World Movie News: The Last 24 Hours
Skydance swallows Warner Bros., The Batman Part II pauses, the London Film Festival opens, Bollywood’s biggest Devgn weekend, China’s Golden Week, a Nollywood record, the Oscar field takes shape & a Telugu giant is mourned.
Hello again, and welcome to a bumper Tuesday. Because this is the day I drag us out of Hollywood by the collar for a lap of the rest of the planet’s film industries. It follows yesterday’s box office rundown, which was rather grim for one A-list gentleman in particular. Tea in hand? Good… there’s a lot of ground to cover.
Skydance swallows Warner Bros.: The big one first, because it will quietly rearrange your cinema listings for a decade. The $110 billion merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery completes today, with the combined company operating as Skydance Corp. Yesterday David Ellison and new co-CEO Ynon Kreiz named their leadership team. Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein, who run Paramount Pictures, will co-chair the merged film division, and James Gunn and Peter Safran stay on at DC Studios. As previously flagged, Warner’s film chiefs Pam Abdy and Mike De Luca will exit. The deal also needed to clear a legal hurdle first; the settlement with state attorney generals requires an extra $1.5 billion of US production spending and annual theatrical release minimums. There’s an international twist, too: Warner Bros. Discovery’s international president Gerhard Zeiler is likely to leave to pursue Austrian politics. That’s quite a career pivot. The new owners inherit Digger, whose worldwide opening was an estimated $20 million, good for sixth place. A welcome gift, folks.
Matt Reeves steps away from The Batman Part II: On a more sombre note, production has been temporarily paused on The Batman Part II while Reeves focuses on a family matter, and DC Studios says he has its full support. No details have been shared, and the internet would do well to leave it that way. The film is currently dated for February 2028, and it’s not yet clear whether the pause will move that. Wishing him and his family well.
The London Film Festival formally kicks off tomorrow: The 70th BFI London Film Festival runs 7–18 October and as you know on this blog, I’ve have the honour of attending as a press delegate at the screenings for the last week already. However, it formally opens tomorrow with Elsinore, starring Andrew Scott and Olivia Colman, and closes with Jesse Eisenberg’s The Debut. Scott plays Ian Charleson, who played Hamlet at the National Theatre in 1989, months before his death. The competition includes Hirokazu Kore-eda, Sergei Loznitsa, Lili Horvát and May el-Toukhy, plus the world premiere of Carol Morley’s 7 Miles Out. Brad Bird’s Ray Gunn and Travis Knight’s Wildwood also get world premieres.
Bollywood’s biggest Devgn weekend: On to the weekly catch-up. Ajay Devgn’s Drishyam: The Conclusion is the final chapter of the crime-thriller franchise, starring Tabu, Shriya Saran and Jaideep Ahlawat and directed by Abhishek Pathak. It opened on 2 October. Trade trackers put its worldwide opening weekend at roughly Rs 270 crore($28m). Bollywood Hungama confirms it as the biggest opening weekend of Devgn’s career, with an India net of $18 million. Overseas markets added about $6.1 million, including $610,000 from the UK. Not a bad weekend’s work.
China’s Golden Week: Traces of Justice topped the mainland China chart over 2–4 October with RMB 208.9 million ($31.2 million), taking its total to $41.8 million since opening on 1 October. The forensic crime drama is from Detective Chinatown creator Chen Sicheng. The wider mainland weekend reached $74.1 million, and year-to-date takings are down 29.7% on 2025. UK readers can judge it for themselves, as Trinity CineAsia releases it in the UK and Ireland on 30 October, with previews from 17 October. Meanwhile Resident Evil opened in China yesterday.
Nollywood breaks a December habit: Faith-based film Agbara Nla: The Return grossed N170.6 million ($130,000) from 28,468 admissions over its Nigerian opening weekend. That is the biggest non-December opening for a Nollywood title, and the biggest ever for a faith-based film. It trails only Everybody Loves Jenifa and Behind the Scene among Nollywood openings. Although small by western standards, its opening-day admissions were the highest of any film in Nigeria this year. The industry has long treated December as the only month that counts; this suggests otherwise.
The Oscar field takes shape: The Academy’s submission deadline passed on 30 September. The Nordics have mostly settled. Sweden sends Adult Supervision, Norway Growth of the Soil, and Finland The Squirrel, and Denmark – unsurprisingly – picked May el-Toukhy’s Golden Lion winner Woman Unknown. Norway has a tough act to follow, since last year’s Norwegian entry Sentimental Value won the International Oscar and was also in the running for Best Picture overall. Japan has Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s All of a Sudden (which I am coincidentally seeing tomorrow at a press screening). This is his second time representing the country in the category. In the Middle East Lebanon chose Rami Kodeih’s banking-crisis heist thriller Furies. Palestine entered Ahmed Hassouna’s documentary Citizen Osama, shot in northern Gaza. The shortlist lands on 15 December, and nominations follow on 21 January 2027.
Singeetham Srinivasa Rao, 1931–2026: The Indian filmmaker died on Saturday night in Chennai, aged 94, after a career of some six decades across Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Hindi cinema. His credits include Apoorva Sagodharargal, Michael Madana Kama Rajan, the Kannada classic Haalu Jenu, and Pushpaka Vimanam won a National Film Award. His time-travel adventure Aditya 369 was decades ahead of studios now pitching the idea as fresh. SS Rajamouli said every Telugu filmmaker who has tried something different owes him something, and Kamal Haasan, Mahesh Babu and Jr NTR also paid tribute.
Twenty years of The Departed: Cheering things up, today marks two decades since Martin Scorsese’s Boston crime thriller The Departed arrived in cinemas. It opened in the UK and Ireland on 6 October 2006, the same day as the US. Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson did their worst to each other, and the film began life as the Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs. It went on to win four Oscars, including the long-overdue one for Scorsese. It made around $292 million worldwide, which is not bad for a film in which almost everybody is a rat. If you haven’t seen it in a while, tonight is as good an excuse as any.
Birthdays: Today’s birthdays include Britt Ekland, born 6 October 1942, who turns 84, and Elisabeth Shue, 63. Also celebrating are Emily Mortimer (55), Ioan Gruffudd (53) and Stranger Things‘ Brett Gelman, who hits the big 5-0.
That’s all for today. Nearly time for my early train to London for another day of LFF film watching.
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