LOS ANGELES — FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2026 — Two movies are having a very good Friday, and they could not be more different. In the US, The Housemaid — the Sydney Sweeney/Amanda Seyfried thriller that turned a $35 million budget into a $400 million global haul — starts streaming on HBO Max today, and if its Starz run is any indication, it is about to own the Top 10 again. In India, Drishyam 3: The Conclusion just wrapped its first week with roughly ₹245.5 crore net, which means it has already outgrossed Drishyam 2's entire lifetime run. Seven days. The prequel needed its whole theatrical life. That is not a win, that is a statement.
01 Millie moves into a much bigger house
The Housemaid begins streaming on HBO Max in the US today, October 9 — TheWrap's October lineup and FilmoFilia both confirm the date, via Warner Bros. Discovery's official announcement — and the timing is almost poetic. The film arrived on Starz on April 1, 2026 and never left the streamer's Top 10, breaking Starz's all-time record for its best-performing Pay 1 film, CBR reports. Now the six-month exclusive window is expiring — it technically leaves Starz on October 11, MovieWeb notes, so there is a tiny overlap weekend where it lives on both — and it lands on a platform with enormously bigger reach. If you missed it in theaters, this is the weekend everyone will be talking about it again.
The numbers explain why. Directed by Paul Feig from Rebecca Sonnenshine's screenplay, adapted from Freida McFadden's 2022 bestselling novel, the film stars Sweeney as Millie, a young woman with a troubled past who takes a live-in housemaid job with the wealthy Winchester family — Amanda Seyfried and 1923's Brandon Sklenar as Nina and Andrew Winchester, with Michele Morrone and Elizabeth Perkins rounding out the cast. It premiered in New York on December 2, 2025, opened theatrically December 19, and went on to gross about $400.5 million worldwide — roughly $126.4 million domestic and $274.1 million international, per ComingSoon's box-office rundown. Critics gave it a 74% Certified Fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes across 201 reviews. For a mid-budget adult thriller in an era when those supposedly do not work anymore — yeah, about that.
And the franchise is just getting started. Lionsgate greenlit a sequel back in January 2026, with Feig and Sweeney set to return for an adaptation of McFadden's The Housemaid's Secret, currently dated December 17, 2027 — with Kirsten Dunst joining the cast. A Max streaming surge this weekend is basically a free marketing campaign for the sequel. Somebody at Lionsgate is having a great Friday.
02 ₹245 crore in seven days
Now to the number that made box-office trackers do a double take. Drishyam 3: The Conclusion, the third and final chapter of Ajay Devgn's crime-thriller franchise, closed its first week with approximately ₹245.5 crore net at the India box office, per Sacnilk-tracked estimates reported by Hungama Express and AndhraVilas — officially passing Drishyam 2's lifetime haul of ₹239.67 crore. (Estimates vary slightly between trackers; Bollywood Hungama's figures put week one around ₹240 crore against a ₹240.54 crore lifetime for the predecessor — either way, the torch has passed.)
The day-wise run tells the story: a ₹66.75 crore opening day — the biggest opening of Devgn's career and one of the biggest Hindi openings ever, powered by ₹27 crore in advance bookings — followed by ₹53.5 crore Saturday, a ₹61 crore Sunday jump, then the expected weekday slide: ₹21, ₹19.5, ₹15.5 and ₹13 crore. It crossed ₹200 crore within five days. For context on how absurd the franchise growth is: the original Drishyam (2015) did ₹67.13 crore in its entire run. The third film beat that in about 36 hours.
Directed by Abhishek Pathak and starring Devgn alongside Tabu and Jaideep Ahlawat — with Shriya Saran, Rajat Kapoor and Prakash Raj in support — the film now has its sights on Devgn's biggest grosser ever, Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior at ₹279.59 crore. Eleven years after a modest remake of a Malayalam thriller opened to ₹5.8 crore, this franchise is playing in the big leagues. The conclusion, it turns out, was just the beginning of the victory lap.
03 The Halloween appetizer platter
Today is also quietly one of the busiest single days of spooky-season streaming, per Decider's weekend guide and The TV Cave's Friday listings. Netflix drops Haunted Hotel season 2 and the Halloween season of Is It Cake? — because nothing says October like watching hyperrealistic cakes get murdered — plus the new series Take Charge of My Heart. Over on Shudder, the found-footage institution returns with V/H/S/MIXTAPE, the latest entry in the long-running horror anthology. Tubi gets in on it with R.L. Stine's Pumpkinhead 2, and Disney+/Hulu adds season 2 of Benefits with Friends.
Between this and the weekend's premieres — our weekend streaming guide and what to watch have the full rundown, including the new Avatar series, John Cena's Matchbox movie and Ben Affleck's Animals — your queue is officially longer than your weekend.