👋 Good morning. Lookalike contest season is upon us once again: yesterday, Washington Square Park hosted a dual Nathan Fielder and Elizabeth Holmes lookalike contest, one week after ‘You Can See Everything’ hit theaters. A crowd of blondes in black turtlenecks and guys wearing the headphones from the doc trailer competed for $50 cash under the arch. One of each was crowned. If we were judging, we’d score the Holmes bracket on resemblance, vocal register, and ability to not blink, and the Fielder bracket on resemblance, really good grades, and ability to make the judges uncomfortable.
Hope you had a good weekend. Grab your coffee and settle in, the box office numbers and everything else worth knowing are below. 👇
BOX OFFICE BREAKDOWN
🎟️ It was Clayface vs. Elizabeth Holmes…
Tom Rhys Harries in ‘Clayface’ (DC Studios/Warner Bros.)
| WEEKEND TOTAL $94.9M| VS. 2025 +22.4%| VS. LAST WKND -8.9% | |
Clayface NEW Warner Bros./DC · $24M domestic weekend · Global total: $43M · Budget: $44M · 🍅: 75% WB was hoping for $25-35M, got $24M, and will happily take it. This is an R-rated body horror movie (a movie star gets an experimental procedure and slowly turns into living clay) that cost about a fifth of what 'Superman' did, and audiences gave it an A- CinemaScore. Modest opening, actual win. Also the first release of the Skydance era at WB. | |
You Can See Everything WK 2 A24 · $19.5M domestic weekend (+25%) · Domestic total: $45.1M · Budget: $7M Nathan Fielder's three-hour Elizabeth Holmes doc actually went up in its second weekend (it tripled its theater count, from 855 to 2,655) and came within $4.5M of a DC movie. It's already the sixth-biggest documentary ever domestically, and Oscar pundits are already saying Best Picture. | |
Wildwood NEW Fathom/Laika · $11M domestic weekend · Global total: $14M · Budget: $100M · 🍅: 100% Laika's first movie since 2019 (they're the 'Coraline' people) opened well above its $6-8M tracking with an A CinemaScore, which is impressive for a stop-motion release with no major studio behind it. It did cost $100M (stop-motion is slow and expensive), so this one's a marathon, not a sprint. The good news: nothing else is aimed at families until Disney's 'Hexed' next month. | |
Street Fighter WK 2 Paramount · $8.6M domestic weekend (-72%) · Domestic total: $46.9M · Global total: $79.6M · Budget: $82M A bit of a brutal second weekend for the video game reboot. Paramount is only on the hook for distribution (Legendary and Capcom footed the bill), so the K.O. lands somewhere else. | |
Wicker NEW Black Bear · $5.8M domestic weekend · Budget: $10M · 🍅: 94% A strong start for a limited release (1,471 theaters) about Olivia Colman ordering a wicker husband from the village basketmaker, who turns out to be Alexander Skarsgård. The audience was 79% female (shocking). It goes wide this coming weekend. | |
Other Mommy WK 3 Universal · $3.85M domestic weekend (-54%) · Domestic total: $51.5M · Global total: $94.9M · Budget: $19M | |
Sense and Sensibility WK 2 Focus Features · $3.4M domestic weekend (-53%) · Domestic total: $13.7M · Global total: $29.4M · Budget: $25M | |
Whalefall WK 2 20th Century · $3.2M domestic weekend (-60%) · Domestic total: $14.1M · Global total: $31.1M · Budget: $60M | |
Verity WK 4 Amazon MGM · $3.06M domestic weekend (-51%) · Domestic total: $71.5M · Global total: $150M+ · Budget: $40M | |
Resident Evil WK 6 Sony · $3M domestic weekend (-45%) · Domestic total: $153.7M · Global total: $384.5M · Budget: $75M | |
| YTD Domestic Box Office▲ +20% | ||||
| ||||
| Source: RENTRAK |
The big picture: if there's a theme, it's that the mid-budget movie is alive and well. 'Clayface,' 'You Can See Everything,' and 'Wicker' all cost a fraction of a tentpole and all did what they needed to. 'Street Fighter', the priciest thing in the top five, dropped 72%. Make of that what you will.
Next weekend: Halloween falls on a Saturday, which is going to eat into everything, and there's not much coming anyway. Netflix is putting Peter Berg's WWII drama 'The Mosquito Bowl' in theaters, there's a Christmas horror-comedy called 'Christmas at the Kringles', and Liam Neeson is back with 'The Mongoose' (Marisa Tomei and Ving Rhames are in it too). 'Wicker' goes wide.
Specialty Corner: Sony basically gave up on 'Klara and the Sun' before it opened, shrinking it to 880 theaters after the reviews came in brutal. It made $720K. Meanwhile, the opposite problem over at Netflix: 'La Bola Negra' had the best per-screen average of the weekend, $250K from just 9 theaters.
CLOSEUP
🗳️ The governor’s race, for Hollywood…
Steve Hilton and Xavier Becerra at an April debate at Pomona College. (Eric Thayer/Getty Images)
Mail-in ballots are out, and California picks a new governor in a little over a week. With Newsom termed out, it's Democrat Xavier Becerra vs. Republican Steve Hilton on housing, taxes, wildfire recovery, and how much Sacramento should spend to keep production in state, which is the one we're zooming in on.
The backdrop: FilmLA's latest numbers came out last week, and LA shoot days are down another 4.8%. The credit is carrying a lot more of the load (40% of scripted on-location shoots, up from about 20%), and the total still fell.
A quick lay of the land, in alphabetical order. Full platforms are on their sites.
Xavier Becerra (D)
Background: former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary, California attorney general, and longtime LA congressman.
On CA’s tax credit: called California's $750M-a-year film and TV tax credit "the floor" and wants to build on it, as long as the state gets at least a dollar back for every dollar it hands out. He hasn't committed to lifting the cap, saying he'd rather see what the Legislature sends him first. The trades have read that last part as dodging, but he says candidates make a lot of promises that go away after Election Day, and he’d rather be judged on delivery.
Also proposing: a rule requiring streaming platforms to share performance data with cast, writers, directors, and crew, a state entertainment summit with the guilds, studios, and streamers (one that has to produce an action plan, not just a report), and faster permitting. On AI, he's calling for disclosure on productions, enforceable likeness rights, and pay for people whose work trains the models. He also says the state should scrutinize consolidation and challenge it where necessary.
Endorsements: Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, the California Labor Federation, the California IATSE Council, the California Teamsters, and AFM Local 47.
Steve Hilton (R)
Background: former Fox News host ('The Next Revolution') and ex-strategy director for then-UK PM David Cameron.
On CA’s tax credit: his "Bring Hollywood Home" plan would make the credit unlimited, scrapping the current $750M-a-year cap, and set a 40% base rate, potentially as high as 50% for the first five years to jump-start things. It would also add above-the-line pay (actor, director, writer and producer salaries), post-production, commercials, docs, and reality TV, most of which don't qualify now. There's no cost estimate yet, and he's said himself that changing behavior may take something "extravagant."
Also proposing: letting productions apply for the credit year-round and get an answer within 30 days (today you wait for one of a few set application windows), a sales-tax break on repairs and upgrades to existing soundstages, and state-arranged bonds for buying and renovating studios. He’s also called California’s (now settled) challenge to the Paramount-WBD merger “politically motivated,” and says he’s been talking with David Ellison and Ted Sarandos about bringing work back.
Endorsements: President Trump and, by Hilton's account, Jon Voight, one of Trump's "special ambassadors" to Hollywood. No guild or union endorsements have been reported.
Where they agree: both want a federal credit on top of the state one (Hilton backs the bipartisan bill that landed in Congress last month, though he doesn't think it has the votes; Becerra’s platform calls for one too, tied to American jobs, but he hasn’t commented on this bill specifically). Both cite the roughly 50,000 California film and TV jobs lost since 2022, nearly all in LA. And neither has an endorsement from SAG-AFTRA, the WGA, the DGA, or Teamsters Local 399.
Looking ahead… Election Day is next Tuesday, Nov. 3. Mail ballots need a Nov. 3 postmark, drop boxes close at 8 p.m., and same-day registration runs through Election Day.
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ICYMI
⚡️ Quick hits…
Jerry Seinfeld in ‘Seinfeld’
😂 Nearly one in four Americans watched 'Seinfeld' this year. Yes, in 2026. That's 72M people catching at least one episode through August, per Nielsen. No wonder Netflix re-upped its $500M+ licensing deal. Syndication alone has brought in $4.5B+ since 1998. Like a Twinkie, 'Seinfeld' has a shelf life science can't fully explain.
📉 Turns out Netflix subscribers aren't opening the app as often, and they're watching less when they do. Execs first pinned it on the 2022 password crackdown, but it never bounced back. With the stock down 29% and growth slowing, it makes sense Netflix just fired its content and film chiefs and handed the reins to Peter Rice.
🎮 A24's 'Elden Ring' movie will cost nearly $200M. It's Alex Garland's take on the hit video game. The indie darling has been chasing more mainstream ambitions lately, sure, but as plenty of people are noting, $200M is major-studio money. The usual 2.5x rule puts break-even around $500M worldwide. It hits theaters in 2028.
🏺 Elon Musk's AI video tool Grok Imagine just dropped the first episode of its own 'Odyssey.' Back in July, Musk promised a full-length, "historically accurate" AI version by year's end, after months of criticizing Christopher Nolan's version's casting. So far it's a 7-minute short made with Wonder Studios and director Dev Walker.
STATISTIC
📊 Gen Z would like to discover someone new…
Every fall, UCLA's Teens and Screens report checks in with roughly 1,500 people ages 10 to 24 about what they're watching and why. This year's edition is out. A few key takeaways:
They want to go to the movies. For the third straight year, seeing a new movie in a theater was their top weekend pick when cost isn't a factor, beating out a new video game and a concert.
They'd rather discover someone new. More would cast an unknown actor (39.8%) than a known star (38.2%), though only by a hair, and just 16.8% would cast an influencer.
YouTube counts as storytelling now. Asked which media can tell a story, YouTube (72.9%) narrowly edged TV shows (70.3%) and movies (70.2%), and nearly four in five said short-form video qualifies.
The bigger picture: Hollywood spent years worried this generation would never become moviegoers. Consider this one more data point that they did. What they didn't inherit was their parents' loyalty to movie stars, and this year's box office has been proving it in real time. Tom Cruise's 'Digger' opened to $8M, his worst in 19 years, while 'Obsession' (unknown lead, YouTube-bred director) became one of the year's breakouts.
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VIDEO VILLAGE
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That’s it for today. Go make your Monday count, or at least look busy. See you Wednesday.
—The Dailies Team