Streaming in October

    This article will be updated throughout October as more horror offerings become available on streaming services.

    It’s the best time of year again! As the leaves start to fall and high temperatures drop, we turn to horror movies to kick off the seasonal shift — and the streamers answer the call. The powers that be at companies like Netflix, Hulu, and Peacock understand that horror has always been one of the top performers on streaming services, which is never truer than in the weeks leading up to Halloween. This year, almost every streaming service has an interesting new offering for anyone looking for a chill in their bones to match the one in the air. Some of these have already premiered at film festivals like Toronto and Fantastic Fest, while others are still tantalizingly unknown quantities. We picked out 12 of the most interesting ones for your calendar, with another 12 alternates for the real genre completists.

    October 3, Hulu

    It wouldn’t be October without Sarah Paulson haunting your streaming algorithms, but she’s actually not involved in the recent Ryan Murphy projects Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story or Grotesquerie. Instead, she’s leading a new Hulu original horror film that premiered at the end of the Toronto International Film Festival last month. Set in 1930s Oklahoma, Hold Your Breath is a story of a terrifying dust storm which a young mother asserts hides a supernatural entity that means her harm. It co-stars Emmy winner Ebon Moss-Bachrach (The Bear), and critics praised Paulson’s work out of Toronto. Of course they did. She almost never misses.

    October 3, Max

    Creatives keep returning to Stephen King’s second novel, now almost four decades old. Tobe Hooper made an underrated miniseries version in 1979, and the less said the better when it comes to the Rob Lowe take from 2004. This film version really sparked to life after the success of It in 2017, when every studio went looking for a King classic to remake. The Conjuring mastermind James Wan was attached as a producer from the beginning, as was writer-director Gary Dauberman, who wrote the two movies about the murderous clown. Starring Lewis Pullman of Lessons in Chemistry, the tale of a writer who returns to his hometown to find it overrun by vampires was actually shot years ago and was set to be released in September 2022. COVID reportedly delayed postproduction and then the notoriously weird things going on over at Max/WB appeared like they could bury this film forever à la Coyote vs. Acme. It seems like it took King himself asking questions in February 2024 to get the film a release date. It’s also worth noting that it opened the famous genre celebration Beyond Fest late last month, usually a sign that there’s something worthwhile about to drop.

    October 4, Netflix

    The biggest deal to come out of Sundance this year wasn’t for a clever comedy about a family coming to terms with one another — it was for the film that Netflix hopes will be the next huge horror hit for the streaming company. That’s why they paid $17 million for Greg Jardin’s It’s What’s Inside, though the director doesn’t exactly embrace the genre branding, telling producer Colman Domingo that “it’s a sci-fi thriller with jokes.” What’s the killer concept that broke the bank in Park City? At a pre-wedding party of close friends, one shows up with a body-swapping machine, leading to revelations, betrayals, and what Jardin calls “existential chaos.” The key to the film’s likely success is that it doesn’t sound like anything else on any of the streamers, and standing apart from the genre crowd is sometimes the best thing a new movie can do.

    October 4, Netflix

    Five years after the original took Netflix by storm, Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia returns with The Platform 2, a sci-fi-horror sequel that promises to expand on the many ideas brought up by the first movie. The Platform cleverly imagines a future prison system wherein vertical housing facilities include a massive platform that runs down their center and contains enough food for everyone to survive, presuming those close to the top leave enough for those close to the bottom. Of course, that’s not how society works. The Platform was a sharp, grisly piece of work that seemed extra dark as most of us watched it in the early days of the COVID lockdown — and there are so many directions in which a sequel can go, making this easily one of the most interesting original streaming productions of the entire year, not just October.

    October 10, Starz

    Ella Purnell has become a reliable force in television, first stealing scenes in Yellowjackets and then anchoring the gigantic Fallout for Prime Video. Her latest for Starz sees her in a new register in this adaptation of the book by C.J. Skuse about an ordinary woman who is pushed to extraordinary extremes by the many people around her who ignore her. Purnell plays Rhiannon Lewis, a bored, annoyed, average woman who struggles at work and in romance. Unlike most people, Rhiannon takes drastic, murderous action, eliminating those who have brought her life down. This U.K. import doesn’t really sound like anything else premiering this season, which might help turn it into the cult hit that Starz could really use this time of year.

    October 10, Peacock

    Even after two episodes premiered at Fantastic Fest, little is known about this promising new Peacock offering, but the pedigree is undeniably impressive. It’s a new series based on the novel Stinger by Robert R. McCammon, a big name in ’80s and ’90s horror. (It’s kind of a deep cut, but there’s an amazing episode of the ’80s reboot of The Twilight Zone called “Nightcrawlers” that was adapted from one of his short stories. There’s a reason it’s on this list.) It was produced by James Wan, the mastermind behind The Conjuring universe, and it stars Yvonne Strahovski (The Handmaid’s Tale) and Scott Speedman (Felicity), along with some other interesting character actors. It seems like the kind of project that’s going to be better appreciated the less we know about it, so let’s just say that it’s about a rural ranch in Georgia, where bad things start to happen. That’s enough for us.

    October 11, Shudder

    Benjamin Barfoot’s nightmare fuel was one of the few films at Fantastic Fest this year that was legitimately creepy, and it’s making a quick turnaround to Shudder to keep everyone up at night. Rupert Turnbull plays a young man named Isaac whose father dies in a car crash, leaving him alone at an isolated estate in the middle of nowhere with a stepmom who never really wanted to be a single parent. Before the domestic drama can really unfold, Isaac is visited by something that has the same head as his father. Elements of folk horror and science fiction blend into a singular vision, a study of grief that’s unlike anything else on Shudder right now. It’s a movie that will haunt you, especially when you’re alone late at night and you could swear you just heard or saw something that shouldn’t be there.

    October 18, Peacock

    Creative people will never tire of mining the awfulness of the satanic panic for horror or even dark comedy. It’s hard to be sure exactly where this one will fall on the genre spectrum, but the involvement of Julie Bowen and Bruce Campbell suggests it may be a little tongue-in-cheek in its telling of the disappearance of a varsity quarterback in small-town America in the 1980s. With townspeople convinced that the athlete was sucked up by the waves of satanism spreading across the country, a group of outcasts in a band named Dethkrunch decides to lean into the panic, turning the members into targets themselves. It sounds fun, and all eight episodes drop on Peacock on the same day.

    October 18, Shudder

    One of the best films of Fantastic Fest is a oner that owes a great deal to films like Victoria and [REC], but it’s also got the energy of a George A. Romero telling of the end of the world. Yeah, it rules. David Moreau, who wrote the awesome Ils (Them) from 2006, directs this truly bonkers movie that unfolds in real time over about 90 minutes of escalating horror. It starts when a bandaged, bloody woman jumps into the car of a young man named Romain. After she gets her blood all over him and promptly disappears, Romain starts to act, well, abnormally. But the party must go on. As whatever twitchy, zombie-esque disease this woman was carrying spreads, it becomes clearer that no one is making it out of this night alive. This is a smart, fast-paced movie that’s almost certainly going to become the kind of thing that someone tells you to watch after they discover it on Shudder. Get on the bandwagon early.

    October 18, Netflix

    Anna Kendrick proves herself to be a nuanced director with her debut, a film that’s closer to thriller than horror compared to most on this list, but it’s chill-inducing enough to qualify. Kendrick also stars as Cheryl Bradshaw, a woman who appeared on The Dating Game in 1978, where she was paired with a seemingly ordinary guy named Rodney Alcala. Later, it was revealed that Alcala was a serial killer, and Kendrick uses this encounter to unpack Alcala’s subconscious and how a culture that casually tosses off phrases like “get the girl” may feed into the worldview of the insane. It’s about systemic misogyny in a way that’s not preachy, and it’s a tightly wound thriller (only 94 minutes!) that will almost certainly become one of the biggest Netflix streamers of the year.

    October 18, Apple TV+

    Consider this a tasty appetizer before the full meal that will be Robert Eggers’s take on Nosferatu (in theaters on Christmas Day). The main reason to be excited about this fascinating project is the involvement of Doug Jones, the physically brilliant actor from Hellboy, The Shape of Water, and Pan’s Labyrinth. He plays the title character in David Lee Fisher’s version of the 1922 silent original, shot scene by scene as the same story but with a new cast and green-screen technology designed to heighten the experience. It promises to feel old and new at the same time, something out of place, kind of like Nosferatu itself.

    October 21, Hulu

    Excuse me, did you say “sentient pumpkin”? Arguably the weirdest project of Spooky Season 2024, this original film is reportedly about a murderous pumpkin that stalks a group of young people on Halloween when they get stuck in a historical reenactment village. Will it be a comedy? Are we supposed to take a murderous pumpkin seriously? It’s too soon to tell, but major points for originality here. It might not be great, but it won’t be like anything else. Think twice before you carve yours this year. You wouldn’t want to make it mad.

    ➼ The Bad Guys: Haunted Heist (Netflix, October 3) — The hit books by Aaron Blabey were turned into a huge film for DreamWorks in 2022 but are becoming seasonal staples for Netflix as their 2023 holiday special is now joined by a Halloween outing.

    ➼ House of Spoils (Prime Video, October 3) — Oscar winner Ariana DeBose plays a rising chef who opens a new destination restaurant in a remote house that just might have ghosts on the menu.

    ➼ V/H/S/Beyond (Shudder, October 4) — If it’s October, there must be a new V/H/S. This one includes segments directed by Justin Long and Kate Siegel, from a script by her husband, Mike Flanagan.

    ➼ Caddo Lake (Max, October 10) — M. Night Shyamalan produces this original thriller about a missing girl near the titular lake, an actual hotbed of supernatural activity on the border between Texas and Louisiana.

    ➼ Mr. Crocket (Hulu, October 11) — A children’s-TV-show host in the ’90s comes out of TV sets to kidnap children and murder their parents in this Hulu original film.

    ➼ Family Guy Halloween Special (Hulu, October 14) — A Hulu exclusive special for the Griffin clan that features star du jour Glen Powell as the king of the annual Quahog pumpkin contest.

    ➼ American Horror Stories (Hulu, October 15) — Five new episodes in the AHS anthology series that include appearances by Michael Imperioli, Henry Winkler, June Squibb, Jessica Barden, and more.

    ➼ The Shadow Strays (Netflix, October 17) — Timo Tjahjanto is one of the craziest action directors alive, helming The Night Comes for Us and The Big 4, among others. His latest isn’t horror but has such a massive fake-blood budget that it qualifies for a list like this one.

    ➼ MaXXXine (Max, October 18) — Ti West closes out his trilogy with Mia Goth, which includes X and Pearl, available exclusively on Max.

    ➼ Trap (Max, October 25) — M. Night Shyamalan’s divisive latest lands on Max just in time for those looking to perfect their Lady Raven costumes for a Halloween party.

    ➼ What We Do in the Shadows: Season Six (FX on Hulu, October 22) – The final season of the hit FX show that’s basically “Real World With Vampires” launches just before Halloween.

    ➼ Hellbound: Season Two (Netflix, October 25) – The first season of this Korean nightmare fuel about creatures basically escaping hell aired way back in 2021 and finally returns to pick up the pieces three years later.

    Brian Tallerico

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  • The 30 Best Movies on Paramount+ Right Now

    The 30 Best Movies on Paramount+ Right Now

    Amores Perros.
    Photo: Lionsgate

    This post will be updated frequently as movies enter and leave the service. *New titles are indicated with an asterisk.

    In 2021, CBS All Access rebranded with the name Paramount+, reflecting the history of the legendary film and TV company with that nifty little mathematical sign that all the streaming companies seem to love these days. The name Paramount brings a deep catalogue of feature films, and the streaming service also includes titles from the Miramax and MGM libraries. They have also added a more robust original selection than at launch to complement the service’s classics like Gladiator, the Mission: Impossible series and Grease.

    For now, Paramount+ can’t compare to the depth of a catalogue like Max’s or the award-winning original works at other streamers, but it has a solid library with at least 30 films you should see.

    Year: 2001
    Runtime: 2h 34m
    Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

    Alejandro González Iñárritu would go on to win two directing Oscars but he first earned worldwide acclaim with this time-jumping thriller starring Gael Garcia Bernal. At the end of a wave of violent triptychs inspired by Pulp Fiction, Amores Perros somehow still felt fresh and new thanks to its director’s daring storytelling style and skill with actors.

    Year: 2016
    Runtime: 1h 56m
    Director: Denis Villeneuve

    The beloved French director’s best film remains his adaptation of “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang, a tale of alien invasion that’s really more about the people on Earth than the interplanetary visitors. Amy Adams gives one of the best performances of her career as a linguist tasked with communicating with the aliens.

    Year: 2004
    Runtime: 2h 50m
    Director: Martin Scorsese

    Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Howard Hughes in Martin Scorsese’s incredibly detailed and lavish period piece about one of the most infamous eccentric millionaires of all time. It feels like every other month produces a bit of social outrage about Scorsese’s place in movie history or his comments on Marvel movies. Ignore that noise and just watch one of his works that doesn’t get nearly enough praise, anchored by one of DiCaprio’s best performances and some of the most impressive aerial cinematography of all time.

    Year: 2007
    Runtime: 1h 56m
    Director: Sidney Lumet

    The masterful director of 12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, and so many more American classics ended his career with a banger in this intense thriller featuring performances from Ethan Hawke, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Marisa Tomei, and Albert Finney that stand among their best. A chronological puzzle of a film that would impress Chris Nolan with its structure, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is one of the best films of the 2000s.

    Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead

    Year: 1984
    Runtime: 1h 45m
    Director: Martin Brest

    It’s hard to explain to people too young to experience it how big a star Eddie Murphy was in 1984 when his Axel Foley ruled the world. Murphy’s wit and charm were put to perfect use in Beverly Hills Cop that produced two inferior sequels, and both happen to also be on Paramount Plus.

    Year: 1997
    Runtime: 2h 35m
    Director: P.T. Anderson

    Paul Thomas Anderson is widely recognized as one of the best living American filmmakers now, but that wasn’t the case before the release of this masterpiece about life in the Los Angeles porn scene. Mark Wahlberg has never (and likely never will be) better than he is here, anchoring an ensemble that includes equally great work from Julianne Moore and Burt Reynolds.

    Year: 1974
    Runtime: 2h 10m
    Director: Roman Polanski

    Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown. One of the best movies of the ‘70s, this Best Picture nominee (and Best Screenplay winner) tells the story of Jake Gittes, played unforgettably by Jack Nicholson, as he investigates an adulterer and finds something much more insidious under the surface of Los Angeles. It’s a must-see, as important as almost any film from its era.

    Year: 1995
    Runtime: 1h 37m
    Director: Amy Heckerling

    You can keep all those stuffy Jane Austen adaptations—one of the best remains Amy Heckerling’s updating of the 1815 classic Emma to mid-‘90s L.A. Is this the most ‘90s movie ever? From its fashion to its references to its beloved characters, Clueless is certainly one of the most iconic, a movie that made a small impact when it was released but feels like it grows even more popular with each generation that discovers it.

    Year: 2004
    Runtime: 1h 59m
    Director: Michael Mann

    Tom Cruise gives one of his most fascinating performances as Vincent, the passenger to Jamie Foxx’s L.A. cab driver on a very fateful night. It turns out that Vincent is hitman and he needs Foxx’s character to drive him on a killing spree in this tense, gorgeously-shot thriller from the masterful craftsman Michael Mann.

    Year: 2022
    Runtime: 2h 19m
    Director: J.D. Dillard

    The proximity to another little movie about pilots called Top Gun: Maverick likely hurt the bottom line of this excellent, old-fashioned drama based on a true story. The excellent Jonathan Majors plays Jesse Brown, the first Black aviator in Navy history, and Maverick star Glen Powell plays his co-pilot and friend Tom Hudner. Both young future stars are excellent in a film that viewers can now find at home.

    Year: 2019
    Runtime: 2h 32m
    Director: Mike Flanagan

    Almost four decades after Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House) adapted the sequel by Stephen King with what felt like mixed results. However, in just the few years since this movie came out, it feels like the cult following has grown. It’s a stylish drama that kind of falls apart in the final act, but has enough good stuff before that to recommend a look.

    Year: 1997
    Runtime: 2h 18m
    Director: John Woo

    There are rumors that a remake of this John Woo classic is on the horizon, so you owe it to yourself to go back and see the very high standard that project will have to meet. Face/Off is one of the best action movies of the ‘90s, a wonderfully staged blockbuster by one of the genre’s best filmmakers. And John Travolta and Nicolas Cage were near the peaks of their screen charismas as an FBI agent and terrorist who end up, well, switching faces. It’s a blast.

    Year: 2020
    Runtime: 1h 38m
    Director: Jiayan “Jenny” Shi

    Jiayan Shi directed and produced this heartbreaking documentary about the disappearance and death of Yingying Zhang in 2017. Shi has unique access to the story in that she knew Yingying, and so her film has an incredible you-are-there quality as Shi captures the investigation and grief that would emerge from this horrific crime. Paramount+ deserves credit for bringing smaller projects like this to their subscribers, ones that other major streamers might ignore.

    Year: 2000
    Runtime: 2h 34m
    Director: Ridley Scott

    One of the most popular films of its era, this action epic stars Russell Crowe as the legendary Maximus, a warrior whose family is murdered by the vicious Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix). Forced into slavery, Maximus has to rise the gladiator arenas to get his vengeance. The film made a fortune on its way to winning the Oscar for Best Picture.

    Year: 1972
    Runtime: 2h 55m
    Director: Francis Ford Coppola

    Maybe you’ve heard of it? In all seriousness, there’s a very cool opportunity right now to watch the entire Godfather trilogy on Paramount+, including the superior recent cut of the third film. You could then slide from some of the best filmmaking of all time into the streaming service’s original series The Offer, about the making of Coppola’s masterpiece.

    Year: 2014
    Runtime: 2h 49m
    Director: Christopher Nolan

    No one else makes movies like Christopher Nolan, a man who took his superhero success and used it to get gigantic budgets to bring his wildest dreams to the big screen. Who else could make this sprawling, emotional, complicated film about an astronaut (Matthew McConaughey) searching for a new home for humanity? It’s divisive among some Nolan fans for its deep emotions, but those who love it really love it.

    Year: 2015
    Runtime: 1h 40m
    Director: David Robert Mitchell

    Maika Monroe stars in this indie horror breakthrough hit as a young woman who discovers that her recent sexual activity has cursed her with a supernatural force that will chase her until she passes it along to someone else. Stylish and striking, this felt like nothing else on the American horror market in 2014, really ushering in the era of what is now called “elevated horror.” Whatever you call it, It Follows is still an unforgettable genre flick.

    Year: 2002
    Runtime: 1h 25m
    Director: Jeff Tremaine

    Jackass Forever helped 2022 start with a bang. Now you can go back and watch the whole series exclusively on Paramount+ right now! (Even the “alternate” ones like Jackass 3.5). Go back to the heyday of Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, and the rest of the dangerous idiots. These movies are often derided as being dumb but they’re a glorious, infectious kind of dumb that wants nothing more than to make you laugh.

    Year: 1996
    Runtime: 2h 18m
    Director: Cameron Crowe

    One of Cameron Crowe’s best films became something of a punchline with its heavily quoted lines (“Show me the money,” “You had me at hello,” everything that cute kid says) but it’s actually a character-driven romantic comedy that has held up incredibly well in the quarter-century since its release. Tom Cruise plays the title character, a sports agent who is pushed into starting his own agency while he falls in love with a single mother, played by Renee Zellweger. It’s sweet, smart, and funny.

    Year: 2022
    Runtime: 1h 52m
    Director: Aaron Nee, Adam Nee

    With echoes of beloved rom-coms like African Queen and Romancing the Stone, this film truly felt like an anomaly in 2022, and yet it turned into a pretty big hit at the theater. It’s already on streaming services, and it’s a great choice if you’re looking for some escapism tonight. Travel to the middle of nowhere with a romance novel writer (Sandra Bullock) and the cover model (Channing Tatum) who tries to save the day.

    Year: 2002
    Runtime: 2h 25m
    Director: Steven Spielberg

    One of Steven Spielberg’s best modern movies is this adaptation of a Philip K. Dick story about a future in which crime can be predicted before it happens. Tom Cruise stars as a man who is convicted of a crime he has no intent of committing in a fantastic vision of a future in which the systems designed to stop crime have been corrupted. It’s timely and probably always will be.

    Year: 1996-present
    Runtime: Varies
    Director: Various

    The whole series is finally here! For some reason, parts 1 to 3 and parts 4 to 6 have alternated residence on a lot of streaming services, but Paramount+ currently hosts the entire thing from De Palma’s first movie to Fallout. While we wait for Mission: Impossible 7, revisit the whole arc of the saga of Ethan Hunt to date.

    Year: 2023
    Runtime: 1h 45m
    Director: Celine Song

    A current Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay nominee, this phenomenal film isn’t on any of the other streamers. It stars the excellent Greta Lee and Teo Yoo as a couple who were close as children but reunite years later after she immigrated to the United States. It’s as much a story of what people leave behind when they change their entire lives as it is a traditional story of unrequited love. It’s beautiful and unforgettable.

    Year: 2008
    Runtime: 1h 52m
    Director: David Gordon Green

    Seth Rogen gives one of his best performances as Dale Denton, an average guy who just wants to get high. He visits his dealer (played perfectly by James Franco) on the wrong night as the pair cross paths with hitmen and a police officer on the wrong side of the law. This is an incredibly funny movie, and you don’t need to be high to love it.

    Year: 2018
    Runtime: 1h 30m
    Director: John Krasinski

    Who could have possibly guessed that Jim from The Office would be behind one of the most successful horror films of the ‘10s? You’ve probably already seen this story of a world in which silence is the only way to survive, but it’s worth another look to marvel at its tight, taut filmmaking and a stellar performance from Emily Blunt. Plus, Paramount+ recently added the sequel, so: double feature time!

    Year: 2019
    Runtime: 1h 24m
    Director: Rose Glass

    Rose Glass’s terrifying horror film is one of the best movies of 2021 and it’s already on Paramount+. Reminiscent of psychological nightmares of the ‘70s like Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby, this is the tale of a hospice nurse named Maud (a fearless performance from Morfydd Clark) who becomes obsessed with saving the soul of one of her patients (Jennifer Ehle). It’s unforgettable.

    Year: 1996
    Runtime: 1h 51m
    Director: Wes Craven

    The Ghostface killer came back in January 2022 with the release of Scream, the fifth film in this franchise and the first since the death of Wes Craven, and the fun continued with another sequel in 2023 (although the troubles around the production of the seventh film have been, well, notable). Paramount+ is the best place for a marathon with the original trilogy and the fifth and sixth films (but, bizarrely, not Scream 4.) The first movie is still a flat-out genre masterpiece.

    Year: 2010
    Runtime: 2h
    Director: David Fincher

    One of the best movies of the 2010s has returned to Paramount after a brief hiatus to remind people how wildly far ahead of its time this movie was when it was released. With a razor-sharp screenplay by Aaron Sorkin and some of the best direction of David Fincher’s career, this is a flawless movie, one that resonates even more now in the era of constant internet than it did thirteen years ago.

    Year: 1986
    Runtime: 1h 53m
    Director: Jonathan Demme

    Jonathan Demme was a master of tonal balancing, finding a way to perfectly blend the comedy and the dread in this story of an average man caught up in a criminal’s web. Charlie (Jeff Daniels) is a milquetoast banker who goes on a wild ride with a girl named Lulu (Melanie Griffith), but everything changes when Lulu’s ex (an unforgettable Ray Liotta) enters the picture.

    Year: 2007
    Runtime: 2h 38m
    Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

    One of the best films of the ‘00s, Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of Upton Sinclair’s Oil! won Daniel Day-Lewis his second Oscar as the unforgettable Daniel Plainview. As detailed and epic as great fiction, Anderson’s movie is one of the most acclaimed of its era, a film in which it’s hard to find a single flaw. Even if you think you’ve seen it enough, watch it again. You’ll find a new reason to admire it.

    Year: 1997
    Runtime: 3h 14m
    Director: James Cameron

    More than just a blockbuster, this Best Picture winner was a legitimate cultural phenomenon, staying at the top of the box office charts for months. There was a point when it felt like not only had everyone seen the story of Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Rose (Kate Winslet), but most people had seen it twice. History has kind of reduced this epic to its quotable scenes and earworm theme song, but it’s a better movie than you remember, a great example of James Cameron’s truly robust filmmaking style.

    Year: 2022
    Runtime: 2h 10m
    Director: Joseph Kosinski

    It’s the movie that saved movies last year! The truth is that Paramount wanted to drop this long-awaited sequel on a streamer during the pandemic, but Tom Cruise knew it was the kind of thing that should be appreciated in a theater. He bet on himself and the result is arguably the biggest hit of his career, a movie that made a fortune and seems primed to win Oscars in a couple months.

    Year: 2000
    Runtime: 1h 36m
    Director: Sofia Coppola

    Sofia Coppola made her directorial debut with this adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’s beloved novel about a group of sisters who captivated the entire neighborhood in which they lived. Kirsten Dunst anchors a dreamy, captivating movie about the myth of perfection that exists in the world of picket fences in middle America. It’s got a great Air soundtrack too.

    Year: 2013
    Runtime: 3h
    Director: Martin Scorsese

    Leonardo DiCaprio should have won the Oscar for his amazing performance as Jordan Belfort, the financial criminal that rocked Wall Street and shocked audiences in one of Scorsese’s best late films. Arguments over whether or not this film glorifies a “bad guy” have become prominent—and could only really be made by people who haven’t actually watched it. Most of all, it’s a shockingly robust film, filmed with more energy in a few minutes than most flicks have in their entire runtime.

    Year: 2007
    Runtime: 2h 37m
    Director: David Fincher

    David Fincher’s masterpiece is more about the impact of crime than crime itself. The fact that he made a sprawling epic about an unsolved murder is daring enough, but what’s most remarkable is how much this movie becomes less and less about figuring out the identity of the Zodiac Killer and more about the impact of obsession. It’s one of the best films of the ‘00s.

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    Brian Tallerico

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  • Disney and DirecTV Still Haven’t Made Up

    Disney and DirecTV Still Haven’t Made Up

    Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Disney, DirecTV

    What do Hudson Yards, Hooters, a gym, and a JetBlue flight have in common? People on social media have posted about seeing screens at all these locations go dark this week due to DirecTV’s ongoing spat with Disney. Since the two parties haven’t been able to negotiate a new carriage contract yet, September 4 marks the fourth day of a DirecTV blackout on Disney-owned channels including ESPN, ABC, Freeform, and more. For some frustrated fans, that means the U.S. Open was closed, LSU and USC’s college football game never kicked off, and The Bachelorette star Jenn Tran never had to relive that finale proposal (though to be fair, she might have preferred that).

    If you’re one of the satellite service’s estimated 11.3 million subscribers and have been affected by the outages, DirecTV is offering a $20 bill credit … as long as you fill out this form and request it yourself. But who’s responsible for this situation in the first place? Naturally, the corporations are blaming each other. DirecTV has claimed that it’s trying to push back against profit-driven, anti-consumer bundles stuffed with channels that people don’t want; Disney is suggesting that it has actually offered DirecTV some nice, flexible options that would be healthy for the market.

    Even as NFL season begins and the presidential debate approaches, DirecTV doesn’t seem ready to give in yet. Per The Wrap, DirecTV’s CFO told investors on Tuesday that the company is not playing a “short-term game,” further claiming that this dispute is about “changing the model in a way that gives everyone confidence that this industry can survive.” We get the feeling that when it comes to the lawsuit over Disney’s planned sports-streaming bundle with Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery, DirecTV might be Team Fubo.

    Jennifer Zhan

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  • The 15 Best Movies and TV Shows to Watch This Weekend

    The 15 Best Movies and TV Shows to Watch This Weekend

    Clockwise from top: Pachinko, City of God: The Fight Rages On, The Crow, and Blink Twice.
    Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Apple TV+, Everett Collection (Amazon MGM Studios, Lionsgate), Max

    Blink twice and maybe this weekend will go by quickly. Even the movie theaters are itching for next week’s four-day weekend, judging by this one’s meager offerings. But at least your at-home watch list is popping off. AMC sent Netflix some deliciously dark offerings, Oz Perkins’s horror Longlegs has hit digital, and The Crow is ripe for a rewatch. You might as well stay in and away from the sun this weekend. It would be so goth of you.

    Creator Soo Hugh’s adaptation of Min Jin Lee’s novel returns for its sophomore season. This installment dives back into its four generations of a Korean family’s questions of identity, especially as part of its narrative is set in Japan during World War II. —Roxana Hadadi

    ➼ Who’s winning, who’s losing — who cares?

    Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut, originally titled Pussy Island, follows a young woman (Naomi Ackie) who gets invited to a tech billionaire’s (Channing Tatum) private island. It seems like a dream come true, but if movies have taught us anything, it’s that following rich people to isolated islands or homes is a terrible idea.

    The 2002 hit film City of God was a nerve-tingling glimpse into the organized crime of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas. Now, a new creative team picks up the mantle in this six-episode series, bringing photographer Rocket (and actor Alexandre Rodrigues) back with a press badge and another drug war to cover. —R.H.

    “The film may insist that Eric and Shelly’s is a grand romance of soul mates, but what it actually gives us is a burnout-detention boyfriend/rebellious-cheerleader girlfriend dynamic that doesn’t feel like it would last a long weekend.”

    ➼ In theaters now; read our full review.

    Well, he finally did it. John Woo finally released that American remake of The Killer that’s been in the works almost since the first one premiered back in 1989. Woo’s original, starring Chow Yun-fat and Danny Lee, was one of the key films that introduced Hong Kong genre cinema to western cinephiles. While this new Killer doesn’t have the insane grandeur of the old one, Woo does still know how to be creative with his action scenes, even when he’s just playing the hits. —Bilge Ebiri

    Tombstone may be the definitive portrayal of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral (though the classic western that carries that name is also fantastic), but that hasn’t stopped everyone from Kevin Costner to Alex Cox from retelling the story of Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and the Clanton gang known as the Cowboys. This latest entry is a TV mini starring Ed Harris, Edward Franklin, and Tim Fellingham. —Eric Vilas-Boas

    A handful of AMC shows have flown onto Netflix’s library for a while, including one of their best. Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire’s small-screen adaptation run by Rolin Jones is sexy, terrifying, dramatic, and fantastic television. The Netflix deal will hopefully give the show a chance to get the eyeballs it deserves. (Unfortunately, the brilliant second season isn’t streaming on Netflix, but hey, it’s on AMC+.)

    ➼ And Longlegs, the “It” horror of the summer, and Inside Out 2, the “It” film of the summer, are now both on digital. Also check out Stress Positions on Hulu and Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga on Max.

    The goth cinema canon.
    Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Columbia Pictures, Dimension Films, Goldwyn Pictures, Miramax, Sony Pictures, Trimark Pictures

    With the Crows and Vampires on our mind, we took a goth day this week. Here are three titles that helped define goth cinema.

    ➼ Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust — “An action-goth masterpiece.”

    ➼ Crimson Peak — Guillermo del Toro’s “misunderstood beauty.”

    ➼ Gargoyles — Specifically, “The Mirror.”

    Photo: Roxana Hadadi/Vulture

    It’s hard to imagine The Crow led by anyone other than Brandon Lee. (You can read more of Roxana Hadadi’s piece here on the matter.) That doesn’t mean the latest iteration of The Crow isn’t necessarily worth watching, but if it made you want to see the 1994 film, you have until the end of the month to check it out on Prime Video.

    Want more? Read our recommendations from the weekend of August 16.

    Savannah Salazar

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  • The Venu Sports Streaming Bundle Will Be Benched for a Bit

    The Venu Sports Streaming Bundle Will Be Benched for a Bit

    Is this how ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery feel?
    Photo: GeorgePeters/Getty Images

    Huddle up, y’all. There’s been a hiccup in the launch of Venu, the planned sports streaming bundle from three heavy hitters in the media landscape. Per CNN, a judge has delayed Venu’s launch by granting FuboTV’s request for a preliminary injunction against the joint venture by Fox, Warner Bros. Discovery, and the Walt Disney Company (you might see some reports swap ESPN into that last slot; ESPN is majority-owned by Disney). Fubo filed a lawsuit two weeks after Venu was announced back in February, arguing that the bundle would violate antitrust laws and cause consumers to “face irreparable harm in the absence of an injunction.” On Friday, a New York district judge ruled that Fubo would likely succeed in proving those claims in trial. Unsurprisingly, Fox, Disney, and Warner Bros. Discovery said they plan to appeal, claiming that “Venu Sports is a pro-competitive option that aims to enhance consumer choice by reaching a segment of viewers who currently are not served by existing subscription options.” As we previously reported, Venu promised to offer its subscribers a dizzying amount of sports coverage through access to all ESPN channels, ESPN+, ABC, FOX, TNT, TBS, and TruTV … plus programs like 30 for 30 via the ESPN library. Venu was originally set to debut this fall with a locked-in “launch price” of $42.99 per month for one year, but the Associated Press now reports that the launch will likely be pushed until at least 2025.

    According to Courthouse News, Fubo said in its filing that it has long wanted to launch a sports-only streaming service, but that it faced difficulties because networks allegedly charged unfairly high licensing costs and forced bundles with entertainment channels that sports fans don’t want. “Today’s ruling is a victory not only for Fubo but also for consumers,” David Gandler, Fubo co-founder and chief executive, said in a statement. “This decision will help ensure that consumers have access to a more competitive marketplace with multiple sports streaming options.” Keep in mind, though, that a preliminary injunction is basically just a timeout. In other words, Friday’s decision is a temporary delay, not a permanent block. A trial date for the antitrust lawsuit has yet to be set. So you’ve got some time to decide, sports fans — are you Team Fubo or not?

    Jennifer Zhan

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