What to Stream This Week: 'The Housemaid,' 'Below,' 'Matchbox' and HBO's Breakout 'War'

October's second week is stacked: every major streamer is dropping something big — a $400-million theatrical hit, two star-driven originals, and the new HBO drama that took 48 hours to break out.

Netflix leads with Below, premiering Oct. 8 — a new thriller mini-series starring Josh Hartnett, Mackenzie Davis and Charlie Heaton. Hartnett is having a week: he's also co-starring in the No. 1 movie in America, Verity. Then on Oct. 9 comes Animals, Ben Affleck's new thriller co-starring Gillian Anderson, following an L.A. mayoral candidate whose son is kidnapped.

Netflix is also playing library chess on Oct. 5, adding all four seasons of Taylor Sheridan and Hugh Dillon's crime series Mayor of Kingstown starring Jeremy Renner, plus The Boogeyman and Lorne — Morgan Neville's documentary on SNL creator Lorne Michaels, featuring Tina Fey, Conan O'Brien, Maya Rudolph and Chris Rock. And if you missed Oct. 1, East of Eden — Zoe Kazan's seven-part Steinbeck adaptation starring Florence Pugh — is already up and waiting.

HBO Max might have the strongest one-two punch of the week. The Housemaid arrives Oct. 9, giving the streamer one of the year's biggest theatrical hits: Paul Feig's erotic psychological thriller, based on Freida McFadden's 2022 novel, grossed $400.5 million worldwide on a $35 million budget and broke Starz's all-time record for a Pay 1 film before landing here. Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried star; a sequel, The Housemaid's Secret, is already dated for December 2027.

The other half of that punch is already out and already working. War — HBO's new British legal drama starring Dominic West and Sienna Miller as a divorcing tech mogul and movie star — premiered Oct. 1 and landed among the most-watched shows on streaming within 48 hours, with a Certified Fresh score in the high 80s. Created by George Kay (Lupin), the eight-episode season runs weekly through Nov. 19, and HBO has already ordered a second season pivoting to a defamation case. Horror fans, meanwhile, get Evil Dead Burn, which just made its streaming debut this weekend, plus the Oct. 11 premiere of the three-part docuseries The Pet Cemetery Murders: A Ghost Story.

Apple TV+ answers with Matchbox: The Movie on Oct. 9 — Mattel's next big post-Barbie swing, starring John Cena as Sean, an undercover CIA agent who pulls his childhood friends into a globe-trotting mission to save the world. Jessica Biel, Sam Richardson, Teyonah Parris, Danai Gurira, Corey Stoll and Bill Camp co-star, with Extraction filmmaker Sam Hargrave directing. It's the kind of big, dumb, expensive toy IP bet that only works if everyone commits — and Apple is committing. Also this week: Small Prophets premieres Oct. 7, and Season 2 of the animated kids' series The Sisters Grimm landed Oct. 2.

Disney+ is quietly having one of its busiest weeks of the fall. The full season of Coven Academy — the YA witch series about a trio of teens at a magic school in New Orleans, starring Malina Weissman, Tiffani Thiessen and Devon Sawa — arrived Oct. 2 after its Freeform debut. The Kardashians returns this week for Season 8, and Oct. 7 brings The Drop — a Snowfall-era saga reuniting Wanda and Leon in the 1990s West Coast rap scene — alongside Between Steps, Merry Berry Love and Surviving Alaska: Women of the Wild. The Austin City Limits livestream wraps today.

The throughline: October is the new summer. With War breaking out on HBO, a genuine theatrical blockbuster landing on Max, and Netflix and Apple going head-to-head on Oct. 8–9, this is the most competitive single streaming week of the fall so far. Your queue is about to get longer.