Thriller movies and TV shows are great, but the genre is best experienced on the page. A visual medium can show the audience what is happening, but a book traps them inside the characters’ thoughts, fears, and paranoia. Thriller novels offer a sense of immersion that doesn’t need background music cues or lingering shots to offer the audience hints.
Instead, readers have to search for clues themselves, question every narrator, and essentially become a part of the mystery at hand. The tension here depends entirely on the author’s ability to control what the reader knows, and, more importantly, what they don’t. Given that, here is a list of the best thriller books of all time that continue to define the genreto this day.
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10
‘The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’ (2005)
Image via Norstedts Förlag
Stieg Larsson’sThe Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is the first book in the Millennium series and serves as the perfect slow-burn thriller. The story follows disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist, whom wealthy industrialist Henrik Vanger hires to investigate the four-decade-old disappearance of his great-niece, Harriet. Henrik is convinced that someone within the enormous, deeply dysfunctional Vanger family was responsible for the crime. This leads Mikael on a sprawling investigation that brings him to Lisbeth Salander, a brilliant hacker and private investigator whose ability to uncover other people’s secrets makes her uniquely suited to this case built around generations of lies.
Mikael and Lisbeth are initially treated as the leads of two separate stories that unfold simultaneously. However, once they finally cross paths, the book becomes impossible to put down thanks to their unique dynamic. Larsson also gives the mystery far more weight than a conventional cold case. The novel’s original Swedish title translates to Men Who Hate Women, which reveals the uglier subject hiding beneath its missing-person premise.
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9
‘The Day of the Jackal’ (1971)
Image via Penguin
Frederick Forsyth’s political thriller, The Day of the Jackal, begins in 1962, after repeated attempts by the far-right OAS to assassinate French President Charles de Gaulle have ended in disaster. The organization is heavily infiltrated by French intelligence, so its leaders decide their only remaining option is to hire someone the authorities have never seen before. That’s when the Jackal enters the story as a nameless English assassin who accepts the contract and begins constructing an extraordinarily detailed plan to kill one of the most heavily protected men in the world. Meanwhile, quiet and methodical police commissioner Claude Lebel is given the seemingly impossible task of identifying and stopping a killer whose real name, appearance, and location are completely unknown.
The genius of the novel is that readers already know de Gaulle survived. Forsyth cannot create suspense by making anyone wonder whether history will be rewritten, so he builds it in how dangerously close the Jackal might come to it. The two men barely share the page, yet their battle of patience and intelligence makes the novel feel as fast-paced as ever. Obviously, Forsyth’s background as a journalist gives the book a frightening sense of authenticity. He blends the fictional plot with real political tensions and genuine events surrounding the OAS to fully immerse the reader in an operation of this scale. This documentary-like realism completely redefines what readers expected from political thrillers, and remains the benchmark for the genre to this day.
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8
‘The Silent Patient’ (2019)
Image via Celadon Books
Alex Michaelides’ The Silent Patient begins with an almost impossible mystery, which is what makes it such a compelling read. The story follows Alicia Berenson, a successful painter with a seemingly happy marriage. Things take a turn when one fateful evening, she shoots her husband Gabriel five times in the face. After the murder, she never speaks again, not even to defend herself or offer any kind of explanation. Her silence turns the case into a national obsession and eventually brings her to the Grove, a secure psychiatric facility. Years later, psychotherapist Theo Faber becomes determined to uncover the truth.
He believes that getting Alicia to speak will finally explain the murder, but his interest in her quickly becomes more personal than professional. Soon enough, Theo’s investigation leads him to believe that nearly everyone involved in the mystery is hiding something. The central question of the story is pretty simple. The readers constantly wonder why Alicia killed her husband, and every chapter of the novel keeps the pace moving to answer that question. The Silent Patient is best known for its final twist, but the reveal works because of how carefully the author builds everything that comes before it.
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7
‘The Talented Mr. Ripley’ (1955)
Image via Coward-McCann
The Talented Mr. Ripleyis Patricia Highsmith’s brilliant psychological thriller that is still an important part of pop culture today. The story introduces readers to Tom Ripley, a struggling young con artist surviving through petty scams in New York. His fortunes change when wealthy businessman Herbert Greenleaf offers to send him to Italy to convince his son, Dickie, to return home and join the family business. Tom barely knows Dickie, but he happily exaggerates their friendship for the free trip. Once he reaches the beautiful seaside village of Mongibello, however, he becomes fascinated by Dickie’s money, confidence, and carefree lifestyle. The catch is that becoming Dickie’s friend isn’t enough.
Tom slowly begins to believe he deserves Dickie’s life more than Dickie does, and this obsession leads him into murder, identity theft, and an increasingly complicated web of lies. Highsmith traps readers inside Tom’s mind while he does all these unhinged, selfish things. As he switches between identities and attempts to stay ahead of the police, the tension comes from never knowing what he might do next, or how much further he is willing to go to protect a life he has stolen. The novel became the first of five books about Ripley, but the opening installment remains one of the most iconic crime stories ever told.
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6
‘The Bourne Identity’ (1980)
Image via Hachette/ Richard Marek
The Bourne Identity begins with a man being pulled from the Mediterranean Sea. His body is filled with bullets and his memory almost completely erased. He doesn’t even remember his name or where he comes from. All he knows is that his instincts tell him how to fight, escape surveillance, and recognize danger before anyone else does. The only clue is a Swiss bank-account number hidden beneath his skin. When he follows it to Zurich, he discovers millions of francs, the name Jason Bourne, and several armed men who seem very determined to stop him from learning anything else. That is the intriguing premise of Robert Ludlum’s genre-defining thriller novel, but the story is far from over here.
The author keeps complicating the central character’s identity every step of the way. The evidence suggests that he may be a professional assassin known as Cain, yet other clues point toward a much stronger covert operation involving the CIA. That forces Bourne to hunt for the truth while questioning whether the person he used to be is someone he should even want to remember. Unlike the considerably simpler film adaptation (which later turned into multiple rewatchable Bourne movies), the novel does not provide one easy answer and move on. It keeps peeling away layers until Bourne’s past becomes more morally complicated than the reader expects.
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Collider Exclusive · Horror Survival Quiz Which Horror Villain Do You Have the Best Chance of Surviving? Jason Voorhees · Michael Myers · Freddy Krueger · Pennywise · Chucky
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Five killers. Five completely different ways to die — if you’re not smart enough, fast enough, or self-aware enough to avoid it. Only one of them is the villain your particular set of instincts gives you a fighting chance against. Eight questions will figure out which one.
🏕️Jason
🔪Michael
💤Freddy
🎈Pennywise
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🪆Chucky
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01
Something feels wrong. You can’t explain it — you just know. What do you do? First instincts are the difference between the survivor and the first act casualty.
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02
Where are you most likely to find yourself when things go wrong? Setting is everything in horror. Where you are determines which rules apply.
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03
What is your most reliable survival asset? Every survivor has a quality the villain didn’t account for. What’s yours?
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04
What kind of fear is hardest for you to fight through? Knowing your weakness is the first step to not dying because of it.
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05
You’re with a group when things start going wrong. What’s your role? Horror movies are brutally clear about who survives group situations and who doesn’t.
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06
What’s the horror movie mistake you’re most likely to make? Honest self-assessment is a survival skill. Denial is not.
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07
What’s your best weapon against something that can’t be stopped by conventional means? Every horror villain has a weakness. The survivors are always the ones who find it.
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08
It’s the final scene. You’re the last one standing. How did you make it? The final survivor always has a reason. What’s yours?
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Your Survival Odds Have Been Calculated Your Best Chance Is Against…
Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.
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Camp Crystal Lake · Friday the 13th
Jason Voorhees
Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.
He moves in straight lines toward his target. He doesn’t strategise, doesn’t adapt, doesn’t outsmart. He simply pursues.
Your ability to keep moving, use the environment, and resist the panic that freezes most victims gives you a genuine edge.
The Crystal Lake survivors were always the ones who stopped running in circles and started thinking about terrain, water, and distance.
You think like that. Which means Jason, for all his indestructibility, would face someone who simply refused to be where he expected.
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Haddonfield, Illinois · Halloween
Michael Myers
Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.
But you are paying attention. You notice the shape in the window, the car parked slightly wrong, the silence where there should be sound.
Michael’s power lies in the invisibility of ordinary suburbia — the fact that nothing ever looks wrong until it already is.
Your spatial awareness and instinct to map every room, every exit, and every shadow before you need them is precisely the quality Laurie Strode had.
You are not a victim waiting to happen. You are someone who already suspects something is wrong — and acts on it.
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Elm Street · A Nightmare on Elm Street
Freddy Krueger
Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.
You are harder to destabilise than most. You’ve faced uncomfortable truths about yourself and you haven’t looked away.
The survivors on Elm Street were always the ones who understood what was happening and chose to face it rather than flee from it.
Freddy’s greatest weakness is that his power evaporates in the presence of someone who refuses to give him the fear he feeds on.
Your psychological resilience — the ability to stay grounded when reality itself becomes unreliable — is exactly the quality that keeps you alive here.
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Derry, Maine · It
Pennywise
Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.
The Losers Club didn’t survive because they were braver than everyone else. They survived because they faced their fears together, and faced them honestly.
You ask the questions others avoid. You look directly at what frightens you rather than turning away.
That directness — the refusal to let fear fester in the dark — is Pennywise’s worst nightmare.
It chose the wrong target when it chose you. You are exactly the kind of person whose fear tastes like nothing at all.
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Chicago · Child’s Play
Chucky
Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.
You don’t have that gap. You take threats seriously regardless of how they present — and you never make the mistake of underestimating something because of its size or appearance.
Chucky relies on surprise, on the delay between recognition and response. You close that delay faster than almost anyone.
Your instinct to treat every unfamiliar thing with appropriate scepticism — rather than dismissing it because it seems absurd — is the exact quality that keeps you breathing.
Against Chucky, not laughing is already winning. You are very good at not laughing.
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5
‘Rebecca’ (1938)
A grayscale photo of concrete stairs with the logo for Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.Image via William Morrow Paperbacks, 2006
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It’s easy to mistake Daphne du Maurier’sRebecca for a romance in the beginning, but it slowly reveals its much darker narrative. The story follows an unnamed narrator, a shy young woman working as a paid companion in Monte Carlo when she meets the wealthy and recently widowed Maxim de Winter. Their courtship moves quickly, and before long, she becomes the second Mrs. de Winter and returns with him to Manderley, his enormous estate on the Cornwall coast. However, instead of beginning a perfect new life, she finds herself living in the shadow of Maxim’s first wife, Rebecca, who drowned less than a year earlier.
The most fascinating part of the novel is how Rebecca dominates almost every page, even though she is dead. Her belongings remain untouched, the staff still compare everything to the way she once ran the house, and her former maid, Mrs. Danvers, makes it clear that the new Mrs. de Winter will never be considered a worthy replacement. It’s almost as if Rebecca is haunting the narrator, which gives the book a unique, unsettling quality. All of that slowly builds up to the mystery surrounding Rebecca’s final moments, but even after the truth surfaces, Rebecca never offers the readers a clear resolution, which becomes the novel’s greatest strength.
4
‘The Spy Who Came in from the Cold’ (1963)
Image via Victor Gollancz
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The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré strips away the glamor mainstream entertainment associated with espionage. The story follows worn-down British intelligence officer Alec Leamas, whose network in East Germany has been systematically destroyed by Hans-Dieter Mundt, a ruthless counterintelligence chief. After watching his final agent get shot while attempting to cross the Berlin Wall, Leamas returns to London expecting retirement. Instead, Control offers him one last operation to publicly destroy his own life, pose as a bitter former agent, and convince East German intelligence that Mundt has secretly been working for Britain. Leamas begins drinking heavily, loses his job, and allows himself to appear like a man who has been abandoned by the country he once served. The performance eventually attracts the attention of East German agents, who believe he may be willing to sell them British secrets.
Once they make contact, Leamas is pulled deeper into a dangerous intelligence operation where everyone has their own version of the truth. This uncertainty is what makes the novel so gripping, but its moral bleakness is what made it revolutionary. It’s important to remember that the story was published when James Bond was transforming the spy thriller genre. However, The Spy Who Came in from the Coldpresented spies as exhausted professionals working for institutions that treat them as expendable. The novel’s final stretch is devastating because its betrayals are not grand or theatrical, but cold and completely believable. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold did not simply make the spy novel darker. It exposed the uncomfortable possibility that, in the real world of espionage, the good side may not exist after all.
3
‘Gone Girl’ (2012)
Book cover for Gillian Flynn’s Gone GirlImage via Phoenix
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Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl begins on Nick and Amy Dunne’s 5th wedding anniversary, when Amy suddenly disappears from their home in North Carthage, Missouri. The living room shows signs of a struggle, and the police immediately begin asking difficult questions. What makes things worse, though, is that Nick doesn’t behave like a grieving husband. He avoids simple questions and repeatedly lies about his marriage, and soon enough, the public decides that he might be the person responsible for Amy’s disappearance. The novel unfolds through Nick’s account of the investigation and entries from Amy’s diary, which trace their relationship from an exciting New York romance to an increasingly unhappy marriage. At first, Amy’s memories appear to explain what Nick is hiding.
However, the details in their stories do not always match, and both narrators carefully control what they allow the reader to see. The result is a mystery where the reader doesn’t know who to trust, and their loyalties are always shifting. That’s what makes Gone Girl more than just a missing-person mystery. The book is a chilling examination of the institution of marriage and the pretenses people operate under when they are falling in love. The story is dark, funny, uncomfortable, and impossible to predict. Gone Girl turns a troubled marriage into psychological warfare in a way that still feels fresh.
2
‘Red Dragon’ (1981)
Image via Corgi Books
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Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon follows former FBI profiler Will Graham, who retired after nearly losing his life while capturing Hannibal Lecter. Graham has an unusual ability to understand how killers think, but that talent comes at a high cost. Entering their minds has left him physically scarred, mentally exhausted, and afraid of how easily he can recognize their impulses within himself. The premise picks up when two families are murdered in their homes under disturbingly similar circumstances, and FBI agent Jack Crawford asks Graham to return for one final investigation. The killer, nicknamed the Tooth Fairy by the press, appears to choose his victims at random and plans his attacks around the full moon. In a race against time, Graham begins studying crime scenes, home videos, and the smallest behavioral details in search of a pattern.
When the investigation stalls, he reluctantly turns to Lecter, while knowing that asking for his help also gives the imprisoned killer another opportunity to manipulate him. Lecter is not the novel’s main villain, though. That role belongs to Francis Dolarhyde, a deeply disturbed man who believes he is transforming into the Great Red Dragon depicted in a William Blake painting. Harris spends a surprising amount of time inside Dolarhyde’s mind to show how childhood abuse, shame, and violence shaped him. The author does not excuse his crimes, but turns him into a far more unsettling character than a faceless murderer. This psychological depth separates Red Dragon from a standard serial-killer thriller. The investigation is tense and carefully detailed, but the novel becomes truly frightening when it forces readers to examine the darkness humans hide within themselves.
1
‘And Then There Were None’ (1939)
Image via Collins Crime Club
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Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were Noneis a classic whodunit that brings ten strangers to an isolated mansion on Soldier Island. Each person has received a different invitation, yet none of them has actually met the mysterious host. Soon after their arrival, a recorded voice accuses every guest of being responsible for someone’s death. Before the group can understand what is happening, one of them suddenly dies. That’s not all, though. The guests soon realize that the deaths appear to be following the lines of a disturbing nursery rhyme displayed throughout the house. The bad weather cuts off their only route back to the mainland, and the group desperately begins searching the island for their absent host.
However, when they find no one else, they start to wonder whether the killer is one of them. That is where the story’s suspense comes from. The readers know that there is no detective coming to solve the case, and that no character can be fully trusted. Every new death reduces the number of suspects while also increasing the danger for everyone left alive. It’s easy to see how many modern books and films have borrowed this exact formula, but as they say, the first time is the charm.
It’s been 22 years since we first boarded Oceanic Airlines flight 815 right before it crashed on a mysterious island in the middle of the ocean, but the legacy of Lost continues to loom large in the television landscape. Often regarded as one of the greatest TV shows of all time, the series garnered attention critically and with audiences at home. It won 11 Primetime Emmys along with hundreds of other industry award nominations. In the zeitgeist, it became the show that everyone had to watch right when it came out, because no one wanted to be spoiled for what happened on the island this week.
Created by Jeffrey Lieber, J.J. Abrams, and Damon Lindelof, the series ran for 121 episodes over six seasons on ABC, with the show being one of the most expensive on the air at the time as it included an ensemble cast and was primarily filmed on location in Hawai’i. But the investment was ultimately worth it as Lost became such a big hit that, decades later, people are still arguing about whether the finale was good or not, talking about the smoke monster twist, and crying over the “Not Penny’s Boat” scene. Sitting down with co-showrunner Carlton Cuse at the 2nd edition of Italian Global Series, Cuse reflected not only on the popularity of the show, but how the television landscape was changed by a show like Lost.
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How Network TV Shaped the Drama of ‘Lost’
“I think Lost was really propelled by the sudden emergence of social media.”
Before audiences were being shocked by Ned Stark’s sudden execution or Walter White’s dark transformation into Heisenberg, Lost was the show that everyone couldn’t stop talking about. By Season 3, Twitter had officially been created, setting up a perfect space for fans of the show to scream about the series and discuss the weekly twists and turns. “We happened to be making a TV show that was engaging and also confounding, and the perfect thing to be discussing on social media,” Cuse explains, thinking back to the height of Lost. “There was this incredible, inadvertent confluence of those two events, and I think Lost was really propelled by the sudden emergence of social media.”
At the time, TV seasons could run for 20+ episodes, and each episode had to be timed to 42 minutes and 30 seconds long. The episodes couldn’t have curse words; a new episode had to be made every eight days, according to Cuse, and the flow of the episode had to accommodate the commercials. Cuse recalls the challenges they faced in the writers’ room: “The constraints of having to have an act break shaped the way we broke the story, so we thought a lot in the writers’ room about, well, what’s the teaser out, what’s the episode out, what are ways in which we can really ensure that the audience doesn’t disappear during a commercial break?”
These constraints, as frustrating as they might be, formulated the perfect environment for the writers of the series. “That narrative structure, I think, really helped shape the way Lost exists,” Cuse admits. “We had to find emotional intensity other ways than just having graphic content, whether it’s extreme violence, sex, language, and it gave us an opportunity because we were doing things that other people weren’t doing, to really be more singular.”
Networks like ABC weren’t — and still aren’t — putting out shows like Lost at the time. Those studios are sustained by familiar procedurals, shows that anyone can drop into and dip out of without losing the plot. Cuse admits that Lost being so different gave the show a leg up in the TV landscape. “There weren’t network television shows that were highly serialized, that had a big sprawling cast, where characters had done really bad things, like murder people. So I think that we benefited enormously from doing Lost in a network environment.”
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22 Years Later and TV Has New Problems That ‘Lost’ Never Faced
“I will probably end up spending two and a half years making eight episodes of television, all told…”
Jorge Garcia, Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, Yunjin Kim, and Naveen Andrews in Lost (1)Image via ABC
Since the streaming boom and this new era of television, you’ll be hard-pressed to find shows with serialized stories like Lost lasting more than even 10 episodes, and it’s more than common to wait at least a year before another season drops. However, the pressure of that type of work environment, which led to Lost‘s success, isn’t necessarily something that Cuse wants to return to. “We made 24 episodes the first season, 23 the second season, 22, and then there was a strike short in a 14-episode season, and then we only made 17, and then 18. I mean, it’s insane when I think about it.”
“My partner, Damon Lindelof, and I would stay late in the office one or two nights a week until you know one or two in the morning, rewriting that week’s script, because we had to put a script out every eight days, and it’s kind of baffling that we were able to do it.” Cuse calls that traditional format of TV making “mind-boggling” and says that what exists today is completely different. “But I don’t really want to go back. I mean, it was just a very different time,” he says.
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Cuse, who is currently working on a Netflix adaptation of Dan Brown‘s latest novel, The Secrets of Secrets, which follows Robert Langdon, the character formerly played by Tom Hanks in the three movies, is far happier with the pace of television making today. “I will probably end up spending two and a half years making eight episodes of television, all told, and it’s just completely different.”
Although this new approach is no doubt far less stressful on showrunners, it also means that extended productions lead to large gaps between seasons. Fans of these shows know firsthand what it’s like to feel like you’re waiting forever just for a handful of episodes to drop all on one day and then disappear again for another couple of years. HBO’s Euphoriahad three years between Seasons 1 and 2 and then a whopping four years between Seasons 2 and 3. Netflix is known for its multi-year breaks between show seasons, with shows like Stranger Things and Wednesday having at least two years of a hiatus between seasons.
The problem with these long hiatuses is that whatever momentum is being built up during the show comes to a screeching halt by the finale. “I think I just read an article about how difficult it is for some streamers, how big a drop off there was in the second and subsequent seasons of most shows, and there are a few exceptions, but a lot of shows — even well-reviewed and regarded shows — are dropping off because audiences have lost any momentum they have for that show, because they have to wait a couple of years between seasons,” Cuse explains.
Can you imagine what it would be like to wait three years after “Through the Looking Glass,” the Season 3 finale of Lost that not only gave us the “Not Penny’s boat” moment but also the “We have to go back!” line from Jack? With so much happening on that show in terms of timelines, factions, and characters, waiting three years would take the wind out of the sails of such an impactful final moment, and that would be the case for any show trying to mimic the format of Lost. But, Cuse sees a new path forward for television that takes a more hybrid approach.
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The Streaming Landscape Needs To Change and Carlton Cuse Knows How
“I think subsequent seasons of television are going to be more like movie sequels in a way.”
When asking Cuse if he thinks Lost would be the same sensation today as it was back in 2004, the producer admits, “I don’t think it would be quite as much of a phenomenon as it was back then; everything was so singular at that time.” But, in truth, the media landscape and the industry have been completely revolutionized in the last 22 years. How we watch TV is different, how we watch movies is different, and how we engage with media is completely different. While Lindelof and Cuse had to deal with how to get people to tune back in after a commercial break, showrunners today have to deal with how to keep people engaged after being gone from the cultural landscape for over a year.
For Cuse, the best way forward is to keep season stories contained rather than having multi-season arcs. “Personally, for me, I’m at a place right now where I like more limited storytelling,” he explains. “I created the show Jack Ryan with writer Graham Roland, and that show we have envisioned that each season was a complete story, and you could revisit it with a character. So, I think subsequent seasons of television are going to be more like movie sequels in a way, where they’ll tell an individual story with the beginning, middle, and end.”
This doesn’t mean that a throughline won’t always be there through a television show, but this approach allows for more complete stories to be told that won’t disappoint audiences if, God forbid, the show doesn’t come back until two years later or is cancelled altogether. “I think streamers will move to a place like in books, you know, there are many novelists who write books like Dan Brown with a certain character, but each story is its own closed-ended story.”
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This is a pattern we’re already seeing in shows like Bridgerton, which is based on a romance novel series by Julia Quinn where each book follows a member of the family, but rather than having to read all the books in the series in order, you can jump in at any time. With the show focusing on one sibling every season, even with overarching storylines, the show becomes easier to keep up with. “I think you’re going to see more of that, because the idea of ending a show with a cliffhanger and expecting someone to remember what’s going on and pick it back up 18 months or two years later is really tough.”
Cuse points out that this method of storytelling will lead to a rise in more limited series, something that we’re already seeing more of today, but that doesn’t mean that’s the only way forward for TV. “On the other hand, I think you’re starting to see another evolution, which is someone who’s a really great producer, like John Wells, really pushing and reinventing the model with The Pitt, where they’re making 15 episodes a season, and they’re continually going writing and producing, so there aren’t these big gaps,” Cuse says. “I think The Pitt is an example of a hybrid model where they’ve taken the traditional network model, and they’re trying to apply it to streaming.”
With so much changing in television today, it’s hard to imagine a show like Lost surviving, but old stories are being rebooted and revived daily, so what’s stopping us from getting a new version of this beloved show? Especially since Lost is still raking in millions of streaming hours even today. Well, Cuse is personally not interested in revisiting the world himself. “In the years following the show, it would get raised by executives at ABC, and they would ask if we were interested in doing it, and we were kind of unhesitant in saying no. We felt like the story we told, we told it, and I think a lot of the reboots of TV shows haven’t gone that well, and so I think the answer for us is very much no.”
However, don’t let that disappoint you if you are champing at the bit for more of those Lost twists. Cuse is fully open to the idea of someone else adapting the series, saying, “I do think and believe that at some point some talented young writer or writers will come to ABC and say, ‘Hey, we have a great idea to do another story in the Lost world,’ and they’ll do it, and that would be great. I don’t have a problem with somebody else telling a story in the world of Lost. But I don’t see us doing it.” One can only hope that if (or more realistically, when) that time comes around, the studio involved will take a bit of advice from Cuse and adapt to this new approach to TV storytelling rather than try and catch lightning in a bottle twice with the old.
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Release Date
2004 – 2010-00-00
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Showrunner
Damon Lindelof, Carlton Cuse
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Directors
Jack Bender, Paul A. Edwards, Tucker Gates, Eric Laneuville, Bobby Roth, Greg Yaitanes, Daniel Attias, J.J. Abrams, Karen Gaviola, Kevin Hooks, Rod Holcomb, Stephen Semel, Adam Davidson, Alan Taylor, David Grossman, Deran Sarafian, Fred Toye, Mario Van Peebles, Marita Grabiak, Mark Goldman, Matt Earl Beesley, Michael Zinberg, Paris Barclay, Robert Mandel
Writers
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Jim Galasso, Christina M. Kim, Graham Roland, Kyle Pennington, Brent Fletcher, Dawn Lambertsen Kelly, Janet Tamaro, Jeffrey Lieber, Paul Dini, Jordan Rosenberg
Netflix takes pride in its roster of thrillers. From the post-apocalyptic Bird Box and the TSA anxiety of Carry-Onto the hit crime action Rebel Ridge, the streamer has a knack for reimagining all kinds of scenarios—from the ordinary to the highly specific—and showing the many ways they can spiral out of control. Whether it’s a case of jealousy gone wrong or a classic detective mystery with a motive for everyone, these thrillers deliver much-needed suspense.
With tightly written scripts that leave little room for wasted moments and cinematography designed to make viewers feel as uneasy as the conflict itself, Netflix’s thrillers know how to keep audiences on edge. While the platform’s biggest hits have had their time in the spotlight, its underrated films deserve just as much recognition. In honor of those overlooked gems, here are forgotten Netflix thriller movies that are perfect from start to finish.
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‘Fair Play’ (2023)
Luke (Alden Ehrenreich) and Emily (Phoebe Dynevor) talking in an office in Fair PlayImage via Netflix
All’s fair in love and war. Fair Play follows freshly engaged Emily (Phoebe Dynevor) and Luke (Alden Ehrenreich), who look like the perfect pair. But when a promotion gets in their way, it’s a corporate battle from here on out. When Emily receives the coveted role instead of Luke, their once-supportive romance descends into a workplace rivalry gone wrong. From sarcastic, passive-aggressive remarks to a full-blown case of abuse, Fair Play exposes how fragile men can be at the sight of a woman’s success.
With Chloe Domont‘s relentlessly paced script, Fair Play continually ups the ante as Luke’s mounting anxiety spirals out of control. Despite Emily clearly being the more talented of the two, jealousy brings out the worst in Luke, pushing him to sabotage her success. It’s a biting commentary on how toxic ambition, particularly from a male perspective, can destroy another person — especially when that person is the one you love. The scary part is that Emily’s experience as a woman, where gender microaggressions are still present in corporate, is not far from fiction.
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‘Reptile’ (2023)
Justin Timberlake as Will Grady in ReptileImage via Netflix
Reptile follows Detective Tom Nichols (Benicio del Toro) as he investigates the brutal murder of real estate agent Summer Elswick (Matilda Lutz). Together with his partner Dan Cleary (Ato Essandoh), the two ask around those closest to the victim. Their suspects include boyfriend Will Grady (Justin Timberlake), estranged husband Sam Gifford (Karl Glusman), and local troublemaker Eli Phillips (Michael Carmen Pitt). While the evidence seems to point toward an obvious culprit, Tom refuses to accept the easy answer.
Reptile keeps audiences questioning because all three suspects have evidence tying them to different crimes. Through a familiar crime thriller formula, supported by del Toro’s strongest performance since Sicario, Reptile requires audiences to notice the inconsistencies. Just because someone is guilty doesn’t necessarily mean they’re the perpetrator behind the central crime. However, it does suggest that forces far bigger than del Toro’s detective are at play. What initially seems like a single case escalates into a wide corruption scheme, giving Reptile its man-versus-the-system edge.
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‘The Killer’ (2023)
Michael Fassbender sitting on the ground in ‘The Killer’Image via Netflix
Gritty, bloody, and stylish, The Killer is a nod to the sleek hitman genre. After missing a high-profile sniper assassination in Paris, a nameless contract killer returns to his hideout in the Dominican Republic only to find his girlfriend brutally attacked in retaliation. Abandoning his rule of never making a job personal, he ventures across the United States to find the person responsible, bringing him to the client he ordered the cleanup back in France.
The Killer shows another side of the hitman profession. Beneath all the traveling, Michael Fassbender‘s detached voiceover reveals that the life of a contract killer is a lonely one, making the assault of his girlfriend even more personal. Because any sign of his true identity could expose him, he lives in constant isolation, whether he’s working from abandoned WeWork offices or relying on food delivery apps. There’s nothing glamorous about contract killing, especially when you’re too detached to reap the rewards.
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‘His House’ (2020)
Rial Majur (Wunmi Mosaku) in His HouseImage via Netflix
His House follows Bol (Sope Dirisu) and Rial (Wunmi Mosaku), refugees fleeing the civil war in South Sudan, as they undertake a dangerous trip of survival to Britain. However, along the way, they lose the young girl they claimed as their daughter during the crossing. Granted temporary asylum, they are assigned a rundown house and warned that leaving could result in deportation. As they struggle with their new surroundings, the last thing they would expect is an apeth, a sinister night witch tied to their past.
Unlike your typical supernatural ghosts, His House presents another kind of demon — one born from survivor’s guilt, grief, and displacement. Amid the jump scares and heart-racing tension lies the heartbreaking reality of living with the consequences of the impossible choices Bol and Rial were forced to make to survive. As much as it is a haunted-house horror film, His House also explores the effects of racism, xenophobia, and the expectations placed on refugees.
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Collider Exclusive · Horror Survival Quiz Which Horror Villain Do You Have the Best Chance of Surviving? Jason Voorhees · Michael Myers · Freddy Krueger · Pennywise · Chucky
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Five killers. Five completely different ways to die — if you’re not smart enough, fast enough, or self-aware enough to avoid it. Only one of them is the villain your particular set of instincts gives you a fighting chance against. Eight questions will figure out which one.
🏕️Jason
🔪Michael
💤Freddy
🎈Pennywise
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🪆Chucky
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01
Something feels wrong. You can’t explain it — you just know. What do you do? First instincts are the difference between the survivor and the first act casualty.
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02
Where are you most likely to find yourself when things go wrong? Setting is everything in horror. Where you are determines which rules apply.
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03
What is your most reliable survival asset? Every survivor has a quality the villain didn’t account for. What’s yours?
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04
What kind of fear is hardest for you to fight through? Knowing your weakness is the first step to not dying because of it.
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05
You’re with a group when things start going wrong. What’s your role? Horror movies are brutally clear about who survives group situations and who doesn’t.
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06
What’s the horror movie mistake you’re most likely to make? Honest self-assessment is a survival skill. Denial is not.
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07
What’s your best weapon against something that can’t be stopped by conventional means? Every horror villain has a weakness. The survivors are always the ones who find it.
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08
It’s the final scene. You’re the last one standing. How did you make it? The final survivor always has a reason. What’s yours?
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Your Survival Odds Have Been Calculated Your Best Chance Is Against…
Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.
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Camp Crystal Lake · Friday the 13th
Jason Voorhees
Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.
He moves in straight lines toward his target. He doesn’t strategise, doesn’t adapt, doesn’t outsmart. He simply pursues.
Your ability to keep moving, use the environment, and resist the panic that freezes most victims gives you a genuine edge.
The Crystal Lake survivors were always the ones who stopped running in circles and started thinking about terrain, water, and distance.
You think like that. Which means Jason, for all his indestructibility, would face someone who simply refused to be where he expected.
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Haddonfield, Illinois · Halloween
Michael Myers
Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.
But you are paying attention. You notice the shape in the window, the car parked slightly wrong, the silence where there should be sound.
Michael’s power lies in the invisibility of ordinary suburbia — the fact that nothing ever looks wrong until it already is.
Your spatial awareness and instinct to map every room, every exit, and every shadow before you need them is precisely the quality Laurie Strode had.
You are not a victim waiting to happen. You are someone who already suspects something is wrong — and acts on it.
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Elm Street · A Nightmare on Elm Street
Freddy Krueger
Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.
You are harder to destabilise than most. You’ve faced uncomfortable truths about yourself and you haven’t looked away.
The survivors on Elm Street were always the ones who understood what was happening and chose to face it rather than flee from it.
Freddy’s greatest weakness is that his power evaporates in the presence of someone who refuses to give him the fear he feeds on.
Your psychological resilience — the ability to stay grounded when reality itself becomes unreliable — is exactly the quality that keeps you alive here.
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Derry, Maine · It
Pennywise
Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.
The Losers Club didn’t survive because they were braver than everyone else. They survived because they faced their fears together, and faced them honestly.
You ask the questions others avoid. You look directly at what frightens you rather than turning away.
That directness — the refusal to let fear fester in the dark — is Pennywise’s worst nightmare.
It chose the wrong target when it chose you. You are exactly the kind of person whose fear tastes like nothing at all.
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Chicago · Child’s Play
Chucky
Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.
You don’t have that gap. You take threats seriously regardless of how they present — and you never make the mistake of underestimating something because of its size or appearance.
Chucky relies on surprise, on the delay between recognition and response. You close that delay faster than almost anyone.
Your instinct to treat every unfamiliar thing with appropriate scepticism — rather than dismissing it because it seems absurd — is the exact quality that keeps you breathing.
Against Chucky, not laughing is already winning. You are very good at not laughing.
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‘The Good Nurse’ (2022)
Based on the crimes of the real-life serial killer, The Good Nurse shows how danger can lurk even within an institution that’s meant to save people from death. Amy Loughren (Jessica Chastain), a compassionate nurse and single mother, struggles to support her family while hiding a life-threatening heart condition. Thankfully, she receives the help she needs at work when the thoughtful Charles Cullen (Eddie Redmayne) joins her shift as a fellow nurse. But beneath his warm smile, Amy begins to feel that something’s off about him.
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It’s tough to play a character who is both disarmingly kind and deeply sinister, yet Redmayne nails the balance. At the beginning of The Good Nurse, Amy and Charlie share a sincere, trusting friendship as they bond over the exhaustion of working night shifts in the ICU, making it all the more heartbreaking when Amy discovers Charles’ true nature. While the film ultimately points to larger forces at fault for allowing Charlie to remain in the hospital’s hallways, it grounds the story in a heartfelt connection that goes sideways.
‘The Platform’ (2019)
Goreng (Iván Massagué) in ‘The Platform’Image via Netflix
In The Platform, Goreng (Iván Massagué) voluntarily enters The Hole,a mysterious vertical prison, hoping to earn an accredited diploma after serving six months. Inside, he discovers a brutal system where two inmates occupy each level, and a descending platform delivers food from the top down, leaving those on lower floors to starve. Every month, prisoners awaken on a different level, forcing them to experience privilege and deprivation alike — the latter spiraling into cannibalism, violence, and the collapse of morality.
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Even in this dystopian prison, the unjust system persists. It’s a high-concept sci-fi thriller at its best, but The Platform is ultimately a powerful social allegory about wealth inequality, greed, and the darker side of human nature. Every monthly floor change brings new twists, forcing viewers to ask whether they would share their food or consume everything out of fear of ending up on a lower level. The slightest chance of survival pushes these inhabitants to consider the moral limits they are willing to cross.
‘Hold the Dark’ (2018)
Russell Core (Jeffrey Wright) pointing towards the distance in Hold the DarkImage via Netflix
No place makes a better backdrop for a thriller than the remote wilderness of Alaska. Hold the Darkis set in the aftermath of the disappearance of three children believed to have been killed by wolves. Retired naturalist and wolf expert Russell Core (Jeffrey Wright) is summoned by grieving mother Medora (Riley Keough) to track down her missing six-year-old son. As Core digs deeper into the case, he realizes that Medora’s account may not be entirely truthful.
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Hold the Dark is a prime example of how the brutality of nature and the darkness of the human mind are deeply intertwined. Despite its icy setting, Hold the Dark has the gritty appeal of a Western, with Russell battling not only a supposed killer but also the unforgiving glacial wilderness. In the isolation of remote Alaska, people are free to commit horrific acts with little fear of consequences, leaving Russell with no one nearby to rely on.
“There is no spoon” from The Matrix.Image via Warner Bros.
With Christopher Nolan having moved away from sci-fi for the time being and the genre’s biggest hit this year being a feel-good space adventure, Project Hail Mary, there seems to be a gap in the market for the sort of cerebral projects that defined the genre for decades. Nolan established himself with The Dark Knight trilogy, but received greater acclaim for films such as Interstellar and Inception. During that same period, Denis Villeneuve made Arrivaland Blade Runner 2049, and is now on the verge of concluding his epic Dune trilogy. Villeneuve’s Dune movies are perhaps the best-reviewed sci-fi titles in over two decades; the trilogy is certainly the most influential of its kind since the Wachowskisiblings burst onto the scene in the late 1990s.
The siblings’ magnum opus, The Matrix trilogy, is now heading toward the Peacock streaming service for a new generation to discover. The series began in 1999 with The Matrix, which grossed over $470 million worldwide against a reported budget of $63 million. Starring Keanu Reeves, The Matrix is regarded as one of the greatest sci-fi movies of all time, and among the greatest movies of the 1990s. Following the film’s success, Warner Bros. put two sequels into production back-to-back. Both movies — The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions — were released in 2003.
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Collider Exclusive · Sci-Fi Survival Quiz Which Sci-Fi World Would You Survive? The Matrix · Mad Max · Blade Runner · Dune · Star Wars
Five universes. Five completely different ways the future went wrong — or sideways, or up in flames. Only one of them is the world your instincts were built for. Eight questions will figure out which dystopia, galaxy, or desert wasteland you’d actually make it out of alive.
💊The Matrix
🔥Mad Max
🌧️Blade Runner
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🏜️Dune
🚀Star Wars
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01
You sense something is deeply wrong with the world around you. What do you do? The first instinct is often the truest one.
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02
In a world of scarcity, what resource do you guard most fiercely? What we protect reveals what we believe survival actually requires.
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03
What kind of threat keeps you up at night? Fear is useful data — if you’re honest about what you’re actually afraid of.
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04
How do you deal with authority you don’t trust? Every dystopia has a power structure. Your approach to it determines everything.
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05
Which environment could you actually endure long-term? Survival isn’t just tactical — it’s physical, psychological, and very much about where you are.
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06
Who do you want in your corner when things fall apart? The company you keep is the clearest signal of who you actually are.
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07
Where do you draw the line — if you draw one at all? Every survivor eventually faces a moment that tests what they’re actually made of.
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08
What would actually make survival worth it? Staying alive is one thing. Having a reason to is another.
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Your Fate Has Been Calculated You’d Survive In…
Your answers point to the world your instincts were built for. This is the universe your temperament, your survival instincts, and your particular brand of stubbornness were made for.
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The Resistance, Zion
The Matrix
You took the red pill a long time ago — probably before anyone offered it to you. You’re a systems thinker who can’t help but notice the seams in things.
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You’re drawn to understanding how the system works before figuring out how to break it.
You’d find the Resistance, or it would find you — your instinct for spotting constructed realities is the machines’ worst nightmare.
You function best when you have access to information and the freedom to act on it.
The Matrix built an airtight prison. You’d be the one probing the walls for the door.
The Wasteland
Mad Max
The wasteland doesn’t reward the clever or the well-connected — it rewards those who are hard to kill and harder to break. That’s you.
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You don’t need comfort, community, or a cause larger than the next horizon.
You need a vehicle, a clear threat, and enough fuel to outrun it — and you’re good at all three.
You are unsentimental enough to survive that world, and decent enough — just barely — to be something more than another raider.
In the wasteland, that distinction is everything.
Los Angeles, 2049
Blade Runner
You’d survive here because you know how to exist in moral grey areas without losing yourself completely.
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You read people accurately, keep your circle small, and ask the questions others prefer not to answer.
In a city where humanity is a legal designation rather than a feeling, you hold onto something that keeps you functional.
You’re not a hero. But you’re not lost, either.
In Blade Runner’s world, that distinction is everything.
Arrakis
Dune
Arrakis is the most hostile environment in the known universe — and you are precisely the kind of person it rewards.
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Patience, discipline, and political awareness are your core strengths — and on Arrakis, they’re survival tools.
You understand that the long game matters more than any single victory.
Others come to Dune and are consumed by it. You’d learn its logic and earn its respect.
In time, you wouldn’t just survive Arrakis — you’d begin to reshape it.
A Galaxy Far, Far Away
Star Wars
The galaxy far, far away is vast, loud, and in a constant state of violent political upheaval — and you wouldn’t have it any other way.
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You find meaning in being part of something larger than yourself — a cause, a crew, a rebellion.
You’d gravitate toward the Rebellion, or the fringes, or whatever pocket of the galaxy still believes the Empire’s grip can be broken.
You fight — not because you have to, but because standing aside isn’t something you’re capable of.
In Star Wars, that willingness is what makes all the difference.
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Here’s When You Can Watch the Landmark Trilogy on Peacock
The Matrix Reloaded grossed over $740 million worldwide against a reported budget of $150 million, while The Matrix Revolutions generated $427 million globally against a budget of $150 million. All three movies have their vocal supporters, but the first is widely regarded as the best of the bunch. It now holds a “Certified Fresh” 83% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, “Thanks to the Wachowskis’ imaginative vision, The Matrix is a smartly crafted combination of spectacular action and groundbreaking special effects.” The second movie has a 74% score and the third movie has a 33% score. A fourth installment, directed solely by Lana Wachowski, was released in 2021, day-and-date on HBO Max and in theaters like the first Dune. Unlike Villeneuve’s film, however, The Matrix Resurrections grossed just $160 million worldwide against a $190 million budget. The franchise is now being rebooted with Drew Goddard at the helm, but you can watch the original trilogy on Peacock starting August 1. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
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Release Date
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March 31, 1999
Runtime
136 minutes
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Producers
Andrew Mason, Barrie M. Osborne, Bruce Berman, Erwin Stoff
With Christopher Nolan‘s latest epic, The Odyssey, continuing its box-office domination this weekend, studios preferred to stay out of its way. Even Sony might be concerned about Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which debuts in a week. The movie will court an entirely different demographic, but The Odyssey is on a generational run, outpacing both The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises. This weekend, the movie overtook two previous Nolan films — Tenet and Batman Begins — and was essentially given a wide berth by competitors. The only other new releases were Hadestown: The Musical, a filmed adaptation of the Broadway production that serves as an unusual companion piece to The Odyssey, and the action movie Motor City.
Starring Alan Ritchson, Motor City is being distributed domestically in around 1,600 theaters by the Independent Film Company. Ritchson has cemented himself as one of the streaming industry’s foremost stars over the years, and it’s no coincidence that Prime Video chose to release fresh trailers for his career-defining hit Reacher and its spin-off Neagley, on the same day as Motor City‘s release. The movie premiered at the Venice International Film Festival in 2025, where it received mostly positive reviews. The wider reception for the film remained mostly favorable following its commercial release, and it now holds a 65% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. In his review, Collider’s Aidan Kelley wrote that the movie is “a thrill ride that has some janky turns and bumps, but the bulk of it is a smooth journey that has some really interesting things to say without saying a word.”
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Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz Which Action Hero Would Be Your Perfect Partner? Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt
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Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn’t work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back.
🎖️Rambo
🍸James Bond
🏺Indiana Jones
🔧John McClane
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🎭Ethan Hunt
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01
You’re dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner? The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you.
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02
You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel? How you get there is half the mission.
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03
You’re pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do? This is when you find out what someone is really made of.
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04
The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest? Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are.
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05
How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission? Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability.
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06
Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them? The approach to the enemy defines the partnership.
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07
Things go badly wrong and you’re captured. What do you trust your partner to do? Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters.
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08
What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn’t replace? A great partner fills the gap you didn’t know you had.
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09
Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with? No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together.
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10
It’s the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now? The last question is the most honest one.
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Your Partner Has Been Assigned Your Perfect Partner Is…
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.
Rambo
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Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.
James Bond
Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.
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Indiana Jones
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.
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John McClane
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.
Ethan Hunt
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Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.
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Here’s How Much ‘Motor City’ Grossed in Its Box Office Debut
With The Odyssey topping the charts once again, grossing around $85 million — a record for Nolan — in its second weekend, Hadestown: The Musical grossed just under $10 million for a top-five finish. Motor City found a spot in the top 10 despite its limited release, grossing around $1.6 million over the weekend against a reported budget of $30 million. Directed by Potsy Ponciroli, the movie also features Ben Foster, Ben McKenzie, Pablo Schreiber, and Shailene Woodley in supporting roles. Reacher, meanwhile, will return for a fourth season in August, while Neagley will be released in September. You can watch Motor City in theaters, and stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
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Release Date
July 24, 2026
Runtime
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103 Minutes
Director
Potsy Ponciroli
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Writers
Chad St. John
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Producers
Greg Silverman, Jon Berg, Chad St. John, Cliff Roberts, Joshua Harris
The Reacher universe is expanding rapidly, mainly because it’s becoming far too big to contain to just one (admittedly giant) man, and Prime Video used its San Diego Comic-Con panel to unveil new footage from both Reacher Season 4 and its first television spin-off, Neagley. But that wasn’t the only news they dropped for fans.
Neagley has long been one of Reacher’s most trusted allies, but Zero Margin will give her an adventure entirely of her own. Her role was expanded significantly from the novels due to the fact Reacher tends to do a lot of work in his own head, which wouldn’t be particularly appealing televisiually. It was thought a character who could help with exposition would be a good addition to the series, so Neagley emerged and proved to be so popular that she’s appeared in all three seasons so far, as well as her own series.
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Collider Exclusive · Sci-Fi Survival Quiz Which Sci-Fi World Would You Survive? The Matrix · Mad Max · Blade Runner · Dune · Star Wars
Five universes. Five completely different ways the future went wrong — or sideways, or up in flames. Only one of them is the world your instincts were built for. Eight questions will figure out which dystopia, galaxy, or desert wasteland you’d actually make it out of alive.
💊The Matrix
🔥Mad Max
🌧️Blade Runner
Advertisement
🏜️Dune
🚀Star Wars
Advertisement
01
You sense something is deeply wrong with the world around you. What do you do? The first instinct is often the truest one.
Advertisement
02
In a world of scarcity, what resource do you guard most fiercely? What we protect reveals what we believe survival actually requires.
Advertisement
03
What kind of threat keeps you up at night? Fear is useful data — if you’re honest about what you’re actually afraid of.
Advertisement
04
How do you deal with authority you don’t trust? Every dystopia has a power structure. Your approach to it determines everything.
Advertisement
05
Which environment could you actually endure long-term? Survival isn’t just tactical — it’s physical, psychological, and very much about where you are.
Advertisement
06
Who do you want in your corner when things fall apart? The company you keep is the clearest signal of who you actually are.
Advertisement
07
Where do you draw the line — if you draw one at all? Every survivor eventually faces a moment that tests what they’re actually made of.
Advertisement
08
What would actually make survival worth it? Staying alive is one thing. Having a reason to is another.
Advertisement
Your Fate Has Been Calculated You’d Survive In…
Your answers point to the world your instincts were built for. This is the universe your temperament, your survival instincts, and your particular brand of stubbornness were made for.
Advertisement
The Resistance, Zion
The Matrix
You took the red pill a long time ago — probably before anyone offered it to you. You’re a systems thinker who can’t help but notice the seams in things.
Advertisement
You’re drawn to understanding how the system works before figuring out how to break it.
You’d find the Resistance, or it would find you — your instinct for spotting constructed realities is the machines’ worst nightmare.
You function best when you have access to information and the freedom to act on it.
The Matrix built an airtight prison. You’d be the one probing the walls for the door.
The Wasteland
Mad Max
The wasteland doesn’t reward the clever or the well-connected — it rewards those who are hard to kill and harder to break. That’s you.
Advertisement
You don’t need comfort, community, or a cause larger than the next horizon.
You need a vehicle, a clear threat, and enough fuel to outrun it — and you’re good at all three.
You are unsentimental enough to survive that world, and decent enough — just barely — to be something more than another raider.
In the wasteland, that distinction is everything.
Los Angeles, 2049
Blade Runner
You’d survive here because you know how to exist in moral grey areas without losing yourself completely.
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You read people accurately, keep your circle small, and ask the questions others prefer not to answer.
In a city where humanity is a legal designation rather than a feeling, you hold onto something that keeps you functional.
You’re not a hero. But you’re not lost, either.
In Blade Runner’s world, that distinction is everything.
Arrakis
Dune
Arrakis is the most hostile environment in the known universe — and you are precisely the kind of person it rewards.
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Patience, discipline, and political awareness are your core strengths — and on Arrakis, they’re survival tools.
You understand that the long game matters more than any single victory.
Others come to Dune and are consumed by it. You’d learn its logic and earn its respect.
In time, you wouldn’t just survive Arrakis — you’d begin to reshape it.
A Galaxy Far, Far Away
Star Wars
The galaxy far, far away is vast, loud, and in a constant state of violent political upheaval — and you wouldn’t have it any other way.
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You find meaning in being part of something larger than yourself — a cause, a crew, a rebellion.
You’d gravitate toward the Rebellion, or the fringes, or whatever pocket of the galaxy still believes the Empire’s grip can be broken.
You fight — not because you have to, but because standing aside isn’t something you’re capable of.
In Star Wars, that willingness is what makes all the difference.
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What Is ‘Neagley’ About?
The news arrived alongside the first teaser for Neagley, which showed the similarities and the differences between the two shows. Neagley is a bit… cooler, than Reacher, who tends to deal with things like a blunt object whereas Neagley is more akin to a Swiss army knife. The show follows her as she works as a private investigator in Chicago, launching her own dangerous investigation after a close friend is killed in dodgy circumstances.
The series stars Greyston Holt (The Night Agent), Adeline Rudolph (Hellboy: The Crooked Man), Jasper Jones (King Ivory), Matthew Del Negro (Mayor of Kingstown), Damon Herriman (Justified), Cassandra Freeman (Bel-Air) and Marshall Cook (All American).
The panel also confirmed that Reacher Season 5 will be based on Make Me, the 20th novel in Child’s series. Alan Ritchson (Fast X) revealed the news as production continues on the next instalment, even before Season 4 makes its debut. Talk about a busy guy.
All episodes of Neagley premiere September 16 on Prime Video.
San Diego Comic-Con’s Avengers: Doomsday exclusives didn’t end with the Hall H panel’s many reveals. Not only are attendees’ eyes attending to a rotating rainbow of Latverian witch costumes, but Iron Studios is unveiling new figures of Robert Downey Jr.‘s Doctor Doom, Patrick Stewart‘s Professor X, and Ian McKellen‘s Magneto in the upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe film. Collider is pleased to give readers an exclusive advanced look at these figures, which provide food for thought on the Doom front and a new look at theX-Men storyline in the upcoming film.
The new take on Doom has been a major point of interest since Kevin Feige announced the film in 2024. The official poster that Marvel Studios debuted on Saturday, July 25, as well as all the merchandise we’ve seen so far from Doomsday, show the Fantastic Fourvillain wearing a curious yellow arm band. Iron Studios’ Legacy Replica and MiniCo figures feature this accessory as well. What does it mean? Every angle presents the opportunity for more theories about why Victor Von Doom is in the MCU and why he has Downey Jr.’s face under that mask. That said, the third Doctor Doom figurine in this exclusive collection has something else that Marvel theorists may want to pore over: runes, speaking of those Latverian witches. The Doctor Doom Throne Deluxe shows Victor seated, grasping one hand, on a chair covered with the mystical symbols. Doom runes!
As for the star-crossed X-Men mentors, we haven’t seen that much about what Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr’s roles are in Avengers: Doomsday yet. Iron Studios’ Professor Xavier figure is surrounded not by runes, but by ruins. He’s seated, in the middle of using his powers, amidst some rocky rubble and a broken stained-glass window. This is more or less in line with the official “The X-Men Will Return” trailer for Doomsday, in which Charles warns that “death comes for us all. That’s all I know for sure. The question isn’t ‘are you prepared to die,’ the question is ‘who will you be when you close your eyes?’” In that trailer, Charles is in a home library with similar windows playing chess with a cozy-looking Erik.
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Image via Iron Studios
Image via Iron Studios
Image via Iron Studios
However, Iron Studios’ Magneto figure is not playing chess in a cardigan. He’s wearing a red super suit and his signature helmet, levitating over a broken pillar with his arm outstretched. Watch out! Is this our first look at Magneto using his powers in Avengers: Doomsday? In fingerless gloves, no less? Is this him “destroying New Jersey,” as McKellan accidentally revealed in an interview? We cannot wait to find out. He also has the X-Men symbol on his belt buckle, by the way, in case there was any doubt whose side he’s on in Doomsday.
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Collider Exclusive · Marvel Personality Quiz Which MCU Hero Are You? Spider-Man · Daredevil · Iron Man · Punisher · Thor · Cap
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Six heroes. One destiny. Answer 10 questions to discover which Marvel Cinematic Universe hero shares your personality, values, and fighting spirit. Will you swing, fly, or thunder your way to glory?
🕷️Spider-Man
😈Daredevil
🤖Iron Man
💀Punisher
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⚡Thor
🛡️Cap
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01
What drives you to do what’s right? Choose the answer that feels most like you.
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02
It’s 2 AM. Where are you? Your answer says more about you than you’d think.
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03
How do you handle a villain who keeps escaping justice? Every hero has a method. What’s yours?
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04
How do you feel about keeping a secret identity? The mask — or the lack of one — says everything.
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05
You’ve lost someone important because of your heroism. How do you carry that? Every hero pays a price. The question is how they pay it.
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06
What’s your role when working with a team? Who you are under pressure is who you actually are.
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07
Where do you draw the line between justice and revenge? The answer defines what kind of hero you really are.
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08
When you’re not saving the world, what does life look like? The person behind the mask is always the more interesting story.
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09
What keeps you up at night? Fear is useful data — if you’re honest about what you’re actually afraid of.
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10
The battle is lost. You’re outnumbered, outgunned, and exhausted. What do you do? This is your tiebreaker — choose carefully.
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Your Hero Has Been Identified Your MCU Hero Is…
Based on your answers, the Marvel hero who matches your spirit, values, and instincts has been revealed.
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Queens, New York
🕷️ Spider-Man
You carry the weight of the world on shoulders that are younger than they should have to be — funny, loyal, and endlessly self-sacrificing.
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You do the right thing not because it’s easy, but because no one else will.
You understand that responsibility isn’t a burden you choose — it’s one that finds you.
Whether it’s a neighbourhood mugging or a multiverse crisis, you show up.
Peter Parker’s lesson — that great power demands great responsibility — isn’t a slogan to you. It’s the code you live by, even when it costs you everything.
Hell’s Kitchen, New York
😈 Daredevil
You fight in the shadows between law and chaos, guided by a fierce moral compass that refuses to let the guilty walk free.
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You use every tool available — your mind, your body, your faith — to protect those the system overlooks.
You’ve looked into the darkness and chosen not to become it, though the line has never been easy.
Matt Murdock’s duality — champion in the courtroom, devil in the alley — mirrors your own.
Relentless, conflicted, and unwilling to stop. That is exactly you.
Stark Industries, Malibu
🤖 Iron Man
Brilliant, driven, and occasionally insufferable — but always the person who solves the unsolvable problem.
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You lead with your mind and back it up with resources, innovation, and a stubbornness that borders on heroic.
You started out looking out for yourself, but somewhere along the way the world became your responsibility.
Tony Stark’s arc — from ego to sacrifice — is your arc too.
You build, you plan, and when the moment comes, you’re willing to give everything. Because in the end, you’re Iron Man.
New York City
💀 The Punisher
You’ve been through fire that would break most people — and it did change you, completely. What’s left is unyielding, relentless, and operating by a code forged in grief.
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You don’t ask for forgiveness, and you don’t expect gratitude.
You see a corrupt, broken world and you’ve decided to do something about it, consequences be damned.
Frank Castle’s war is born from love twisted by loss — and so is yours.
Uncompromising and unflinching — the world may not agree with your methods, but your conviction is absolute.
Asgard · Protector of the Nine Realms
⚡ Thor
Powerful, proud, and on a lifelong journey to become worthy of the legend you carry.
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You lead with strength but have learned — sometimes painfully — that true greatness comes from humility and growth.
You’re larger than life, yet more vulnerable than you let on.
Thor’s story is one of transformation: from arrogant prince to worthy king, from isolated warrior to beloved protector.
You bring the storm when it’s needed — and the warmth when it matters just as much.
Brooklyn, New York · The Avengers
🛡️ Captain America
You believe in something bigger than yourself — and you fight for it even when the world has moved on and nobody else will.
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You don’t bully the small guy, and you never stop when it gets hard.
Steve Rogers didn’t become a hero when he got the serum — he was always one. So were you.
Your strength isn’t in your fists; it’s in your refusal to compromise what’s right, no matter the cost.
In a world full of people taking the easy road, you’re the one who picks up the shield and stands up — every single time.
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When you think about how many characters we know will be in this film, and how many we still don’t know will be in this film, it can get a little overwhelming. Just on the X-Men side we have James Marsden as Cyclops, Kelsey Grammer as Beast, Alan Cumming, as Nightcrawler, Rebecca Romijn as Mystique, and Channing Tatum as Gambit in addition to Stewart and McKellan. There’s also the Fantastic Four, played by Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach. Add them to the legacy Avengers cast, the New Avengers (formerly known as the Thunderbolts*) and unmarred heroes like Simu Liu‘s Shang-Chi, and you’re gonna need to start clearing space for your collection. These five new figures include a MiniCo Doom, a 1/4 scale Doom, and three 1/10 scale figures: Doctor Doom, Professor X, and Magneto.
Avengers: Doomsday clocks into work in theaters on December 18. In the meantime, get an exclusive look at the new Iron Studios figures for the movie in the galleries above and stay tuned here at Collider throughout the weekend for more coverage from SDCC.
Scarlett Johansson has not-so-quietly become one of the biggest actresses in Hollywood, and this is largely due to her blockbuster role as Black Widow in the MCU movies. Johansson appears to be one of the few OG Avengers not set to return later this year in Avengers: Doomsday, but it’s possible that her role is being kept under wraps, and she has filmed scenes for the movie. Johansson is joining another side of the comic book genre, though, along with one of her long-time MCU co-stars, Sebastian Stan. The duo have been tapped to star in Matt Reeves’ long-awaited Batmansequel, which is now due in theaters in 2028 after being delayed once again. Details about their roles are being kept under wraps for now, but Reeves will surely announce more information when the time is right.
Over the years, even after she signed on to play Black Widow, Johansson has starred in plenty of famous non-MCU projects, like Lucy. The 2014 sci-fi thriller co-stars Morgan Freeman and Pilou Asbæk, and while it wasn’t exactly a critical darling, it found extraordinary success at the box office. On a modest budget of only $40 million, Lucy managed to gross $469 million at the global box office, meaning the film earned back its budget 11x more, making it one of the biggest financial successes of Johansson’s career. The sci-fi thriller has been streaming on Netflix for a few months now, but the streamer has officially announced that the last day to watch the film will be on July 31. Luc Besson wrote and directed the sci-fi thriller, which also stars Choi Min-sik and Amr Waked.
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Collider Exclusive · Sci-Fi Survival Quiz Which Sci-Fi World Would You Survive? The Matrix · Mad Max · Blade Runner · Dune · Star Wars
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Five universes. Five completely different ways the future went wrong — or sideways, or up in flames. Only one of them is the world your instincts were built for. Eight questions will figure out which dystopia, galaxy, or desert wasteland you’d actually make it out of alive.
💊The Matrix
🔥Mad Max
🌧️Blade Runner
🏜️Dune
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🚀Star Wars
Advertisement
01
You sense something is deeply wrong with the world around you. What do you do? The first instinct is often the truest one.
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02
In a world of scarcity, what resource do you guard most fiercely? What we protect reveals what we believe survival actually requires.
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03
What kind of threat keeps you up at night? Fear is useful data — if you’re honest about what you’re actually afraid of.
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04
How do you deal with authority you don’t trust? Every dystopia has a power structure. Your approach to it determines everything.
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05
Which environment could you actually endure long-term? Survival isn’t just tactical — it’s physical, psychological, and very much about where you are.
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06
Who do you want in your corner when things fall apart? The company you keep is the clearest signal of who you actually are.
Advertisement
07
Where do you draw the line — if you draw one at all? Every survivor eventually faces a moment that tests what they’re actually made of.
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08
What would actually make survival worth it? Staying alive is one thing. Having a reason to is another.
Advertisement
Your Fate Has Been Calculated You’d Survive In…
Your answers point to the world your instincts were built for. This is the universe your temperament, your survival instincts, and your particular brand of stubbornness were made for.
Advertisement
The Resistance, Zion
The Matrix
You took the red pill a long time ago — probably before anyone offered it to you. You’re a systems thinker who can’t help but notice the seams in things.
You’re drawn to understanding how the system works before figuring out how to break it.
You’d find the Resistance, or it would find you — your instinct for spotting constructed realities is the machines’ worst nightmare.
You function best when you have access to information and the freedom to act on it.
The Matrix built an airtight prison. You’d be the one probing the walls for the door.
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The Wasteland
Mad Max
The wasteland doesn’t reward the clever or the well-connected — it rewards those who are hard to kill and harder to break. That’s you.
You don’t need comfort, community, or a cause larger than the next horizon.
You need a vehicle, a clear threat, and enough fuel to outrun it — and you’re good at all three.
You are unsentimental enough to survive that world, and decent enough — just barely — to be something more than another raider.
In the wasteland, that distinction is everything.
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Los Angeles, 2049
Blade Runner
You’d survive here because you know how to exist in moral grey areas without losing yourself completely.
You read people accurately, keep your circle small, and ask the questions others prefer not to answer.
In a city where humanity is a legal designation rather than a feeling, you hold onto something that keeps you functional.
You’re not a hero. But you’re not lost, either.
In Blade Runner’s world, that distinction is everything.
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Arrakis
Dune
Arrakis is the most hostile environment in the known universe — and you are precisely the kind of person it rewards.
Patience, discipline, and political awareness are your core strengths — and on Arrakis, they’re survival tools.
You understand that the long game matters more than any single victory.
Others come to Dune and are consumed by it. You’d learn its logic and earn its respect.
In time, you wouldn’t just survive Arrakis — you’d begin to reshape it.
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A Galaxy Far, Far Away
Star Wars
The galaxy far, far away is vast, loud, and in a constant state of violent political upheaval — and you wouldn’t have it any other way.
You find meaning in being part of something larger than yourself — a cause, a crew, a rebellion.
You’d gravitate toward the Rebellion, or the fringes, or whatever pocket of the galaxy still believes the Empire’s grip can be broken.
You fight — not because you have to, but because standing aside isn’t something you’re capable of.
In Star Wars, that willingness is what makes all the difference.
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What Is ‘Lucy’ About?
The official synopsis for Lucy, which earned scores of 67% from critics and 47% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, reads as follows: “A woman (Scarlett Johansson) gets forced into smuggling a powerful synthetic drug, only for it to leak into her system and unlock extraordinary cognitive abilities beyond human limits. As she gains control over her mind and body, she races against time to evade a ruthless crime lord and uncover the secrets of human potential—before her own existence begins to unravel.” For Johansson, Lucy came in the same year that she reprised her role as Black Widow in the critically acclaimed MCU movie, Captain America: The Winter Soldier. It was also one year after she starred opposite Joaquin Phoenix in Her.
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Check out Lucy before it’s removed from Netflix at the end of this month, and stay tuned to Collider for more updates and coverage of Scarlett Johansson’s future projects.
Matt Damon as Odysseus in The Odyssey (2026)Image via Universal Pictures
After smashing projections in its opening weekend, Christopher Nolan‘s latest epic, The Odyssey, is showing incredible resilience in its sophomore frame. The movie shattered the records of Nolan’s The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises to deliver the biggest second-weekend haul of his illustrious career. The Odyssey dropped by just 29% this weekend, retaining the number one spot on the box office charts. By comparison, Ryan Coogler‘s acclaimed horror film Sinners dropped by a mere 5% in its second weekend last year. Holds this strong are incredibly rare in this day and age; even Nolan’s Oppenheimer fell by 43% in its second weekend. Word on the street is that The Odyssey is tracking to overtake not only Oppenheimer’s $975 million lifetime global haul, but also those of Nolan’s second and third Batman movies.
What this means is that the epic adventure film will likely surpass the coveted $1 billion mark worldwide and will eventually become the biggest hit of Nolan’s career. Starring Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, and Robert Pattinson, the movie is already enjoying some of the best reviews that a Nolan film has been met with. It now holds a “Certified Fresh” 94% critics’ score and a “Verified Hot” 97% audience score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, “Reinvigorating an ancient adventure with majestic sweep and sterling work by its colossal ensemble, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey imbues myth with primal human feeling.”
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Collider Exclusive · Middle-earth Quiz Which Lord of the Rings Character Are You? One Quiz · Ten Questions · Your Fate Revealed
The road goes ever on. From the green hills of the Shire to the fires of Mount Doom, every soul in Middle-earth carries a destiny. Ten questions stand between you and the truth of who you are. Answer honestly — the One Ring has a way of revealing what we most want to hide.
💍Frodo
🌿Samwise
👑Aragorn
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🔥Gandalf
🏹Legolas
⚒️Gimli
👁️Sauron
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🪨Gollum
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01
You are handed a responsibility that could destroy you. What do you do? The weight of the world falls on unlikely shoulders.
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02
Your closest companion is heading into terrible danger. You: True loyalty is revealed not in comfort, but in crisis.
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03
Enormous power is within your reach. Your instinct is: Power corrupts — but only those who reach for it.
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04
What does “home” mean to you? Where we long to return reveals who we truly are.
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05
When a battle is upon you, your approach is: War reveals what we are made of — whether we like it or not.
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06
Someone comes to you for advice in their darkest hour. You: Wisdom is not knowing all the answers — it’s knowing which questions to ask.
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07
How do you see yourself, honestly? Self-knowledge is the most dangerous kind.
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08
Which of these best describes your relationship with the natural world? Middle-earth speaks to those who know how to listen.
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09
You encounter a wretched, pitiable creature who has done terrible things. You: How we treat the fallen reveals the height of our character.
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10
When the quest is over and the songs are sung, what do you hope they say about you? In the end, we are all just stories.
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The Fellowship Has Spoken Your Place in Middle-earth
The scores below reveal your true character. Your highest number is your match. Even a tie tells a story — the Fellowship was never made of simple people.
💍 Frodo
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🌿 Samwise
👑 Aragorn
🔥 Gandalf
🏹 Legolas
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⚒️ Gimli
👁️ Sauron
🪨 Gollum
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You carry something heavy — and you carry it alone, even when you don’t have to. You were not born for greatness, and that is precisely why greatness chose you. Your courage is not the roaring, sword-swinging kind; it is quiet, stubborn, and terrifying in its refusal to quit. The Ring weighs on you more than anyone can see, and still you walk toward the fire. That is not weakness. That is the rarest kind of strength there is.
You are, without question, the best of them. Not the most powerful, not the most celebrated — but the most essential. Your loyalty is not a trait; it is a force of nature. You would carry the person you love up the slopes of Mount Doom if it came to that, and we both know you’d do it without being asked. The world needs more people like you, and the world is lucky it has even one.
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You were born to lead, and you have spent years running from it. The crown is yours by right, but you know better than anyone that right means nothing without the will and the worthiness to back it up. You are tempered by loss, shaped by long roads, and defined by a code of honour you hold to even when no one is watching. When you finally step forward, the world shifts. Because it was always waiting for you.
You have seen more than you let on, and you say less than you know — which is exactly as it should be. You are a catalyst: you do not fight the battles yourself, you ignite the people who can. Your wisdom comes not from books but from an age of watching what happens when it is ignored. You arrive precisely when you mean to, and your presence alone changes what is possible. A wizard is never late.
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Graceful, perceptive, and almost preternaturally calm under pressure — you see things others miss and act before others react. You do not need to make a scene to be remarkable; your presence speaks for itself. You are loyal to those you choose to stand beside, and that choice is not made lightly. You have lived long enough to know that the most beautiful things in this world are also the most fragile, and that is why you fight to protect them.
You are loud, proud, and absolutely formidable — and beneath all of that is one of the most fiercely loyal hearts in Middle-earth. You don’t do anything by half measures. Your friendships are forged like iron, your grudges run as deep as mines, and your courage in battle is the kind that makes legends. You came into this fellowship suspicious of everyone and ended it willing to die for an elf. That is not a small thing. That is everything.
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You think in centuries and act in absolutes. Order, dominion, control — not because you are cruel by nature, but because you have decided that the world left to itself always falls apart, and you are the only one with the vision and the will to hold it together. You were not always this. Something was lost, or taken, or betrayed, and the version of you that stands now is the answer to that wound. The tragedy is that you’re not entirely wrong — just entirely too far gone to course-correct.
You are a study in contradiction — pitiable and dangerous, cunning and broken, capable of both cruelty and something that once resembled love. You are defined by loss: of innocence, of self, of the one thing that gave your existence meaning. Two voices war inside you constantly, and the tragedy is that the better one sometimes wins, just not often enough, and never at the right moment. You are a warning, yes — but also a mirror. We are all a little Gollum, given the right ring and enough time.
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Here’s How Much ‘The Odyssey’ Has Grossed Globally
This weekend, the film grossed a whopping $87 million domestically, taking its running haul to more than $285 million in just 10 days. Internationally, The Odyssey has generated $353 million, for a global total of $578 million. This puts the movie ahead of Ridley Scott‘s two most successful swords-and-sandals epics, Gladiator and Gladiator II. Released in 2000 and headlined by Russell Crowe, the first Gladiator movie grossed approximately $465 million worldwide against a reported budget of around $100 million. Gladiator II, starring Paul Mescal, was released in 2024. The movie grossed around $460 million globally against a reported budget of around $300 million. The Odyssey, which cost a reported $250 million to produce, has also overtaken Scott’s other historical epics: Napoleon, Exodus: Gods and Kings, Kingdom of Heaven, and The Last Duel— the latter also featured Damon in the lead. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
There are very few actors out there who can sell a movie by their name alone, but Glen Powellis quickly proving that he’s in an elite club. Thanks to his work in movies like Anyone But You, Top Gun: Maverick, and Twisters, Powell’s combination of charm and dedication to his roles has made him an actor to watch. It’s also led movie fans to slowly discover his earlier roles, including a Netflix series that puts a fresh spin on a long-running science fiction franchise. What’s more, Powell isn’t the only recognizable face in the cast, as Jenna Ortegahas a major role in the series as well.
The series in question? Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous. As its name suggests, Camp Cretaceous is an offshoot of the Jurassic World movies, and follows six teenagers who’ve won a trip to Camp Cretaceous, a program that’s part of the Jurassic World theme park. However, once the events of the first Jurassic Worldkick off, the teens are stranded and have to learn to work together in order to survive the packs of wild dinosaurs and other threats on Isla Nublar. Running for five seasons, Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous not only manages to replicate the danger and spectacle of the Jurassic World movies, but exceeds them in one key way.
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‘Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous’ Thrives Thanks to Its Characters
Image via Netflix
What makes Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous stand outis its focus on its human characters, particularly the six teens it follows. The differences between these teens are stark, as dinosaur fanatic Darius (Paul-Mikél Williams) initially butts heads with rich kid Kenji (Ryan Potter), while the athletic Yaz (Kasuar Mohammed) couldn’t be more different from vlogger Brooklynn (Ortega) or farm girl Sammy (Raini Rodriguez). As Camp Cretaceous progresses, the teens start to form a friendship and even put their skills to the test, whether it’s Darius’ dinosaur knowledge helping them survive or Yaz and Sammy forming a relationship. The character who changes the most is Ben (Sean Giambrone); once a shy and socially awkward teen, he grows into a more confident survivor and even forms a relationship with an Ankylosaurus he names “Bumpy.”
The same treatment is even given to Glen Powell’s character, Dave. Dave and his fellow camp counselor Roxie (Jameela Jamil) are polar opposites, with Roxie being hyper-focused on keeping strict schedules while Dave is more laid back. However, Dave does show flashes of humanity beyond his laid-back surfer boy persona, as he winds up saving Kenji and Darius early in the series; he and Roxie also try to save the teens in the back half of Season 1. The duo even reappears at the end of Camp Cretaceous to get the campers home, which gives the series a full circle moment and Powell a chance to flex his dramatic chops.
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Collider Exclusive · Sci-Fi Survival Quiz Which Sci-Fi World Would You Survive? The Matrix · Mad Max · Blade Runner · Dune · Star Wars
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Five universes. Five completely different ways the future went wrong — or sideways, or up in flames. Only one of them is the world your instincts were built for. Eight questions will figure out which dystopia, galaxy, or desert wasteland you’d actually make it out of alive.
💊The Matrix
🔥Mad Max
🌧️Blade Runner
🏜️Dune
Advertisement
🚀Star Wars
Advertisement
01
You sense something is deeply wrong with the world around you. What do you do? The first instinct is often the truest one.
Advertisement
02
In a world of scarcity, what resource do you guard most fiercely? What we protect reveals what we believe survival actually requires.
Advertisement
03
What kind of threat keeps you up at night? Fear is useful data — if you’re honest about what you’re actually afraid of.
Advertisement
04
How do you deal with authority you don’t trust? Every dystopia has a power structure. Your approach to it determines everything.
Advertisement
05
Which environment could you actually endure long-term? Survival isn’t just tactical — it’s physical, psychological, and very much about where you are.
Advertisement
06
Who do you want in your corner when things fall apart? The company you keep is the clearest signal of who you actually are.
Advertisement
07
Where do you draw the line — if you draw one at all? Every survivor eventually faces a moment that tests what they’re actually made of.
Advertisement
08
What would actually make survival worth it? Staying alive is one thing. Having a reason to is another.
Advertisement
Your Fate Has Been Calculated You’d Survive In…
Your answers point to the world your instincts were built for. This is the universe your temperament, your survival instincts, and your particular brand of stubbornness were made for.
Advertisement
The Resistance, Zion
The Matrix
You took the red pill a long time ago — probably before anyone offered it to you. You’re a systems thinker who can’t help but notice the seams in things.
You’re drawn to understanding how the system works before figuring out how to break it.
You’d find the Resistance, or it would find you — your instinct for spotting constructed realities is the machines’ worst nightmare.
You function best when you have access to information and the freedom to act on it.
The Matrix built an airtight prison. You’d be the one probing the walls for the door.
Advertisement
The Wasteland
Mad Max
The wasteland doesn’t reward the clever or the well-connected — it rewards those who are hard to kill and harder to break. That’s you.
You don’t need comfort, community, or a cause larger than the next horizon.
You need a vehicle, a clear threat, and enough fuel to outrun it — and you’re good at all three.
You are unsentimental enough to survive that world, and decent enough — just barely — to be something more than another raider.
In the wasteland, that distinction is everything.
Advertisement
Los Angeles, 2049
Blade Runner
You’d survive here because you know how to exist in moral grey areas without losing yourself completely.
You read people accurately, keep your circle small, and ask the questions others prefer not to answer.
In a city where humanity is a legal designation rather than a feeling, you hold onto something that keeps you functional.
You’re not a hero. But you’re not lost, either.
In Blade Runner’s world, that distinction is everything.
Advertisement
Arrakis
Dune
Arrakis is the most hostile environment in the known universe — and you are precisely the kind of person it rewards.
Patience, discipline, and political awareness are your core strengths — and on Arrakis, they’re survival tools.
You understand that the long game matters more than any single victory.
Others come to Dune and are consumed by it. You’d learn its logic and earn its respect.
In time, you wouldn’t just survive Arrakis — you’d begin to reshape it.
Advertisement
A Galaxy Far, Far Away
Star Wars
The galaxy far, far away is vast, loud, and in a constant state of violent political upheaval — and you wouldn’t have it any other way.
You find meaning in being part of something larger than yourself — a cause, a crew, a rebellion.
You’d gravitate toward the Rebellion, or the fringes, or whatever pocket of the galaxy still believes the Empire’s grip can be broken.
You fight — not because you have to, but because standing aside isn’t something you’re capable of.
In Star Wars, that willingness is what makes all the difference.
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‘Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous’ Spawned A Sequel Series
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous became a major hit, scoring the highest ratings of any entry in the Jurassic World franchise and a dedicated fanbase. Netflix capitalized on this success by releasing a sequel series, Jurassic World: Chaos Theory. While Chaos Theory still keeps the strong mix of characterization and spectacle that defines Camp Cretaceous, it takes a major leap forward in time and shows the characters six years later and how their experiences on Isla Nublar affected them. Showrunner Scott Kreamer said that the biggest draw of working on Chaos Theory was exploring the dynamic between man and dinosaur that was teased in Jurassic World: Dominion.
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“What’s great about Dominion is it tells this big story about what it looks like with dinosaurs in the world. Well, what does that look like for an everyday person?”
Those who watched Dominion know that the final result left a lot to be desired, but Jurassic World: Chaos Theory leaped at the chance to show how living among dinosaurs affects Darius and his friends. While Glen Powell didn’t return for Chaos Theory, his role in Camp Cretaceous shows that the trick to making a great Jurassic movie isn’t big dinosaurs and cutting edge effects but having actual characters the audience grows to care about.
The announcement comes just days after Ritchson revealed filming on Season 5 was already underway, despite the fourth season not yet having premiered, and now, fans know precisely where Reacher’s next investigation will take him.
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Collider Exclusive · Sci-Fi Personality Quiz Which Sci-Fi Hero Are You Most Like? Paul Atreides · Captain Kirk · Princess Leia · Ellen Ripley · Max Rockatansky
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Five iconic heroes. Five completely different ways of facing an impossible universe. One of them shares your instincts, your values, and your particular way of refusing to back down. Eight questions will tell you which one.
🏜️Paul Atreides
🖖Capt. Kirk
✊Princess Leia
🔦Ellen Ripley
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🔥Max Rockatansky
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01
How do you lead when the stakes couldn’t be higher? The way you lead under pressure is the most honest thing about you.
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02
What is your greatest strength in a crisis? The quality that keeps you alive when everything else fails.
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03
What is the thing you’d sacrifice everything else for? Your deepest motivation is your truest compass.
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04
How do you relate to the people around you? Who you are to others under pressure is who you really are.
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05
You’re facing a threat that no one else believes is real. What do you do? How you respond when you’re the only one who sees it defines everything.
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06
What has your heroism cost you personally? Every hero pays. The question is what — and whether they’d pay it again.
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07
How do you feel about the rules of the world you’re in? Every hero has a relationship with the system. What’s yours?
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08
When everything is on the line, what keeps you going? The answer is the most honest thing about you.
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Your Hero Has Been Identified Your Sci-Fi Hero Is…
Your answers point to the iconic sci-fi hero who shares your instincts, your values, and your particular way of facing the impossible.
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Arrakis · Dune
Paul Atreides
You carry a weight most people would crumble under — the knowledge of what you’re capable of, and the burden of what you might have to become.
You see further ahead than others and you plan accordingly, even when the vision frightens you.
You are driven by loyalty to your people and a sense of destiny you didn’t ask for but can’t escape.
Paul Atreides is not simply a hero — he is someone who understands the cost of power and chooses to bear it anyway.
That gravity, that willingness to carry what others won’t, is exactly you.
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USS Enterprise · Star Trek
Captain Kirk
You lead with instinct, warmth, and an absolute refusal to accept a no-win scenario — because you’ve always believed there’s a third option nobody else has thought of yet.
You take the mission seriously without ever taking yourself too seriously.
Your crew would follow you anywhere, not because you demand it, but because you’ve earned it.
Kirk’s genius isn’t tactical — it’s human. He reads people, bends rules with purpose, and wills outcomes into existence through sheer conviction.
That combination of warmth, audacity, and relentless optimism is unmistakably yours.
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The Rebellion · Star Wars
Princess Leia
You are the kind of person who holds the line when everyone else is losing faith — not because you’re fearless, but because giving up simply isn’t something you’re capable of.
You lead through conviction. Your voice carries because your belief is unshakeable.
You gave up everything ordinary the moment you chose the cause, and you’ve never looked back.
Leia is not a supporting character in her own story — she is the moral centre of the entire rebellion.
That same fierce, principled, unbreakable core is what defines you.
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The Nostromo · Alien
Ellen Ripley
You are not reckless, not grandiose, and not particularly interested in being anyone’s hero — you just refuse to stop when it matters.
You see threats clearly, you document the truth even when no one listens, and when the time comes you handle it yourself.
Ripley’s heroism is earned, not performed. She doesn’t have a speech — she has a flamethrower and a plan.
You share her composure under the worst possible pressure, and her refusal to pretend the monster isn’t there.
When it counts, you don’t flinch. That’s everything.
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The Wasteland · Mad Max
Max Rockatansky
You have been through fire that would break most people — and what came out the other side is something the world underestimates at its peril.
You don’t ask for help, don’t need validation, and don’t wait for anyone to tell you the rules no longer apply.
Your loyalty, when it finally arrives, is absolute — but it’s earned in silence and tested in action, not in words.
Max is not a nihilist. He is someone who lost everything and found, against his will, that he still has something worth protecting.
That bruised, stubborn, ultimately human core is exactly yours.
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‘Reacher’ Season 5 Will Adapt ‘Make Me’
Prime Video confirmed during its panel that Reacher Season 5 will adapt Lee Child’s 2015 novel Make Me, the 12th book in the long-running Jack Reacher series. That also explains the earlier teaser image which was shared by the show’s social accounts — a railroad crossing — that made fans think either The Affair or Make Me would be next.
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The novel starts with Reacher getting off a train in the town of Mother’s Rest, just because he thinks the name is cool, which is the kind of thing he tends to do. Reacher tends to find trouble because he follows his gut, rather than doing things logically, after all. But then, as is always the case, his curiosity leads him to missing people, government conspiracies and baddies everywhere. As with every Reacher season, it’s a standalone so you can jump right in.
The announcement follows recent comments from Ritchson, who revealed that production on Season 5 had already begun. Speaking while promoting Motor City, Ritchson confirmed that the entire season had already been written before cameras rolled.
“Yeah, we know [which book we’re adapting]. The season’s been written. We’re ready to shoot. All the scripts are done. The last half of my year is going to be all Reacher Season 5.”
Meanwhile, Season 4 is set to adapt Child’s Gone Tomorrow, and stars Jay Baruchel (FUBAR) as Jacob Merrick, Sydelle Noel (GLOW) as Tamara Green, Agnez Mo (Pernikahan Dini) as Lila Hoth, Anggun (Levitating) as Amisha Hoth, Kevin Weisman (Alias) as Russell Plum, Marc Blucas (My Life with the Walter Boys) as John Samson and Kathleen Robertson (The Expanse) as Elsbeth Samson.
Reacher Season 4 premieres on Prime Video on August 20, with Neagley debuting the same day the fourth season concludes. Season 5 is now filming.
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Release Date
February 3, 2022
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Network
Prime Video
Showrunner
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Nick Santora
Directors
Omar Madha, Carol Banker, Julian Holmes, Lin Oeding, M.J. Bassett, Norberto Barba, Stephen Surjik, Thomas Vincent
Image via Iron Studios
Image via Iron Studios
Image via Iron Studios
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