The Owens Sisters Ended Spider-Man's Streak — Now the Week Belongs to Streaming
Practical Magic 2 opened at No. 1 with $30 million and a 53-point critics-versus-audience gap, Runner over-delivered, and The Uprising landed ninth. Then Wednesday and Thursday hand the week to streaming: Slow Horses season 6 on Apple TV+, and Netflix dropping both Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story and Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 season 2 on the same day.
Friday delivered, just not the way the anticipation ratings said it would. Practical Magic 2 walked into a theater full of Spider-Man and took the crown, while the other three wide releases sorted themselves into one pleasant surprise, one expensive misfire and one that never showed up on the chart at all. Then the back half of this week hands everything over to streaming, and Wednesday and Thursday are genuinely loaded.
Here is the state of play, with dates and where to watch.
Now Playing: Friday's Scoreboard
Practical Magic 2 opened at No. 1 with an estimated $30 million from 4,146 theaters, ending Spider-Man: Brand New Day's six-weekend run at the top of the domestic chart. Susanne Bier directs, Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman are back as the Owens sisters twenty-eight years on, and it runs 2 hours 10 minutes. Add roughly $16 million from 77 international markets and the global opening is about $46 million — against a reported $75 million budget, which is why you will see the word "disappointing" attached to the movie that just won the weekend.
The more interesting number is the split. As of Monday, critics have it at 39% on Rotten Tomatoes across 125 reviews. The audience score is 92%. Opening-night crowds handed it a B+ CinemaScore. That is not a movie that failed — that is a movie that was never being made for the people writing about it. If it holds anything close to that word of mouth over the next two weekends, the "disappointing" framing is going to age badly.
Anticipation: 8/10. Go for Bullock and Kidman, not for the plot. In theaters now.
Runner is the one that over-delivered. Scott Waugh's Angel Studios thriller — Alan Ritchson hauling a donor liver across the map with Owen Wilson riding shotgun — opened fourth with $6.4 million from 2,568 theaters, reportedly the biggest opening of Ritchson's career as a leading man. It sits at 67% with critics across 18 reviews, 88% with audiences, and an A- CinemaScore, which for a September action movie is about as clean a result as exists. The premise is ridiculous. The execution, apparently, is not.
Anticipation: 8/10, and the best pure ticket of the four. In theaters now.
The Uprising is the painful one. I gave Paul Greengrass and Andrew Garfield doing the 1381 Peasants' Revolt a 10/10 last week and I am not fully taking it back, but the market did. It opened ninth with $3.25 million from 2,068 screens — the second-lowest wide-release debut of Garfield's career, behind only The Magic Faraway Tree earlier this year. Critics split down the middle at 51% across 71 reviews, audiences sit at 64%, and the CinemaScore is a B-. The recurring complaint is that the handheld Greengrass style and the mythologizing of its hero pull against each other. Still: a real filmmaker swinging at real history in September is a rare thing.
Anticipation: 7/10, adjusted. Catch it on a big screen while it is still on one, because it will not be for long.
And then there is the one that changed its name on the way in. The Liam Neeson and Zachary Levi Tehran thriller that spent two years being announced as Hotel Tehran arrived on September 11 retitled The Fix, from Briarcliff Entertainment, directed by Guy Moshe, with Elnaaz Norouzi and Annet Mahendru. It is 141 minutes about ex-CIA operators going back into Iran for a score and a rescue, and it did not crack the top ten. Critics put it at 19% across 26 reviews, one of the lowest-rated entries in Neeson's filmography. Audiences were kinder, handing it a B CinemaScore. Two hours and twenty-one minutes is a lot of runway for a movie the reviews describe as never landing.
Anticipation: 4/10, and only if you have genuinely exhausted the Neeson catalogue.
Streaming: Wednesday and Thursday Do All the Work
Slow Horses season 6 — Apple TV+, Wednesday, September 16. Six episodes, one a week, running through October 21. This season adapts Joe Country and Slough House, the sixth and seventh novels in Mick Herron's series, and Olivia Cooke is back as Sid Baker alongside Gary Oldman's Jackson Lamb. Slough House has not had a weak season yet, and the show's refusal to pad past six hours a year is a large part of why.
Anticipation: 9/10. The best thing arriving this week and it is not close.
Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story — season 4 of the Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan anthology, Netflix, Thursday, September 17, all eight episodes at once. Ella Beatty plays Lizzie, Charlie Hunnam and Rebecca Hall are her father and stepmother, Vicky Krieps is live-in maid Bridget "Maggie" Sullivan and Billie Lourd plays sister Emma, with Sarah Paulson and Jessica Barden also in the cast. This is the first installment of the anthology built around an alleged female killer, and Fall River in 1892 is a case that has survived 134 years precisely because nobody can agree on what actually happened in that house.
Anticipation: 8/10 if the anthology still works for you, 4/10 if Dahmer burned you out.
Stranger Things: Tales From '85 season 2 — Netflix, Thursday, September 17. Worth getting right, because plenty of listings have it wrong: this is the animated spin-off's second season, not its debut. Season one landed on April 23 and Netflix renewed it five days later. Season two is eight episodes, down from ten, and it moves the Hawkins kids to Valentine's Day — ghostly apparitions, a swarm of hate sprites, blue flowers blooming in the middle of winter and a mine nobody has explored. Brooklyn Davey Norstedt, Luca Diaz, Braxton Quinney, Elisha "EJ" Williams, Jolie Hoang-Rappaport and Benjamin Plessala are back on voices, joined by Odessa A'zion and Janeane Garofalo.
Anticipation: 7/10. Low-stakes Hawkins is a genuinely nice thing to have on a Thursday.
The Takeaway
Last week I said Friday would reset the board. It did — just not in the order anyone predicted. The comfort-watch sequel won, the ridiculous action movie over-performed, the prestige swing landed ninth, and the Neeson thriller changed its title on the way in and still could not hide.
So: get to Runner this week while it is at its peak, and clear Wednesday night for Slow Horses. Everything else will keep.
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