Netflix’s big-screen release of the Stranger Things finale is estimated to have made over $25m at the US box office, the latest example of event cinema proving popular

It was a lucrative holiday period at the North American box office these past two weeks, with titles like Avatar: Fire and Ash, The Housemaid, Marty Supreme, Anaconda and Zootopia 2 bringing a welcome diversity of hit movies after an underwhelming fall. But during that period, the biggest single-day gross posted by any release wasn’t really a gross – or a movie. It was the series finale of the Netflix TV show Stranger Things.

Netflix made a deal to put the feature-length episode in theaters simultaneously with its streaming debut, and estimates put the numbers for the 24 hours’ worth of shows, beginning at 8pm on New Year’s Eve and continuing throughout New Year’s Day, around $25m. That’s bigger than any single day of Avatar: Fire and Ash after its opening weekend. In fact, if the Stranger Things release banked over $30m, as some estimated, that would make it the second-biggest 24 hours for any release in December, beaten only by Avatar 3’s opening day.

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I doubt very much that 2026 will see anything in the Marty Supreme league, but here’s hoping one of the most bizarre side-steps of the decade turns out as interesting as it hopes. Short of Christopher Nolan signing on to the new Mr Men movie, I didn’t think much would throw the industry a loop as when Greta Gerwig decided to follow up bubblegum blockbuster Barbie with …… a Narnia movie. More specifically, Gerwig – previously a skilled purveyor of achingly hip alt-indie comedy with Lady Bird, Frances Ha and Damsels in Distress – is restarting the Narnia series, which had got through three of CS Lewis’s series before Netflix took over the rights. To my mind, though, The Magician’s Nephew, Lewis’s origins/prequel to the Wardrobe/Caspian/Dawn Treader narrative, is the most interesting of the entire Narnia canon, with its Edenic fall, “deplorable word” and mystical apple. We know some of the cast: Emma Mackey is the future White Witch, Carey Mulligan the terminally ill mother of one of the main kids, and Daniel Craig might be Aslan or mad inventor Uncle Andrew – or both, or neither. All eyes will be naturally be on Gerwig, but I have confidence she will pull it off in style. Andrew Pulver