October 2026 Box Office Preview: Can Street Fighter, Clayface and Digger Survive a Stacked Month?

Published 3 October 2026. Words like "tonight" or "next week" refer to that date.

October is stacked, and that means not all of these movies can do well. My pick for the biggest earner of the month is Street Fighter, while Digger, Whalefall and Clayface each face real hurdles. A documentary about Elizabeth Holmes is the film I am most excited about.

Before the weekly breakdown, a quick word on Skydance and its merger with Paramount and the Warner Brothers subsidiaries. The name was announced today, and a little information is coming out about who will be working there and who maybe won't. It was also revealed that Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy maybe aren't out, so I want to wait for the dust to settle before covering it again. I do find it interesting that the announcement was made on Twitter, which I think almost for sure confirms Elon Musk will be part of the new company. David Ellison also now has a Twitter account, and I think he and James Gunn are going to get along just fine as long as Gunn makes him money. We don't yet know whether any executive will be installed above Gunn and Peter Safran.

Verity is set to win the first weekend while Digger fights to avoid a flop

Tracking has Verity easily taking the number one spot this weekend with 30 to 40 million dollars. It did four and a half million in Thursday previews, a little lower than the 7 million It Ends With Us did, but that is still quite strong. Digger, which is set to open with 10 to 15 million dollars if it's lucky, did 1.2 million on Thursday night.

Digger's critic score has gone down to 51%. What better way to show it's a divisive movie than sitting at 50/50 for good or bad. Unfortunately you are only a fresh tomato above 60, but there are only 189 reviews in, and the number is usually somewhere around 300 to 400. Once all the reviews come in, I feel it's not impossible it gets pushed to fresh. What I'm more excited about is the audience score, which has gone up from 67 to 69. I said this could maybe be another Joker situation, where critics have a problem with a film and the audience rallies behind it. That would be phenomenal.

Digger is not going to open with a lot of money even though it cost so much to make. The hope is that it's not a complete flop. If it opens in that range or a little above, that could give it enough momentum to carry through. Perhaps there will be a pendulum effect, and perhaps Warner Brothers was very smart to release it in early October, right around when it released One Battle After Another, which went on to win Best Picture. The knee jerk reaction has not been good, but if it holds on, maybe everyone will come around just in time to vote.

Birdman, an Iñárritu film, was a very slow rollout and never did more than two and a half million per weekend, yet it won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Cinematography. Maybe Digger should have been a slow rollout too, but there are some big twists in the film that would have been ruined. We'll have a pretty good idea of where Digger stands at the end of this weekend, but it's not dead.

Verity is a test for Dakota Johnson, not Anne Hathaway

I haven't seen Verity yet. Colleen Hoover is definitely a big name in Hollywood now with a real fandom, and she has proven people show up for adaptations of her novels. It Ends With Us is her most successful to date with a 50 million dollar opening, and its reviews weren't great either at 55%. Verity has a lower Thursday and a 38% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is really bad. Will that make it drop as the weekend progresses? The audience score hadn't come up yet, but the audience reactions I saw were positive, so maybe it will be good here too.

Anne Hathaway is pretty Teflon. She already has Prada 2 and The Odyssey, and she's already campaigning for Best Supporting Actress. This is really a test for Dakota Johnson, who was a big hit in the Fifty Shades films but has had a hard time since, particularly with Madame Web. I think she's an interesting actress, and in the right role, like The Materialists, I think she is very effective. She really needs this film to do well.

I don't think Verity can be another Housemaid. The Housemaid had a solid Rotten Tomatoes score and played for weeks through the holidays into January. I think this is the only weekend Verity will do well. The male lead is Josh Hartnett, who is not a huge star, so maybe that's an issue.

The Other Mommy and The Social Reckoning look soft for weekend two

The Other Mommy is projected to do 15 to 25 million dollars, while The Social Reckoning is projected at 6 to 10 million, not much better or even worse than Digger, because it doesn't have a Tom Cruise. Horror is hot right now, and people really liked The Other Mommy's trailer, myself included. I was surprised at how compelling it was, so I'm surprised it isn't projected to do more. I've been looking at seat sales, and there are almost none.

Jessica Chastain seems very well cast and appears to handle the duality of the role, but she has never been a box office draw, and I think that has kept her career from moving forward. As I put it, "she just can't sell a ticket." My biggest concern is that the press screening I was sent is on Thursday evening, after the movie is already in theaters at two o'clock. That was the first thing that made me feel maybe it wasn't a good movie, because everything else had made me feel it would be.

As for The Social Reckoning, does anyone still care? The whistleblower story was big news a few years ago, but the social media companies have not changed, apart from changes forced by a big lawsuit over how underage customers are treated. I think Aaron Sorkin might be telling a story people don't care about or don't want to hear. Sorkin wrote The Social Network, but David Fincher directed it. Here Sorkin is directing too, and I don't think he's a strong director. He is still a brilliant writer, but this looks almost like a filmed play, very static, and I think the trailers have not been good.

This is a vital film for everyone involved. Jeremy Strong is popular, but can he launch something in the feature space? Mikey Madison turned down Star Wars for this, and Mia Goth took that role instead; the way things have been going, it might have been a mistake. She is also sandwiched between two streaming actors, Jeremy Strong from Succession and Jeremy Allen White from The Bear, which may make it seem like a movie you don't need to see in theaters. I also wonder how many people remember The Social Network. It is very good, but it doesn't have huge rewatchability, and I wonder how much of it came from Fincher elevating Sorkin's writing. If this one gets bad reviews and is largely ignored by audiences, it might just be dead on arrival.

Street Fighter should lead weekend three, but Sense and Sensibility has a problem

Tracking has Street Fighter leading with 30 to 40 million dollars, Whalefall at 10 to 15 million and Sense and Sensibility at 8 to 12. I saw a tweet predicting Street Fighter would be like Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves and Masters of the Universe, loved by its fandom but not doing particularly well. Masters of the Universe opened at only 30, while Dungeons and Dragons opened at around 38, right where Mortal Kombat 2 did, which makes that prediction look strong. If Street Fighter doesn't open above 40, I think we might be a little nervous.

I think the trailers have been some of the best I've ever seen, so good that I worry the movie can't possibly live up to them. Even if it doesn't do well in theaters, it might really rally on digital and streaming. It's a Paramount movie, so it might have a future at Skydance, since video games are pretty big. It seems more adult than Minecraft, which everyone on earth could watch. Kids didn't watch Mortal Kombat, and it didn't open as big as people would have liked with 38.5 million. That's what Street Fighter is trying to avoid.

For Whalefall, the real question is how much excitement Austin Abrams still carries; it could overperform or at least do solid business because of him. It is about a guy who gets swallowed by a whale and has to get out, and I'm going to find out why anyone would make it. Sense and Sensibility opened in the UK last weekend with only 78% from UK reviewers on Rotten Tomatoes, though they might be sticklers since it's their book. People really liked the popcorn bucket, a stack of books. But who would ever need to remake Sense and Sensibility? The 1995 version, written by and starring Emma Thompson with Kate Winslet, Alan Rickman and Hugh Grant, is tough to top. There's not a single star in this one, and I would be shocked if it opened above projections.

Clayface looks like an uphill battle after Mike Flanagan's comments

It's too early for tracking on the fourth weekend, so for Clayface I looked at comps. Supergirl did 37.1 million, which would make it one of the highest openings this month, though people would say it only matched Supergirl. Kraven did 11. Venom 3, after the franchise took a couple of knocks, still opened at 51 million. I think that's almost impossible for Clayface given the lack of star power, though the movie was clearly very inexpensive to make. Not casting a known actor, someone like Tom Hardy, makes it a harder sell. Everyone has been burned by the standalone villain movies Sony pioneered, and it's weird to see DC go down the same path.

One of the scariest things is Mike Flanagan's recent comment. While doing press for Carrie, he said he handed a script he really liked to James Gunn and Peter Safran, they left him be, he has had nothing to do with the project since, and he has no idea what the movie is like now. Many people were excited about Clayface because of Flanagan, and people feel he is trying to get out ahead of it. If he thought it would be a hit, he'd say he's excited for people to see it. Reviews will be important, especially coming off Supergirl, and I was hoping Lanterns would stick the landing with its season finale on Sunday, October 4. It's not going to have IMAX, but it might have Dolby. I don't think anything major happens if Clayface doesn't do well, since I don't think anyone expects it to; I think Gunn will live or die on his own movie, Man of Tomorrow.

Laika is releasing Wildwood itself after no studio would take it

As I've said recently, no studio would release Wildwood, which I find shocking because people have been impressed with the trailers. Laika shopped it around and couldn't get anyone, even someone like Lionsgate, so it is releasing the film itself through Fathom Events. That's why it may not have showings at all the theaters you'd expect. Laika is headed by Travis Knight, whose father Phil Knight founded Nike, which is how it could afford to make Wildwood and self distribute it.

It's too bad Laika was too early for AMC Theatres' new distribution label, which handles movies that are already paid for, though then it might only play in AMC theaters. Laika also has to run its own awards campaign, so reviews, audience scores and box office will be important tools in what I've heard many people describe as the most competitive year in a while for animation. Coraline put Laika on the map, and I still think it has yet to match that film, but maybe it will with this one.

You Can See Everything could make documentary history

Nobody knew the Elizabeth Holmes documentary existed until about a month ago, when it was the surprise film at a recent festival. Kudos to Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim for keeping it a secret. It opens in limited release the weekend before going wide, so the per theater average will shape how it's perceived. It's almost impossible to get a ticket here in New York City, so I think that average will be really strong.

Fahrenheit 9/11 holds the highest documentary opening ever at 23.9 million dollars in 2004, and the runner up is all the way down at 7 million with Melania earlier this year. So I think You Can See Everything has a good shot at landing in there. It's from A24 and hoping to be a strong awards contender. A documentary can be nominated for Best Picture but never has been, and I think A24 has a decent shot. Of this whole weekend, I'm most excited for it, and the fact that I'm most excited for a documentary over an animated movie and a DC film shows how strong it is. I've never seen Nathan Fielder's other work, but I think he has jumped to the mainstream with this.

The Mosquito Bowl is Netflix's first reported box office test

Only one movie opens the last weekend, because Friday is October 30 and Saturday is Halloween, and Hollywood figures people will be partying, which I think is a safe bet. That movie is Netflix's The Mosquito Bowl. Netflix is working hard to get into theatrical, partly after getting burned on the Warner Brothers deal and partly because it isn't growing at the rate Wall Street wants. This will be the first time it officially reports its own box office, and I wouldn't have picked this film to be first. It gets a full window, hitting Netflix only around Thanksgiving, basically a month later.

The film follows all star college football players who put their careers on hold to serve their country, including games they played before deploying, which is a pretty good subject. Peter Berg is hit or miss, though he's behind Friday Night Lights and that is being used to promote it. They've said it might be an awards movie, but I don't think Berg is that caliber of director. I'm a fan of Nicholas Galitzine and Bill Skarsgård, though I don't think Skarsgård fits, and Ray Nicholson seems to me like a poor imitation of his father so far. I think this is very Angel Studios coded, aimed at middle America. I don't expect it to do well, but with no other new release that weekend, I would not actually be surprised if it did.

Looking at the whole month, I'd say Street Fighter makes the most money, if it's as good as the trailers. Digger obviously has a problem and Whalefall is a tough sell, while I'm not sure which way The Mosquito Bowl will break. Which October release do you think will surprise at the box office?