As Prime Video’s Reacher prepares a fifth and sixth season, the franchise’s creator is happy with the freedom provided by this adaptation.

Author Lee Child, who penned the Jack Reacher books on which the series is based, explained why he “exercised that veto” on a third entry in the Tom Cruise movies, opting instead for the “fabulous luxury” of a streaming series.

“I had a clause in that movie contract that after two movies I had a veto whether we would do any more. I exercised that veto,” he told Collider. “The deal was done in 2005, and it finished in a long, long time of development. Then the two movies finished in 2017. That first movie in particular was huge. It came out in December 2012. By January 2013, like one reporting cycle later, I had eight old paperbacks in the Top 10. You cannot buy that, and you cannot turn it down.”

Cruise starred as the former army police officer in writer/director Christopher McQuarrie’s Jack Reacher (2012) and co-writer/director Edward Zwick’s Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016).

Child added, “By 2017, of course, there was a whole new landscape. Binging television had been invented. Broadband was much more widespread. It was a thing now. It was not a thing in 2005. It hadn’t been invented, and nobody, I think, now would ever go for a feature film over streaming television for two reasons. First of all, the running time — it’s fabulous luxury. It really is. Eight hours, 10 hours, 12 hours, whatever you want. You can tell the whole story, all the light and shade, all the quiet parts, all the fun parts. It doesn’t have to be rammed together for 90 minutes of content.”

In 2022, Season 1 of Prime Video’s Reacher premiered with Alan Ritchson in the titular role. “The finances are totally different. With a feature film, the actor attracts the money. What actor is worth a $200 million investment?” explained Lee Child.

“Whereas with television, the platform pays it, and you can have anybody. You can have total unknowns,” he added. “The star on television doesn’t really attract either the audience or the money, and so we had a completely free hand for casting.”

Before Season 4 of Reacher premiered on Prime Video in August, the streamer gave it an early renewal for Season 5 back in May. The upcoming season adapts Make Me (2015), the 12th book in Child’s series, in which Reacher hitches a train to the Midwestern town of Mother’s Rest, where he helps private investigator Michelle Chang search for her missing colleague.

After Season 4 amassed 66 million viewers globally in its first 28 days on Prime Video, Amazon doubled down and gave the show an early Season 6 renewal.

Colleen Hoover can look forward to a nice brunch this morning as the feature take of her novel starring Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson, and Josh Hartnett, Verity, bowed to $62.5M worldwide, the second best start for the author at the global box office behind 2024’s It Ends With Us in like-for-likes, which was $95.6M WW.

Meanwhile, Alejandro Inarritu’s $160M net costing Tom Cruise political satire, Digger, was buried with a $20M global debut ($12M abroad, $8M stateside); in no way One Battle After Another which began at $48.5M WW reported in 74 territories a year ago, that ultimate multi Oscar winner becoming Paul Thomas Anderson’s highest grossing movie ever at $213.2M WW.

Verity also had more magic than the reported global opening of Warner Bros’ Practical Magic 2 which began with $46M WW in 77 offshore territories.

With a $40M net production cost, Verity continues to underscore Amazon MGM Studios’ mark in the female content space, their Prime side rallying with series such as Off Campus and Elle to name a few.

Verity was also more vivacious than the global starts of Hoover’s Regretting You ($23.6M in 43 markets) and Reminders of Him ($28.1M WW, 57 markets) in reported global launches. In several offshore markets, Verity was ahead of Reminders of Him and Regretting You. Housemaid, which is another global crowdpleaser by author Freida McFadden isn’t necessarily the comp here given its staggered rollout and year-end holiday boost, however, Verity slayed Housemaid in its openings in UK (No. 1 $4.5M 950 screens), Brazil ($3.8M at 715 screens, No. 1) and Australia ($3.1M 500 screens for a No. 1 rank). We told you heading into the weekend that Verity presales were already ahead of It Ends With Us in Brazil’s. Mexico’s $1.5M No. 2 rank at 1,522 screens is to be commended as the market is mostly known for the excelling of genre and family pics.

Word flowed into Amazon international from foreign offices that Verity wasn’t just a female skewing movie (in the U.S with a $32.6M start, it drew 78% female), rather pulled in non-literary lovers and dudes as well. Macho movie markets like Norway ($400K, 200 screens at No. 1), Turkey and Ukraine ($370K from 235 screens, No. 1 where it’s the biggest opening for a Hoover book adaptation) are to be commended.

Best starts for Hoover were also seen in Portugal ($575K at 60 screens, No. 1) and Hungary ($318K at 70 screens, No. 1).

Lots of No. 1s here with Germany ($3.8M at 715 screens), Netherlands ($590K at 115 screens), Austria ($380K from 68 screens), Sweden ($375K at 120 screens), Switzerland ($330K at 70 screens), Belgium ($320K at 65), Argentina ($300K from 190 screens), Greece ($245K from 106 screens), as well as Lithuania grossed ($205K from 18 screens), Finland ($190K at 110 screens) and Israel ($185K at 37 screens).

Pic was best MPA title in UAE ($670K at 91 screens) as well as India with $500K at 350 screens, just -12% behind It Ends With Us which is remarkable. U.S. genre has been working in the market with Obsession rallying there.

The Michael Showalter directed title kissed $1.7M in France at 384 screens for No. 2, Spain grossed $825K from 382 screens and ranked #4, Italy romanced $760K at 312 screens for No. 3, Saudi Arabia $535K from 105 screens and ranked #4, NZ was $370K from 110 screens No. 2, Poland was $240K from 152 screens No. 3, Colombia $238K at 140 screens No. 4, Colombia $238K from 140 screens and ranked #4 while Philippines grossed $233K from 168 screens and ranked #3.

Taiwan and the CIS region open next weekend, with Slovakia and Vietnam the weekend after. Korea opens on October 22 and Japan on November 6.

Paramount’s The Heart of the Beast continued to beat not just stateside with a great $11M second weekend hold, but also around the world with a $32.5M take. Of that foreign’s second frame was $21.5M in 66 territories with an overall running cume of $98.7M. China opened $2.1M at 7,300 theaters including previews while Turkey pulled in $225K at 194 sites with previews.

France’s second weekend was $3M, No. 1 in the market, -17% for a cume of $7.6M. Mexico had a second frame of $2M, also No. 1, -17% for a tally there of $5.1M. UK’s $1.6M second weekend at 554 sites ranked third, -22% for a cume of $5.5M. Spain did $1.1M second frame at 392 locations, No. 2, -25% for a local cume of $3.6M. Australia posted $1.1M No. 2 in second frame at 290, -17% for a total of $3.3M while Germany grossed $955K in second weekend at 428 theaters, No. 3, +2% for a cume of $2.3M. The Heart of the Beast storms into Korea on Oct. 29.

We’ll have more updates for you later.

In his 1979 book The Question of Palestine, Edward Said, the Palestinian writer and academic, frames the relationship between Palestinians and Zionists as a “contest between an affirmation and a denial.” Making sense of it requires us to “understand what the instruments of this contest were, and how they shaped subsequent history so that this history now appears to confirm the validity of the Zionist claims to Palestine, thereby denigrating the Palestinian claim. In other words, we must understand the struggle between Palestinians and Zionism as a struggle between a presence and an interpretation, the former constantly appearing to be overpowered and eradicated by the latter.”

To criticize the popular interpretation of Zionism, to frame Israel as a settler-colonial project and to recognize the humanity and history of Palestinians was — and, unfortunately in the Western world, often remains — a radical thesis.

In the new documentary Edward Said: Between Worlds, Danish filmmaker and producer Maiken Baird explores, among other things, how the publication of this book and Said’s consistent advocacy for Palestinian self-determination made him both a model of intellectual integrity and an enemy of the United States. The doc carries the legacy of other Said film projects, including Mike Dobbs’ Edward Said: The Last Interview, released in 2004, but Between Worlds still offers a useful political education. Through impressive archival footage (interviews and lectures, home videos and family photos), Baird, who executive produced Icarus and Orwell: 2+2=5, revives the voice of a crucial public figure and indicts the U.S. and its mainstream media outlets for the role they have played — and continue to play — in abetting the annihilation of Palestinians. She wraps these major themes in a poignant narrative about how Said, exiled from Palestine and alienated from his Arab identity, eventually found his way back to both.

Between Worlds, still seeking distribution following well-received showings at the Toronto and New York film festivals, opens with an audio compilation of news anchors describing Said. They refer to him as a Palestinian activist, and remark on his eloquence in a subtle nod to the way he defies the expectations of a public taught to dehumanize Arabs. In one early clip, Said says he would “like to be identified as a professor of literature at Columbia University.” A voice off-camera repeats the title, with an interrogative intonation, and Said responds with humorous exasperation: “That’s right. I mean that’s what I do for a living.” This moment captures a tension that Said faced in battling assumptions that deep political engagement somehow foreclosed the possibility of other interests.

The beginning of Between Worlds functions as a kind of prelude, offering a straightforward primer on Said. Using the scholar’s own words, Baird lays out Said’s role in public life and defines one of his principle intellectual projects. “Whenever there is a Palestinian effort to tell a story, to put in a dramatic and realizable way the story of Palestine, it’s been assaulted and stopped,” he says in voiceover. “So we appear as if we are orphans, as if we have no origins, we have no narrative as a people. We are being told in a certain sense that we don’t really exist.”

A violent estrangement from land, history and culture defined Said’s early years. Between Worlds smartly shapes itself around Said’s intellectual ideas without giving up the ease of a chronological timeline. After the intro, Baird introduces Said’s interest in memory and who gets to define history, focusing on the scholar’s early years. Said was born into a middle-class family in Jerusalem, Palestine, in 1935. In 1947, he and his family moved to Cairo, ahead of the 1948 mass expulsion of Palestinians from Israel widely known as the Nakba. Through archival interviews, Said explains how his parents rarely talked about their home country except when vaguely citing what they lost. As a result, Said grew up rather politically disengaged and with no real connection to his identity.

Despite not having the language for it, the young Palestinian understood his position as a marginalized person very early on. In school, he identified with stories of indigenous Americans and Black people in America, and noticed how much of his education was filled with historical elisions of the harm done to them. Said’s teaching style was informed by this keenness, as he encouraged his students to approach their studies with healthy skepticism and to question historical silences.

When he was further into adolescence, Said was sent to the United States for boarding school, where the severance from his Arab identity was reinforced. He went on to study at Princeton and then Harvard before landing a teaching job at Columbia University. It’s at this institution that Said would go on to formulate his most enduring theses about Arab identity in relation to the West (Orientalism, 1978); Palestinian history and self-determination (The Question of Palestine, 1979); and the afterlives of imperialism (Culture and Imperialism, 1993). It’s ironic that today the university that served as Said’s intellectual home is at the forefront of sanctioning students and faculty advocating for Palestinians.

The most emotionally poignant parts of the film focus on how the intellectual rebuilt his relationship to his Palestinian identity. After he married Mariam, a Lebanese writer and activist, Said traveled to Beirut with her, connected with people involved in the liberation of Palestine, and embarked on an intensive study of Arabic. Through this re-engagement, he began to notice how the Western media participated in disseminating anti-Arab propaganda, and these observations would go on to inspire many of his books.

There’s substantial attention paid as well to Said’s intellectual development after his early writings, notably how he became disappointed with and estranged from Palestinian comrades like Yasser Arafat, who he believed harmfully capitulated to American and Israeli demands. While Between Worlds touches on Said’s evolving politics, particularly his later advocacy for a nation where Israelis and Palestinians could live in equality, it leaves the viewer wanting additional context.

One of the most jarring elements of Baird’s documentary — as with most nonfiction projects about Palestinians released in the last few years — is how much of the language featured in the film echoes the contemporary moment. It can feel uncanny to watch Said, interviewed throughout the 80s, 90s and early 2000s, argue the same issues that are being litigated today. And it’s striking to see how being asked repeatedly to defend Palestinian self-determination wears on the scholar, who also had other intellectual interests. He was a talented pianist, a prolific literary critic and a founder of what we now call postcolonial studies, a multidisciplinary field that examines the cultural, economic and political afterlife of imperialism.

I first learned about Said as an undergraduate studying English literature at Princeton, our shared alma mater. His debut book Orientalism offered me, as well as many others, a renewed understanding of the violent legacy of colonization and reinvigorated my understanding of identity as fluid and relational. If there’s one tension in Between Worlds, it’s the constant reminder that there’s so much more to learn about its subject.