☀️ Biggest Streaming Movies Q3 Shock: PEACOCK Tops

Mornin! This is Sean McNulty and here’s the Hollywood + Media news to know on Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026.

Where who had the NY JETS and LA RAMS with the same record at the 5-week mark of the NFL season?

Tough loss last night, West Coast, although I think your 7-year-old’s soccer game had more defense than the RAMS and BILLS combined in the 2nd half.

But know that at least FOX is likely also pulling for a DODGERS comeback from being down 2-0 in the NLCS — gonna guess a MILWAUKEE vs. CLEVELAND World Series isn’t going to light up the NIELSENs . . . even though it would be cool to see the BREWERS finally win one.

CLEVELAND also hasn’t won a World Series since 1948, although I heard they got close in ’89.

#FUNFACT: The MLB LCS matchups feature teams with the #1, #19, #28 and #30 player payrolls in the league this year (#30 is the GUARDIANS, with the smallest player payroll in MLB).

• Add that onto the LA RAMS’ 2-3 record so far, and yes — even with access to all of the cloud and AI-enabled stats in the world . . . everybody’s an expert in sports. Enjoy your flood of NBA season prediction pieces next week.

YAH: Nic Cage said he refused to sign a waiver allowing AMAZON to use AI on Spider-Noir, and “probably would not be working with that studio again” as a result . . . right after the company flies him around to promote the Madden movie next month.

YUP: Yes, SKYDANCE found its first #pricehike! DISCO+ is now $7 for the ad-tier and $12/month for the ad-free one.

YEAH: ABC is giving its biggest show, High Potential, the post-Super Bowl slot in February, likely as a 2-part episode setup, with the 2nd part airing the following night. It’ll also stream on DIS+ after the Super Bowl, as it does on ABC.

• HULU’s The Land NFL series is also debuting the following day.
• ABC will also do alt-casts of the big game with the Manning Bros. and Pat McAfee respectively on ESPN plex networks (no word if they’ll also be available to stream on DIS+, like the main feed of the game — they’re likely to be exclusive to cable TV bundle / ESPN D2C app subs).

OOF: GETTY IMAGES is going bankrupt and will be taken private in a deal with Charles Koch’s investment firm. 🥳 The company had attempted a merger with SHUTTERSTOCK, but that was abandoned back in June due to U.K. regulatory challenges.

• Lenders agreed to forget about $270M worth of owed debt as part of the transaction.
• And yes, AI decimating its stock image business is a main driver here.

SPEAKING OF: 90% of the world’s Top 50 news sites saw traffic declines YoY in September, with, uh, Substack and the India Times being the only sites in the Top 25 to see a boost (full list in the link).

BUT: Ya gotta love the TV media buyer who mistakenly bought TV ad time in Portland, Oregon for the Maine U.S. Senate race (wait, they have a Portland, too?). The Republican Super PAC got a refund from its agency.

ALSO: CNN’s D2C streamer is launching in the U.K. and Canada on Oct. 20. Prices are about $6.60 and $5.60 a month, respectively, with lower 1-year subscription prices being offered in each territory.

HMM: Gotta say, I still can’t figure out why Americans are so sour on their economy this decade.

FWIW: GOLDMAN SACHS estimates that 2/3 of total growth in S&P 500 earnings this year will come from just 10 stocks #AIeconomy, which is reassuring when paired with a U.S. federal government hampered by already crushing debt and unable to help mitigate things if they go south.

BUT: At least someone has a few bucks still lying around! Your biggest known political spending donor this year? BLEECKER STREET doc star Elon Musk, who has given $276M so far to re-elect Republican candidates since July (1 year since he said he was launching a new America political party).

• Elon’s giving this year has already topped the amount he gave in the 2024 Presidential election, and the local TV station owner contingent thanks you. Shockingly, he’s being far less public about it this time around. #TeslaSales

WELL: Hopefully this makes you feel a little better about the Hollywood Q4 layoffs — grocery giant KROGER announced it’s going to lay off 1/3 of its corporate staff over the next 3 years, or about 3,000 folks.

BUT: There’s hope for you yet, creative class. The biggest earner on KALSHI’s economic indicator wagering markets? Aspiring L.A. screenwriter and former theater director Brian Golden, who has cleared over $2M in profits from his “predictions,” often beating the pros at the top banks.

PLUS: The real estate market is goin’ great — the supply of U.S. homes for sale hit its highest level since Covid / March 2020 . . . as pending home sales had their biggest decline in September in more than 3 years, hitting the lowest total level since 2014.

• Can’t wait to see what October brings with its even higher interest rates than September. Eh, people who own real estate don’t vote, right?
• AND: Elder Gen Z / younger Millennials — if you think a 7.5% mortgage rate can’t get much worse, ask your grandparents about the early 1980s in America.

REST IN PEACE: Goes out to Breaking Bad actor RJ Mitte, who died by suicide at the age of 34 yesterday. Beyond his acting career, he was an ambassador for United Cerebral Palsy and Shriners Children’s and was actively promoting a new film this month called Talking to Strangers.

If you need help or someone to talk to, folks are available 24/7 — just dial the 988 hotline.

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🎥 The Silver Screen

NIELSEN Q3 2026 U.S. Streaming Movie Chart

So, who had PEACOCK topping NETFLIX and AMAZON PV on the Q3 U.S. streaming movie chart?

AMAZON also had a movie result that at least feels like a solid coda to a dud box office run.

Ok, yes, PEACOCK’s win is for one of our biggest existing animated franchises . . . but the fact that Super Mario could power PEACOCK over the 2 huge streaming stalwarts FTW is still impressive.

Although some 2026 comps to keep things level:

• PEACOCK got 21.7M views for Super Mario Galaxy in the U.S. in its first 5 weeks on streaming in Q3.
• Zootopia 2 got 41.2M views on DIS+ in its first 5 weeks earlier this year, with Hoppers getting 25.3M.
• Swapped also got 24.5M views on NETFLIX in its first 5 weeks in the non-theatrical game.
• Toy Story 5 also got 15.1M views in its first 5 days on DIS+ at the end of September.

But enjoy your Q3 flowers, PEACOCK! And share some of them with AMAZON PV, whose subscriber base scale helped propel Masters of the Universe to numbers that got within Project Hail Mary’s orbit!

With that, let’s dive into the Q3 Top 10 list and key insights into the movie performance of the 6 major streamers (I’m doing DISNEY’s hard work and counting DIS+ & HULU as 1 service already).