What to Watch This Weekend: The Movie Warner Bros. Tried to Bury Is Finally in Theaters

This is the last real weekend of summer 2026, and for once the story is not the superhero movie. Spider-Man: Brand New Day will win its fifth straight weekend and cross $900 million domestic, but you have probably seen it. The interesting choice is between a cartoon lawsuit that almost never existed, a Ridley Scott movie critics cannot agree on, and a horror sequel in its second week. And if you would rather not leave the house, Netflix just handed Robert De Niro a serial killer case.

We wrapped the season's winners and losers in our summer box office scorecard. This guide is about what to do with the weekend that is left.

The one to see: Coyote vs. ACME

The short version of a very long story: Warner Bros. finished this movie in November 2023, then announced it would never release it, taking a tax write-off reported at around $30 million. The backlash was loud enough that the studio reversed within days and let other buyers look, then turned down every offer. In March 2025, independent distributor Ketchup Entertainment bought the film outright for a reported $50 million. It opened Friday in 3,575 theaters, a record footprint for Ketchup.

The movie is a live-action and animation hybrid built from a 1990 New Yorker humor piece: after decades of exploding rockets and faulty anvils, Wile E. Coyote sues the ACME Corporation. Will Forte plays the billboard lawyer who takes the case, Lana Condor is the intern niece who talks him into it, and John Cena is ACME's attack-dog attorney. Eric Bauza voices the entire Looney Tunes bench. Dave Green directs from a Samy Burch screenplay with a story credit that includes James Gunn.

The reviews are the best of any wide release this month: 95 percent with critics and 92 percent with audiences on Rotten Tomatoes. Time called it "a late-summer delight," and RogerEbert.com described its final beats as "almost inspirational." It is rated PG, runs 103 minutes, and pulled $1.7 million in previews on the way to a projected $12 to $15 million weekend, roughly double what tracking said a month ago. Take the kids. Take yourself. This is the one.

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The wildcard: The Dog Stars

Ridley Scott is 88 and still releasing a movie a year. The Dog Stars adapts Peter Heller's 2012 novel about Hig (Jacob Elordi), a pilot living in a Colorado airplane hangar after a flu pandemic has emptied the world, with only his dog and a heavily armed survivalist named Bangley (Josh Brolin) for company. A stray radio transmission picked up in his old Cessna sends him looking for whoever is out there. Margaret Qualley and Guy Pearce play the people he finds. Mark L. Smith, who co-wrote The Revenant, wrote the script; Elordi took the role after Paul Mescal fell out of negotiations.

The critics are genuinely split, which is more interesting than a consensus pan. The Rotten Tomatoes score is 40 percent, with a consensus that calls it a derivative and drowsy tour through the post-apocalypse. But one trade review argued it is arguably Scott's best since The Martian, and almost everyone agrees Elordi is terrific. It is rated R, runs just under two hours, and is tracking for a soft $8 to $12 million opening on a $70 million budget. If you keep a Scott ranking (start with our Alien movies ranked for the peaks), this is a worthwhile data point. If you want a sure thing, it is not that.

The scary one: Insidious: Out of the Further

Insidious: Out of the Further is the sixth entry in the Blumhouse franchise and a prequel to 2023's The Red Door. Writer-director Jacob Chase (Come Play) introduces Gemma (Amelia Eve), a young mother back in her childhood home who discovers she can cross into the Further and, worse, bring things back. Lin Shaye returns as Elise Rainier, and the standout sequence turns a daughter's pillow fort into an endless liminal space of cushions.

It opened to $25.3 million, well below The Red Door's $33 million, and should drop to around $9 million this weekend for a ten-day total near $42.5 million. Reviews landed at 57 percent, split between critics who found it uninspired and those happy with a steady stream of jump scares. It is a serviceable PG-13 scare with a 70 percent audience score and a decent warm-up for spooky season. Rank the franchise on Shortlist and see if you agree the original is still untouchable.

The couch pick: The Whisper Man on Netflix

Netflix's big Friday drop is The Whisper Man, adapted from Alex North's bestseller by director James Ashcroft. Adam Scott plays Tom Kennedy, a widowed crime novelist whose young son vanishes after they move into a gothic rental. The abduction matches the method of a serial killer caught 25 years earlier, which forces Tom to reunite with his estranged father (Robert De Niro), the retired detective who put the killer away. Michelle Monaghan, Michael Keaton, and Owen Teague fill out a cast that is frankly overqualified for the material.

The reviews are the mixed-positive kind Netflix thrillers usually get: Variety called it diverting, The Hollywood Reporter called it a twisty airport paperback, and most agree Scott does the heavy lifting while De Niro works in a lower gear. It is rated R, runs 114 minutes, and does exactly the job of a procedural you can talk over with a glass of wine.

What about Spider-Man?

Still there, still number one. Spider-Man: Brand New Day entered the weekend at $869.2 million domestic and is projected to add $18 to $20 million, which puts it past $900 million and makes it the first film to hold the top spot for five straight weekends since Avatar: Fire and Ash. It has single-handedly made August 2026 the biggest August in domestic box office history and only the third month ever to clear $1 billion. See where the community slots it in our Spider-Man movies ranked list before you argue about it.

Next weekend, briefly

Labor Day weekend is traditionally quiet, and this one is mostly re-releases. The big one is Cars, back in theaters September 4 for its 20th anniversary, timed to Lightning McQueen Day on September 5 (his car number is 95). If you have kids who have never seen it on a big screen, that is your plan, and a good excuse to revisit where it sits in our Pixar movies ranked list.

Whatever you pick, log it. A summer that included The Odyssey, Toy Story 5, Spider-Man, and a rescued Looney Tunes movie is exactly the kind of slate a tier list was built for, and ranking head to head on Shortlist settles the Coyote-versus-Spider-Man debate faster than a group chat ever will.

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