Screen Wrap · Saturday 17 October 2026
HBO has found its next True Detective double act in Nicolas Cage and Antonio Banderas. Tonight’s Screen Wrap also has the weekend box office, where Street Fighter leads, a three-hour documentary makes history and Whalefall sinks, plus the Coen brothers’ Minneapolis plans, Tenzing on Apple TV and two new indie stories.
The News That Matters
Nicolas Cage and Antonio Banderas will lead True Detective season 5
- Network: HBO
- Cast: Nicolas Cage as Henry Logan; Antonio Banderas as Rai Garcia
- Showrunner: Issa López, returning as writer and director after Night Country
- Setting: Jamaica Bay, New York
- Production: Due to begin in 2027
- UK availability: UK date not yet confirmed
HBO has its next True Detective double act. Less than a week after Nicolas Cage let slip at a Comic-Con panel that he “might do a season of True Detective”, the network confirmed the casting in a teaser that runs through the anthology’s famous pairings, from Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson to Colin Farrell and Vince Vaughn, before landing on Cage and Antonio Banderas.
Cage plays Henry Logan and Banderas plays Rai Garcia, and that is all HBO is saying about the story for now. Issa López, who wrote and directed every episode of Night Country, returns as showrunner, and the action moves from Alaska’s endless night to Jamaica Bay, the tidal inlet south of Brooklyn and Queens. López has promised connections to Night Country alongside a new story and new characters.
Remarkably, Cage and Banderas have never shared the screen before. Pairing two stars with such big screen personalities could go either way, but López proved with Jodie Foster and Kali Reis that she knows how to build a season around a combustible partnership.
Update: Street Fighter takes the weekend with a $31 million US opening
- New development: Opening-weekend box office estimates
- US opening: About $31 million from 3,575 cinemas (Saturday estimate)
- Friday: $12.5 million, including about $4 million from Thursday previews
- Production cost: About $82 million
- UK availability: In UK cinemas now, released 16 October
Paramount and Legendary’s Capcom adaptation is set to top the North American box office with around $31 million, according to Saturday’s estimates. That is at the lower end of expectations, and below the mid-$30 millions Paramount had been hoping for, after a $70 million global forecast going into the weekend. Audiences gave it a B- CinemaScore, and Deadline reports that men over 35 make up a big share of the crowd.
There is a neat bit of history in the number, too. Kitao Sakurai’s film is on course to take close to the entire unadjusted domestic total of the 1994 Jean-Claude Van Damme film, about $33 million, in a single weekend. With an $82 million production cost, though, it will need strong legs and a good international run to make its money back.
Update: You Can See Everything heads for one of the biggest documentary openings ever
- New development: Opening-weekend box office estimates
- US opening: About $12 million to $14 million from 855 cinemas
- Friday: About $5.3 million, including previews
- Distributor: A24
- UK availability: In UK and Irish cinemas from Friday 20 November 2026
The weekend’s real story is a three-hour documentary. A24’s Elizabeth Holmes film from Lance Oppenheim and Nathan Fielder is heading for a $12 million to $14 million opening from just 855 cinemas, which Deadline says would be the second-best opening ever for a documentary, behind 2004’s Fahrenheit 9/11 ($23.9 million). It would also comfortably beat the $7.1 million opening for Melania earlier this year.
Deadline reports around 1,300 sell-outs and queues round the block in New York and Nashville, remarkable for a film that cost a reported $7 million. Eight years after Theranos collapsed, Holmes clearly still fascinates. Our review called it a hall of mirrors like no other, and UK audiences can see it from 20 November.
Whalefall struggles to stay afloat with a $7 million opening
- New development: Opening-weekend box office estimates
- US opening: About $7 million to $7.5 million from 3,065 cinemas, against tracking of $11 million
- Budget: About $60 million
- Director: Brian Duffield
- UK availability: In UK cinemas now, released 16 October (15 certificate)
20th Century Studios’ survival thriller has had a tough first weekend. After a $2.6 million Friday including previews, Whalefall is heading for an opening of around $7 million to $7.5 million, well short of the $11 million tracking. Audiences who did go seem to like it, with a B CinemaScore and an 82% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, but Deadline suggests the film lost male viewers to Street Fighter.
Brian Duffield’s adaptation of Daniel Kraus’s 2023 novel stars Austin Abrams as a scuba diver swallowed by a sperm whale, with an hour of oxygen left to escape, and Josh Brolin as the estranged father whose remains he dives to recover. It deserves better than this. As our review put it, it is a bold survival nightmare, and one that plays best on a big screen.
The Coen brothers tease a return to Minneapolis for their reunion film
- Where: Lumière Film Festival, Lyon, where Joel and Ethan Coen received the 2026 Lumière Award
- Status: No project confirmed; the brothers say they plan to make another film together
- Last joint film: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
- UK availability: UK date not yet confirmed
Joel and Ethan Coen are talking about going home. Speaking in Lyon, where they received a career tribute at the Lumière Festival, the brothers said a couple of the stories they have discussed would take place in Minneapolis, where they grew up and where they made Fargo and A Serious Man. “We haven’t discussed it in terms of plot or narrative or what kind of movie. But we’ve discussed going back because there are certain crew people we missed,” said Ethan.
Frances McDormand, Joel’s wife, had playfully challenged them on stage to complete an unofficial Minnesota trilogy. “I think Fran wants to see it. We’ll see if we can accommodate her,” Joel joked. He also warned that further studio consolidation is bad news for filmmakers, arguing that “competition is what produces opportunities for different kinds of movies”. In the meantime, Joel’s solo film Jack of Spades, with Josh O’Connor, is due next year.
Tom Hiddleston’s Everest drama Tenzing is now streaming on Apple TV
- Streaming: Apple TV, from Friday 16 October 2026
- Director: Jennifer Peedom, from a screenplay by Luke Davies
- Cast: Genden Phuntsok, Tom Hiddleston, Willem Dafoe, Caitríona Balfe and Thinley Lhamo
- UK availability: Streaming now on Apple TV in the UK
Apple’s mountaineering drama tells the story of the first ascent of Everest from the side that history too often left in the shadows. Genden Phuntsok plays Tenzing Norgay, the Himalayan climber who reached the summit alongside Tom Hiddleston’s Edmund Hillary. Willem Dafoe plays expedition leader Colonel John Hunt, Caitríona Balfe is expedition secretary Jill Henderson and Thinley Lhamo plays Tenzing’s wife, Dawa.
Director Jennifer Peedom knows this terrain better than most, having made the documentaries Sherpa and Mountain. Where the Western climbers see a peak to be conquered, Tenzing reveres Chomolungma as a sacred mother goddess, and that tension, along with the class divides of a British expedition, sits at the heart of the film.
Sony Pictures Classics buys Chase Infiniti’s TIFF drama The Julia Set
- Rights: US, UK and a number of other territories
- Director: Niki Byrne, in her feature directing debut
- Cast: Chase Infiniti, Christopher Briney, Gillian Anderson, Jason Isaacs and Nina Hoss
- UK availability: UK release date not yet confirmed; Sony Pictures Classics holds the UK rights
Chase Infiniti’s first film since her BAFTA-nominated breakout in One Battle After Another has found a home. Sony Pictures Classics has acquired The Julia Set for the US, the UK and a long list of other territories following its world premiere at Toronto last month.
Niki Byrne’s debut stars Infiniti as a university maths prodigy who falls for her teaching assistant while preparing for a notoriously difficult exam, with Gillian Anderson, Jason Isaacs and Nina Hoss in support. Byrne says she is proud it will be seen “the way movies are meant to be seen: in a darkened theater, together”, so a proper cinema release looks likely here too.
Gregg Araki wraps The Decline of F*cking Western Civilization and adds a starry ensemble
- New development: Filming has wrapped in Los Angeles, and new cast members have been announced
- Leads: Ashton Kutcher, Alison Brie and Jesse Williams
- Script: Kevin W. Koehler, with revisions by Araki
- UK availability: UK date not yet confirmed
Gregg Araki has finished shooting his dark comedy and revealed a supporting cast that reads like a who’s who of film and TV comedy. Kal Penn, Michael Chiklis, David Koechner, Nat Faxon, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Steve Guttenberg, Colleen Camp, Giovanni Ribisi, Judy Greer, Margaret Cho, Alex Borstein, Lulu Wilson and Charlie Bushnell join Ashton Kutcher, Alison Brie and Jesse Williams.
Character details are being kept quiet, but the ensemble piece has been described as Election meets American Beauty. That is a promising combination for the director of Mysterious Skin, who is coming off this summer’s erotic thriller I Want Your Sex with Olivia Wilde and Cooper Hoffman.
Movieversalfilm Takeaway
Cage and Banderas in a López-run True Detective is the kind of casting that gets people talking, and the long wait for production only adds to the intrigue. At the box office, the weekend belongs less to Street Fighter’s solid if unspectacular start than to You Can See Everything, proof that audiences will queue round the block for a documentary when the subject grips them. If you skipped Whalefall, it is worth catching while it is still in cinemas. You can find everything else that opened this week in our Weekly Cinema Pack.
Nicolas Cage and Antonio Banderas in True Detective: inspired pairing, or too much star power for Issa López’s next mystery?