Discover how The Conjuring: Last Rites broke records with a $187M global debut, audience love, and franchise milestones despite mixed critic reviews.
The Conjuring Last Rites opened on 5 September 2025 in theatres, earning an estimated $83 million domestically. It pulled in around $104 million internationally, which sums up a massive $187 million global opening. While the budget is about $55 million for the Last Rites for its record breaking release. It makes 44% domestic and 56% internationally which blows the previous films record. As compared to, The Devil Made Me Do It opening record is about $65.6 million domestic and $206.4 million worldwide back in 2021.
The Conjuring Last Rites blows its first weekend with $83 million, marking a record for the franchise. It surpassed the $53 million record of 2018 The Nun. It became the third largest horror opening ever and expected to surpass the top two It films. Variety notes that this is Warner Bros’ the seventh successful movie with a $40 million opening in this year.
This part makes more money in its first weekend than previous Conjuring parts. Its $83 million opening is exceeding the previous series opening of the horror movies domestically, The Devil Made Me Do It with $65.6 million, Annabelle Comes Home ($74.1 million), The Curse of La Llorona ($54.7 million), and almost matched first Annabelle movie ($84.3 million).
The Conjuring: Last Rites became the highest-grossing “Conjuring” franchise opening ever. Its $187 million shattered records for the franchise and pushed its universe past $2.3 billion. Analysts observed that Last Rites became the biggest blockbuster hit as it surpassed its opening record, making it the third-best horror movie. As BoxOfficePro noted, It will soon make a huge commercial win and beat other horror movies including The Devil Made Me Do It ($206.4M) and The Nun ($366M) which was franchise’s current highest earner.
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The Conjuring Last Rites opening is 3X larger than the entire box office collection of The Devil Made Me Do It, about $65.6 million total in the US. it also beats other Conjuring movies like Conjuring 3 made about $206 million worldwide but Last Rites opening was much stronger. As reported in EW.
The Conjuring 2025 release matches Annabelle opening record of $84 million, showing its stronger opening than the recent three movies of Conjuring Franchise. Taking a strong turn for Franchise’s box office power with this powerful debut.
As Hollywood Reporter notes, critics were divided on the Conjuring Last Rites film. While Rotten Tomatoes gave a 55% score for this film, audiences gave a warmer response to this film. It received a B cinemascore and critical PostTrak rating about 79%. Critics also criticized its untwisted plot that led to a lower review score but audiences enjoyed the movie as shown by CinemaScore.
Warner Bros. decided to launch Last Rites only in theaters and did not follow up the last film release strategy in 2021. TheWrap reports that the film was not yet streaming but it is set to arrive later on HBO Max.
The old-school theater first strategy works well to maximize the box office potential. Analysts also noted that last year’s mixed release also hurt the movie’s theater run.
Variety’s Rebecca Rubin noted that Last Rites fuel the box office for the movie franchise. It is expected that more movies will add up to this series even though it was called the “final” film. Warner Bros. surprised with its opening and now the Conjuring universe is worth $2.5 billion. Peter Safran sees that as a win, it also opens the door for more horror movies from Warner.
The Conjuring Last Rites break the opening record in its first weekend of run in theaters. Becoming the third best horror movie with audiences love while critics gave a rough rating to this film. Analysts and media were effusive about the results and also surprised Warner Bros. with its high grossing popularity.
Gosling joins Star Wars Starfighter Obey your thirst. Discover how the Gosling-Levy pairing might reshape the genre of space opera when it arrives in 2027.
There is a strange buzz that fills the air when Ryan Gosling appears on set. It’s not the orchestrated buzz of a marketing strategy, it’s the quiet assurance of a performer who knows that film is as much about what you don’t say as what you do. When Gosling was officially announced to be joining Star Wars Starfighter with Shawn Levy at Star Wars Celebration Tokyo in April 2025, the news was more than a simple casting win for Lucasfilm. It was something far more fragile: a possible course correction for a franchise that’s been failing for focus for the better part of a decade.
The Rise of Skywalker ended the Skywalker Saga, and since then, Star Wars has felt less like one shared universe and the galaxy has become multiple tossed captains in the ship. But “The Mandalorian and Grogu” restored faith and The Book Boba Fett got things all mixed up, Andor demonstrated maturity and seriousness in Star Wars storytelling, and The Acolyte explained how far off that can fly.
Through it all, one question looms over Kathleen Kennedy’s leadership: what the hell is Star Wars Starfighter in 2027?
Now, enter the Gosling–Levy pair — not so much a studio double feature as two filmmakers connected by the same childhood dreams and creative vision, returning with something that actually feels personal once again.
Here we’re getting into speculation, Star Wars Starfighter focuses on Gosling as not a smuggler, not a Jedi, but a very real trader in an uncle outraged into protecting his Force-sensitive nephew from dark side hunters in a galaxy still recovering from Palpatine’s final death, in which Amy Adams is said to be the boy’s mother, and possibly a Jedi herself who gives her brother (Gosling) the son’s protection as she goes to meet the galactic threats elsewhere.
If this is the case and screenwriter Jonathan Tropper has been as characteristically tight-lipped as always then this setup is genius in its simplicity. For four decades, Star Wars has weighed fathers and sons, masters and apprentices, the burden of blood and destiny. An uncle-nephew relationship allows for a genuinely horizontal dynamic: chosen responsibility as opposed to inherited burden. Gosling wouldn’t be wrestling with the sins of his father—he’d be leaping into danger for love of his sister and her child.
This turns the whole hero’s journey on its head. Luke Skywalker became a legend because of who his father was. Gosling’s character, let’s call him Kael for the sake of our theory, would be a hero for who he chooses to be. That has a very modern ring to it, in a time when a found family often trumps blood ties.
There’s another theory made that mentioned by CBR that’s worthy of your attention, one which links Star Wars Starfighter to the wider weave of today’s Star Wars narrative.
Baylan Skoll references the Bokken Jedi in Ahsoka, Force users who trained outside of the Now I’m watching Ahsoka. They are survivors, self-made warriors who cobbled together knowledge from legends, ancient holocrons, and fragments of lore rather than being expert practitioners. Crude, authentic, and defined by loss rather than tradition.
But what if Baylan is one of them? A former student of Luke Skywalker’s temple who escaped Ben Solo’s massacre — someone who saw friends die, chose survival over heroism, and vanished rather than standing and fighting. That kind of background would explain everything about who he is now. Five years Post-Exegol, the galaxy doesn’t need another chosen one. It needs a broken man who relearns how “to be whole” by protecting someone else.
That would explain the “Star Wars Starfighter” titles even better than a simple aesthetic reason. He is flying a starfighter, literally, because he is on the run. Now action sequences become character beats — every evasive dive through an asteroid field isn’t just spectacle, it’s a man dodging his past until he can no longer. The ship becomes a metaphor: run-down, cobbled together, but still capable of amazing things when properly captained.
Shawn Levy, the director of the new Star Wars movie is really important to this equation. Levy is not a visionary auteur in the conventional sense. He’s not Denis Villeneuve drawing with shadows and silence, or Christopher Nolan stretching time like taffy.
Levy’s talent is subtler, and perhaps more challenging: He makes tentpole movies feel intimate. Free Guy shouldn’t have worked as a comedy about an NPC gaining self-awareness in a video game that sounds like algorithmic nightmare fuel. And yet Levy injected it with such happy earnestness that even Ryan Reynolds’ blue-shirted everyman seemed worth rooting for.
Then there was Deadpool & Wolverine, and that could’ve been a cynical IP soup concoction. But Levy approached Wolverine’s mourning with sincere respect all the while delivering the R-rated mayhem fans desired. He understands that the most successful blockbusters function on two or three different frequencies simultaneously: the visual, emotional and, in the case of the sense of irreverent humor.
For Star Wars Starfighter, this approach is just right - it’s fun without feeling like a drag and you get a sense of accomplishment for each stage you complete. The sequel series always felt embarrassed to be Star Wars, constantly trying to upend expectations until there were none left to upend.
Levy is not a subversion, he is an embrace. He’ll give us the trench run homage, the cantina scene, the binary sunset moment – he’ll give us all of those things, but he’ll earn them through character work rather than nostalgia triggers.
Star Wars Starfighter movie appearance five years after The Rise of Skywalker is something that builds hope to open up interesting story possibilities while closing others.
This is a galaxy being rebuilt. The New Republic that was decapitated by the destruction of Hosnian Prime that the First Order killed is either in the process of rebuilding or has fractured into various regional powers. The First Order’s remnants haven’t simply vanished but they’ve likely sprouted as warlords, marauders, or desperate holdouts.
And the Jedi? Rey is probably off training her first students somewhere, but the Force-sensitive populace hasn’t suddenly exploded in size. If anything, parents are likely keeping their children’s talents under wraps, taking heed of how the last regime treated “Force-wielding terrorists.
As IGN mentioned, This adds poignancy to Gosling’s role as the overprotective uncle. He’s not just running from dark side hunters, he’s trying to navigate a hideous bureaucratic system in which signing up a Force-sensitive kid for school could very well be handing him or her over to a government that wants to stop another Palpatine. The film might delve into the paranoia of the post-war generation, the way its trauma reverberated through organizations even after it won.
There’s also the prospect of legacy characters turning up that don’t overwhelm the story. Daisy Ridley’s Rey makes a cameo not as a savior, but as a distant hope, a legend that Kael doesn’t believe in until she sees for herself. The Starfighter vs. the sequel trilogy, however, would be scale: Rey is not the main character in this one, She’s not in this world, She’s is in another dimension, a parallel story.
What interesting is about the path Ryan Gosling’s career has taken. He’s also one of the few actors to flex his star power between indie bona fides (The Nice Guys, Blade Runner 2049, First Man) and blockbuster draw (Barbie, La La Land) without ever really feeling like he’s slumming in either realm. He has never led a franchise this large, this culturally laden.
There’s danger here. Star Wars has chewed up bright futures before, just look at the Solo cast, or the skilled actors buried beneath sequel trilogy exposition. But there’s also an unprecedented opportunity. If Starfighter works, Gosling doesn’t just get one big movie, he gets ownership of a new corner of the galaxy.
Gosling is the right age for this at 46 as he can convey gravitas, yet be around for multiple films, and is savvy enough to know when to fight for creative input.
But more than that, he adds an element of the audience that doesn’t usually think about Star Wars. The Barbie crowd, the Drive lovers, the Oscar-season crowd who tip it to his nominations, they will come to this galaxy, enlarging the base beyond the faithful who gauge midi-chlorian counts on Reddit.
In January 2026, screenwriter Jonathan Tropper made a comment that should have attracted more attention:
“Star Wars Starfighter is truly standalone, there are no secret cameos from legacy characters. Interview In a day and age where all blockbusters are secretly backdoor pilots for ten other projects, this is radical.”
What that means is the film has to be able to stand on its own. You don’t just play John Williams’ Force Theme to make you cry, you have to earn it through new themes. It can’t just take the outline of Darth Vader to create menace — it must introduce new villains (Matt Smith and Mia Goth, according to casting rumours) that feel as iconic. This is Lucasfilm betting on storytelling over brand recognition, and that confidence is contagious.
It’s not trying to sound legendary — it’s practical, almost humble. A name that can function as a job, a vehicle, and just a way to get around, instead of a symbol burdened with the weight of mythology. It implies a movie about people at work—hazardous, urgent work rather than destiny congealing in the veins.
If Star Wars Starfighter is successful as early executive reactions indicate that it could rewrite the Star Wars rule book entirely. No more trilogies in the works before the first film debut. No more mystery boxes that go nowhere. Just filmmakers with passion projects, actors with real chemistry, and stories that just happen to take place in space.
For Ryan Gosling, success means showing that he can bear the impossible load of fan expectations and still come out on the other side as a fully realised artist. For Shawn Levy, it’s proof that his particular brand of warm-hearted blockbuster filmmaking can survive in the most closely parsed sandbox in cinema. What they really want is for the original 1977 Star Wars to feel real again — not because of twists or surprises or retcons, but because that film had heart. And it made people feel, and that’s what we haven’t had.
Speculation, set visits and Star Wars Starfighter trailer dissections over the past 18 months have been propelled by that one hope that Star Wars will discover its soul again. Release was then scheduled for May 28, 2027, for the new film. But in years now, that excitement really does feel deserved rather than manufactured. Because somewhere in a London editing suite, Ryan Gosling is learning to fly, and the galaxy is at last becoming large enough for new stories once again.
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Colin Farrell returns to Matt Reeves' Batman universe as the Penguin in The Batman Part II, and shares the dark world of Gotham and his passion storytelling.
Colin Farrell has got us very excited to return to Gotham as The Penguin in The Batman Part II. Far from it being about getting action scenes right, or even stealing the show with the character’s arc. Farrel explained in a chat with Collider that what pulls him back are the people he gets to work with, and the “Matt Reeves immersive world that’s just very, very gritty.” There’s definitely a love for the vibe and the behind the scenes team it feels like. Farrell kept it real, he explained the camaraderie and new ways of working on set keep bringing him back, as he promotes the upcoming movie The Ballad of a Small Player releasing on 29 October 2025.
Colin Farrell delivered so many thoughts on his role in HBO’s massive hit The Penguin. So the experience evidently stuck with him for good. The series its eight-episodes run in late 2024. It garnered rave reviews, high ratings, and mentions for major awards like the Emmys and Golden Globes. Farrell really got to dive deep into the character, all of the intricate layers and psychological twists and turns that you can only explore in a long form series. Apparently the part allowed him to stretch his acting chops quite a bit, and fans seemed to get as much pleasure as he did. With all the buzz around the show, it is no surprise that The Penguin turned out to be one of HBO’s breakout hits.
The show ended up a huge success, attracting 5.3 million viewers across all platforms during its first weekend, marking the largest four-day debut for a tier one Max original since The Last of Us dusted off in January 2023. The show received rave reviews from critics with a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with many reviews referring to Colin Farrell’s performance as “transformative” and “a true tour de force.”
It’s not so much ‘What do I do with this?, but I just want to be in that world and be with Robert and be with Jeffrey again and be brought by Matt Reeves,’ said Farrell. After a deeper exploration of the HBO series character, Farrell returning to the movie sequel isn’t about further expanding the Penguin’s story, instead rejoining the talented ensemble.
Colin Farrell shared his happiness by saying “I’m really excited to be back in that world, to just be around it,” he said as he contemplated joining such an unparalleled group of creatives once more.
Farrell’s ties to the world of Batman are deeply embedded since he was a kid growing up in Dublin. He shared, he was raised watching Burgess Meredith’s legendary turn as the Penguin in the ‘60s Batman TV series when he was 5, and then Danny DeVito’s iconic performance in Tim Burton’s Batman Returns at around 11 or 12.
For the actor, the joy is a little simpler, just getting to play in a world “where a character called Bruce Wayne and Batman exist, is such a joy.” He admired how Reeves had “re-imagined a world that is unique enough and yet still honors the struggles of that city and the psychological struggles of the character of Bruce Wayne.”
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Although Farrell has now confirmed that his part in The Batman Part II will be very small, a smaller appearance than in the first film. He has read the full script and described it as “extraordinary”. He hinted that THE BATMAN 2 is a much deeper plot, it means that Reeves is expected to be seen in scarier scenes and it will further keep the franchise as the stakes are bigger.
Filming for The Batman Part II is set to begin April 2026. Robert Pattinson, Jeffrey Wright, Andy Serkis and Colin Farrell are returning to their roles. Farrell seems doubtful about a second season of The Penguin. He said to Deadline, “I’ve heard some talk about it, but I don’t know if that’s a good idea. Part of me thinks we should just leave it as we got away with something special.”
For Farrell, being part of Matt Reeves’ Batman world is more than just another gig—it’s a dream come true from his childhood, and he’s surrounded by collaborators who are as passionate as he is about telling grounded, character-driven stories in the dark, complex reality of Gotham. The criminal underworld of Gotham City is once again ready to entertain their fans but Colin Farrell’s Penguin has made a permanent impact on the Batman mythos and his passion for this universe and the team behind it will keep him coming back for as long as they’ll have him.
