Month: October 2026

Coven Academy is already No. 1 on Disney+: a new hit

Coven Academy is now streaming on Disney+ and Hulu after first premiering on Freeform on October 1, 2026, as part of the network’s 31 Nights of Halloween lineup. It didn’t take long to catch on, either. According to FlixPatrol, the supernatural teen drama has already climbed to No. 1 on Disney+’s TV chart.

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Now that the full first season is up, that ranking makes a lot more sense. FlixPatrol currently has the series ahead of American Horror Story and Loki, which is a pretty strong hint that Disney+ may have a breakout fantasy original on its hands outside the usual Marvel, Star Wars, and book-based crowd-pleasers.

It’s also easy to see why so many people are bringing up Wednesday. Tim Federle’s series centers on Brooklyn teen Briar Roberts, played by Malina Weissman, after she arrives at New Orleans’ Crescent Veil Academy. There, Briar is trying to get a handle on both her telekinesis and her temper while teaming up with Sasha, who can manipulate minds, and Tegan, who bends time. Add in romance, mystery, and mounting threats to the coven, and the comparison doesn’t feel random.

The reviews have been strong, too, stronger than you might expect. At the time of writing, Coven Academy is sitting at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics praising its emotional depth and that very specific 2000s teen-supernatural vibe. If you’re looking for Disney+’s next big fantasy watch while Percy Jackson and the Olympians cools off, this one looks like a good bet, especially after Disney said Percy launched with 13.3 million viewers and Nielsen reported the series logged 3 billion minutes in 2024.

You can stream the full first season now on Disney+ and Hulu.

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Carrie premieres on Prime Video October 7: Stephen King’s classic becomes an 8-episode series

Prime Video’s Carrie, an eight-episode limited series drawn from Stephen King’s first novel, premieres worldwide on October 7, 2026. The longer format gives the story a lot more room than any of the earlier movie versions ever had.

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This take on Carrie pulls the story into the present, with cell phones, social media, and cyberbullying woven right into it. Early reviews have landed well too: Rotten Tomatoes has it sitting in the mid-80s, and a lot of the praise has gone to Summer H. Howell as Carrie White and Samantha Sloyan as Margaret White.

Mike Flanagan developed the series and serves as showrunner and executive producer alongside Stephen King. If you’ve followed Flanagan’s earlier King adaptations, including Gerald’s Game, Doctor Sleep, and The Life of Chuck, there’s a good reason to pay attention here. The series seems especially interested in digging further into Carrie White’s isolation , trauma, and public humiliation in a world where everything spreads fast and nothing stays private for long. Amber Midthunder, Matthew Lillard, and Siena Agudong are also part of the cast.

Set against the earlier versions, Prime Video’s Carrie is the fourth major screen adaptation, following the 1976 film, the 2002 TV movie, and the 2013 remake. It also extends Mike Flanagan’s larger partnership with Prime Video, which includes The Dark Tower.

You can stream Prime Video’s Carrie worldwide starting October 7, 2026.

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Attack of the Killer Tomatoes returns 34 years later: Organic Intelligence hits digital today

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes: Organic Intelligence, the fifth Killer Tomatoes movie, lands on digital and VOD today, October 6, after first opening in limited theaters on August 7, 2026. That puts it 34 years after 1992’s Killer Tomatoes Eat France!, which is a pretty long layoff for this franchise.

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This isn’t a reboot. It plays more like a fond, knowingly silly continuation, with the same campy B-movie spirit, practical effects, and puppetry intact. The story follows a biotech prodigy whose engineered tomatoes are supposed to help solve world hunger, then become sentient and dangerous instead. The movie uses that setup to take swings at biotech ambition, corporate greed, and technology getting loose from the people who built it.

The connection to the older films is real, too. Series creators Costa Dillon and J. Stephen Peace are on board as executive producers, David Ferino directs, and John Astin returns as Professor Gangreen in a voice role.

If you’re into proudly goofy sci-fi, this one may be worth a look. The 1978 original Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!, was a spoof made for under $100,000. Reviews weren’t great, but it still spawned sequels, a cartoon series, and video games. This new installment also comes as part of a 50th-anniversary push that already includes Comic-Con promotion and a Panick Entertainment comic.

You can watch Attack of the Killer Tomatoes: Organic Intelligence now on digital and VOD, or catch it in limited theaters where it’s playing.

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Mistborn gets three new RPG rulebooks in Fall 2026: Scadrial joins the Cosmere RPG

Brotherwise Games has a new Mistborn line on the way for the official Cosmere Roleplaying Game. Three hardcover rulebooks set in Brandon Sanderson’s fantasy universe are now listed for November 4, 2026, and for the moment, that’s the new Mistborn release on the calendar, not another novel.

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The lineup is The Mistborn Handbook, Mistborn World Guide, and Mistborn Legacy. All three are currently listed by Brotherwise Games for November 4, 2026. Mistborn Legacy is priced at $49.99, while The Mistborn Handbook and Mistborn World Guide are each set at $59.99. That also marks a clear move for the Cosmere tabletop line beyond its early Stormlight emphasis and into Scadrial, with Brotherwise saying support through 2027 is planned through 2027.

Players will be able to jump into both major Mistborn eras. Era 1 leans into heists, rebellion, horror, ash-covered cities, and noble intrigue. Era 2 moves the setting into frontier territory, with detectives, secret organizations, gunslingers, and the same familiar magic working in a different kind of world.

There’s more coming with the expansion, too. It adds metal-based combat and exploration mechanics. Mistborn Legacy also brings in extra setting material and a story that stretches across generations. And the Starter Set includes a 72-page rulebook, the 48-page Hope in Ashes adventure, battlemaps, tokens, six pregenerated characters, and initiative cards, according to Brotherwise Games.

So if you’re waiting on new Mistborn fiction, this won’t scratch that itch. If what you want is tabletop Scadrial, though, this is one to keep an eye on.

Right now, the books are listed for November 4, 2026. The Lost Metal is still the most recent Mistborn novel, going back to November 2022. Ghostbloods still isn’t expected before 2028, based on Brandon Sanderson’s earlier comments. And the screen project, along with the Apple TV Cosmere work, still doesn’t have an announced release date.

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Lanterns finale kills Hal Jordan: Green Lantern goes cosmic

Lanterns, HBO’s Green Lantern series inside the DCU, wrapped its first season on October 4, 2026, and the finale blows up the franchise’s Green Lantern status quo. After Sheriff Kerry Kane discovers that her son Noah is a Manhunter hybrid, she kills Hal Jordan. John Stewart then takes Hal’s ring and a Sinestro-forged battery that fuses green willpower with yellow fear, declares himself Earth’s Green Lantern outside both the Green Lantern Corps and the Guardians, and sends the Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, and Tom King series into much bigger territory. Up to that point, the show had run from August 16 to October 4, 2026 as a grounded Rushville murder mystery, drawing a lot of True Detective comparisons, and it’s sitting at 95% on Rotten Tomatoes, according to Rotten Tomatoes. Now it’s moving straight into cosmic crossover territory, with Aaron Pierre reportedly lined up for Man of Tomorrow and season two ideas reportedly already in the works.

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If you’ve been keeping up with the DCU, this is a finale you’ll want to see, and the tie-in is worth picking up too. Injustice 2 Mobile has already added Guy Gardner in his DCU-style Justice Gang suit as a Legendary Arcane solo-raids fighter who builds a combo meter to enter Green Lantern Form. Lex Luthor is already playable as well, and it seems likely that more Man of Tomorrow-style game crossovers are on the way.

You can stream Lanterns on HBO and Max, and Guy Gardner is available now in Injustice 2 Mobile.

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Crawl is now on Netflix: one of 2019’s sharpest thrillers

Netflix just added Crawl, Alexandre Aja’s 2019 survival thriller produced by Sam Raimi, which puts one of that year’s leanest, nastiest thrillers back in easy reach.

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Aja directs, Raimi produces, and the setup gets moving fast. University swimmer Haley Keller, played by Kaya Scodelario, ignores evacuation orders during a Category 5 hurricane and heads back to her Florida family home to look for her injured father, Dave Keller, played by Barry Pepper. Once she gets there, she’s stuck with rising floodwater, a house that’s starting to give way, and a pack of massive alligators.

Crawl still lands because it’s built with real discipline. It plays as both a disaster movie and a creature feature, and it never muddies the stakes. The pacing stays tight, the action is easy to follow, and the effects sell the flooding and the attacks without going overboard.

If you’re in the mood for a tense, fast-moving thriller that shows up, does the job, and leaves, Crawl is an easy pick.

Critics liked it for exactly those reasons, especially the suspense and the pace, and it pulled in more than $91 million worldwide against a budget of about $13.5 million. The movie’s getting another look now partly because Crawl 2 is moving forward with Alexandre Aja coming back, and reports say the sequel will shift to New York City with Mason Gooding and Emily Rudd.

Crawl is streaming on Netflix now.

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PlayStation Plus October 2026 free games are official: Spider-Man avatars too

PlayStation Plus has refreshed its October 2026 lineup. Starting October 6, subscribers get three monthly games, plus a Spider-Man: Brand New Day avatar bonus. The games stay up through November 2, and the avatars are being handed out through Sony Pictures Core.

The Spider-Man: Brand New Day freebie isn’t a game. It’s a set of profile avatars in Sony Pictures Core, released alongside the film’s digital launch. If you don’t have PlayStation Plus, you can still get the avatars by buying the movie in Sony Pictures Core. Just keep the date in mind: the voucher expires on October 6, 2027.

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The monthly games, available from October 6 to November 2, are F1 25 for PS5, Hunt: Showdown 1896 for PS5, and Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2 for PS5 and PS4. As usual, you’ll need to add them to your library by November 2 if you want to keep access while your membership is active.

One regional catch: in Japan, Hunt: Showdown 1896 is swapped out for Hello Neighbor. So before you assume the lineup is identical everywhere, check your local PlayStation Store listing.

If you actually use PlayStation Plus month to month, this October 2026 update is worth picking up mostly for the games themselves. Hunt: Showdown 1896 looks like the big one here. There are also some Halloween-themed in-game extras for titles like Call of Duty: Warzone and Overwatch 2.

You can grab the Spider-Man: Brand New Day avatars through the Sony Pictures Core app, and claim the monthly games through PlayStation Plus on your console.

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Star Trek: Outposts Unknown launches on October 20: the franchise’s first outpost-building strategy game

Star Trek: Outposts Unknown is coming to PC and Mac on October 20, 2026. Made by Magic Fuel Games and published by Playstack, it marks Star Trek’s first strategy game built around outpost construction.

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The story is set in the 23rd century, in the Strange New Worlds era, and drops you into the X’Lehari System. From there, you’re trying to pull a civilization back from catastrophe before a mysterious cosmic threat spreads through the region and reaches hostile worlds like Kourou, an ice-and-fire planet.

The focus here isn’t starship combat so much as the hard, ongoing work of building and expanding a Federation colony. You’ll be dealing with research facilities, tech upgrades, resource management, interplanetary logistics, and crew assignments, while also developing your officers and keeping morale and survival from falling apart.

For Star Trek, that’s a pretty big genre shift, especially during the franchise’s 60th-anniversary stretch. If you’re after a more grounded strategy game, one built around planning, diplomacy, adaptation, and the day-to-day pressure of keeping a remote mission running, this looks like one to watch, assuming the final version arrives in solid shape.

A demo at Steam Next Fest got people interested in the mission structure and the resource systems. Some early players also ran into pre-release bugs tied to exploration and combat.

Star Trek: Outposts Unknown arrives for PC and Mac on October 20, 2026.

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Fringe is still worth watching after Lost ended: it stuck the landing

More than ten years after Fox pulled the plug on Fringe, the 2008 sci-fi series has become one of the most satisfying shows in the genre to revisit, and a lot of fans now put it above Lost.

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Created by J.J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman, and Roberto Orci, Fringe follows FBI agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv), Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble), and Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson) in the Fringe Division. It starts with body horror and reality-warping cases, then builds into a serialized story about parallel universes, alternate timelines, technology, and bigger questions around memory, identity, and destiny. And unlike plenty of mystery shows, Fringe set up clues, paid them off, and actually gave viewers answers.

John Noble’s performance as Dr. Walter Bishop is still the emotional center of the show, and it’s the part people most often point to when they talk about Fringe’s secret weapon.

If you want a sci-fi saga that started strong, got better as it went, and really landed the ending, Fringe is still well worth picking up, even though the ratings dropped from 9.13 million-viewer pilot to 6.252 million in season 2, 5.83 million in season 3, and 3.2 million for the finale.

Fox still gave Fringe the chance to finish its run across five seasons, 100 episodes, seven Saturn Awards, and two Emmy nominations, and there still aren’t any official plans to bring it back.

You can watch Fringe on the streaming service that carries it in your region.

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Jesse Eisenberg turned down appearing in the sequel to ‘The Social Network’. Its director thought it was impossible that he’d do that

Although by 2008 he had already become famous thanks to Zombieland, Jesse Eisenberg won audiences over with The Social Network, which earned him an Oscar nomination. Perhaps for that very reason Aaron Sorkin, who wrote the film and has now directed The Social Network Part II, its sequel, was totally convinced that he’d agree to come back without a moment’s hesitation.

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I gave you all my love, at love dot com

The role of Mark Zuckerberg, previously played by Eisenberg, has been taken up by Jeremy Strong, but even if Sorkin is happy, it’s hard not to see it as a failure. He had only written a couple of pages of the script when he ran into Eisenberg at a party and told him “I’m going to send you something in a couple of weeks”. However, after sending it to him, the screenwriter was left stunned: “It never occurred to me that he wouldn’t want to do it”.

In fact, he even tried to rehearse every conversation with him so that he’d end up saying yes: “It’s the only time I’ve ever written myself an outline. I don’t do it for movies, but I did it for my conversations with Jesse. They were arguments for why he should do it, including ‘We already know you’re going to be great because you already did it once’ or ‘Here are the big scenes you’ll get to play in the movie.’ And I handed it to him”. Although he was close to changing his mind, in the end he backed out at the last minute. Ooooh!

Sadly, not even a good payday made him change his mind: “I found out what the studio was offering him, but money doesn’t motivate Jesse. It’s exasperating. In fact, money actually kills his motivation. It’s admirable. He’s very concerned about his children growing up with too much money”. Fine, Jesse, if you want to get rid of a little, you know where we are. It’ll be a pleasure.