A weekly film and box office newsletter. Howdy, folks! What's scarier than a near-record low box office weekend for the year? If you ask theater owners, it's a Warner Bros. sale. With Halloween falling on a Friday, studios avoided programming any major new releases this weekend, but the dampened results pale in comparison to worries about how a sale of Warner Bros. Pictures will impact the health of the movie theater industry. Especially if the buyer is Netflix, a "worst case scenario," one theater exec told TheWrap. The streamer has been making quiet moves in the theatrical space recently, including the release of "KPop Demon Hunters" aka the biggest movie of 2025 (how many Rumis did you see on Halloween?) in theaters not once but twice this year. And yet Ted Sarandos still maintains that theatrical is "not our business." So with Netflix kicking the tires on Warner Bros., what would they do with the studio's output? Would films like "Sinners" and "Minecraft" and "Superman" be destined for streaming-only releases? Would Netflix keep some level of theatrical output while folding other films into its own content strategy? Would they shrink WB's traditionally pretty robust windows? If Netflix were to buy WB, the big value is in the library. The streamer's biannual data dumps reveal that licensed titles make up the bulk of the most-watched films on Netflix, so to be able to fold the entire DC universe, New Line horror hits and "LEGO" movies into their always-available offerings would be a boon to the streamer's strategy. Much more on this in our lead "spotlight" story below. Adam Chitwood 
Box Office: 'Regretting You' and 'Black Phone 2' Battle in Near-Record Low WeekendThis weekend was expected to be a new low for the 2025 box office, and it is close to that... 
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