2026 Best Picture Power Rankings, and the Best Movies at TIFF. Plus: Zach Cregger on ‘Resident Evil’!

Key takeaways

• The Paramount-Skydance merger settlement includes concrete commitments: operations stay in California with no sale of the Paramount or Warner Bros. lots, an additional $300 million a year in U.S. film production, and a promise to release at least 30 movies theatrically per year, including 4 independent films and 6 blockbusters over $50 million. If they miss that target, the consequence is divesting Miramax (which controls rights tied to franchises like Scream). A third-party board will also oversee CNN and CBS News to preserve editorial independence.
• Adam Naiman's TIFF recap flagged an unusually reactive audience this year, with people clapping and cheering during Lee Chang-dong's Possible Love and Beth de Araújo's Josephine, and one attendee openly heckling Danny Boyle on stage over conspicuous, unnecessary AI effects in his film Inc. Naiman's standout was Sandra Wollner's Every Time, a mysterious Berlin-set grief drama he called the best thing he saw, while he singled out the slasher River (bought by Blumhouse/Universal for roughly $8 million) as the only horror title he genuinely liked.
• Naiman pushed back hard on Jordan Firstman's Club Kid, arguing the film lets its self-flattering protagonist off the hook for real consequences, while Sean and Amanda remained enthusiastic defenders of it, setting up a recurring disagreement they plan to revisit.
• The hosts debuted their Best Picture power rankings top ten: The Odyssey at number one, followed by Netflix's La Bola Negra (fresh off winning TIFF's People's Choice Award), Wild Horse Nine, Dune Part 3, Project Hail Mary, Fjord, The Invite, The Debut, All of a Sudden, and Obsession. They flagged La Bola Negra as the movie most likely to challenge The Odyssey's front-runner status, and questioned whether A24 can sustain three or four simultaneous contenders (The Invite, Club Kid, The Debut).
• Resident Evil opened to $60 million domestically and $108 million globally, the biggest debut in the franchise's history and the biggest of Cregger's career; Amanda reviewed it favorably after seeing it twice, calling it gross rather than scary and praising the practical stunt work in the rooftop sequence alongside a divisive, CGI-heavy third act.
• In the interview's opening stretch, Cregger explains he went directly from editing Weapons into shooting Resident Evil, wrote the script fast with a co-writer as an intentionally "dumb fun" palate cleanser compared to his more agonized next project, Flood, then endured a brutal nocturnal shoot in the snowy Czech Republic while battling pneumonia and a bacterial infection.

Notable moments

• "Resident Evil made $60 million in the United States... This is Craig's biggest movie of all time."
• An audience member yelled at Danny Boyle to "knock that shit off" over the AI effects in Inc.
• Naiman on Every Time: "at least on two separate occasions, my heart just stopped in terms of how surprising this film is."
• Naiman on Club Kid: the movie treats its lead's bad choices as "not really their fault," calling it a showcase for talent rather than genuine complexity.
• Sean reads all 30 Best Picture contenders aloud in a mock "movie phone voice," prompting Amanda to joke they should host a trivia night.
• Amanda on Resident Evil's hospital nursery scene: "the image of the baby hands coming up over the plastic box is the funniest thing I've ever seen."
• Cregger describes Flood as the script he'd "put on my tombstone," contrasting it with Resident Evil, which he wrote in about 15 hours purely for fun.
• Cregger recounts shooting nights in the snow while sick: "I never had 50% of my body."

The transcript ends mid-interview, so further detail from the Cregger conversation about the making of Resident Evil is not available in this summary.

Time saved: 2 hours, 10 minutes.