Some of 2024’s biggest blockbusters are now available to rent or buy from the comfort of your own home. Even better, a few other must-watch movies are coming this weekend to a streaming service you’re likely already paying for as of this weekend.
The Wild Robot and Sonic the Hedgehog 3 may be kid-centric, but there’s plenty to appeal to adults in both movies.
One half of the ‘Glicked’ phenomenon — Gladiator II — lands on streaming to entertain you (and in case you missed the first half, Wicked is also now available on video on demand). Robert Eggers’s take on Nosferatu resonated in theaters and is sure to continue freaking out audiences at home, and Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night gleefully depicts the history of a comedy institution we all know and love.
Here’s what to know about the theatrical movies newly available to stream as of this week, and where you can find them.
Click on the links below to jump straight to a specific movie:
Gladiator II
Ridley Scott’s very fun Gladiator II makes the case that every prestige blockbuster deserves a many-years-later sequel that doesn’t take itself as seriously as its Oscar-winning predecessor.
Less a play for awards season hardware than it is a megabudget crowd-pleaser, the tone of the movie shifts from austere to silly, in a good way. At one point, an arena is suddenly filled with water and sharks for the gladiators, and it’s arguably not the goofiest set piece in the film.
The story itself is so tied up in recreating arcs fans know from the original Gladiator that it doesn’t make much of an impression, but it’s hard to care much when Denzel Washington is having an absolute blast in a villain role, and audiences get a pair of additional baddies in twin emperors played by Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger. It may tick every box of what we’ve come to know as the “legacy sequel,” but it has a good time doing it.
Nosferatu
Robert Eggers’s longtime passion project was an unexpected box office hit, and it’s easy to see why. The sheer attention to detail of the period production design is enough to make your jaw drop, the sound design is truly skin-crawling and the performances are memorable.