Image via HBO
Published Nov 13, 2026, 9:00 PM EST
Rohan Naahar is a News Writer for Collider. From Francois Ozon to David Fincher, he'll watch anything once.
He has covered everything from Marvel to the Oscars, and Marvel at the Oscars. He also writes obsessively about the box office, charting the many hits and misses that are released weekly, and how their commercial performance shapes public perception. In his time at Collider, he has also helped drive diversity by writing stories about the multiple Indian film industries, with a goal of introducing audiences to a whole new world of cinema.
Sign in to your Collider account
One of the most surprising sleeper hits of the fall is an erotic romance fantasy that serves as a neat companion piece to Guillermo del Toro's Oscar-winning The Shape of Water. What makes the new film's box-office success even more unexpected is that it was distributed by Black Bear Pictures, an outfit that hadn't delivered a single domestic hit in the past year. Black Bear released the sports drama Christy, the Jason Statham vehicle Shelter, the Guy Ritchie action-thriller In the Grey, and most recently, the Matthew McConaughey-led neo-Western The Rivals of Amziah King.
This is a diverse slate, and the new romance fantasy continues the trend with its unique approach to familiar themes. Starring Olivia Colman and Alexander Skarsgård, the movie in question exceeded expectations in its box-office debut a few weeks ago, and subsequently displayed impressive holds. However, at the end of the day, it's still a niche title. Movies like it invariably have to make room for newer, shinier releases.
The film lost a small chunk of theaters for the first time in its run last week and another chunk this week, as it heads toward a PVOD release later this month. The good news is that the movie has already tripled its reported budget of $10 million, having grossed $20 million domestically and $30 million worldwide. It could make further gains if it garners attention during the awards season, which is entirely possible given its excellent reception.
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Iconic Romance Is Your Favorite? Harry & Sally · Love & Basketball · Heated Rivalry · Titanic
Four great love stories, and four completely different ideas of what love actually is. One is a friendship that took twelve years to admit itself. One is two people who refuse to stop competing. One happens entirely behind closed doors. And one lasts five days and never stops mattering. Eight questions decide which one is really yours.
🍂Harry & Sally(1989)
🏀Love & Basketball(2000)
🏒Heated Rivalry(HBO Max)
🚢Titanic(1997)
FIND YOUR ROMANCE →
01
How does your love story start? The first scene tells you what kind of story this is going to be.
AWe are friends for years before either of us says anything. BWe want the same thing and neither of us backs down. CNobody can know, including our closest friends. DOne look across a room and everything changes.
NEXT QUESTION →
02
What do the two of you keep arguing about? Every great romance has one fight it has over and over.
AWhether this is actually happening, and what to call it. BWhose career comes first this year. CWhether we will ever be honest about this in public. DNothing small. When we fight, it is about everything.
NEXT QUESTION →
03
How do you show somebody that you love them? Grand gestures are easy to write. This is the harder question.
AI remember every single thing they have told me. BI show up to the things that matter to them. CI keep their secrets like they are my own. DI would give up something enormous for them.
NEXT QUESTION →
04
What is actually standing in the way? There is always something. Which something tells you the genre.
ATiming. We keep finding each other at the wrong moment. BAmbition. We both want big lives and they do not match. CThe world. It is not safe to be open about this yet. DEverybody around us has decided this cannot happen.
NEXT QUESTION →
05
Which romantic moment gets you every single time? Be honest. There is one that works on you and you know which.
ASomebody running across a city to say it before midnight. BSomebody in the stands who stayed until the very end. CA look across a crowded room that nobody else catches. DSomebody promising to hold on, and meaning it.
NEXT QUESTION →
06
What would you actually risk for the right person? Every romance asks this. Most people find out far too late.
AA friendship I could never get back. BThe plan I have had for my life since I was a kid. CMy privacy. All of it would become public. DEverything. I would not think about it for long.
NEXT QUESTION →
07
Where are the two of you in ten years? Some love stories are about the meeting. Some are about the staying.
AStill talking. We have never run out of things to say. BBuilding something together, both of us still ambitious. CFinally open about it, after years of being careful. DApart, and I still think about it constantly.
NEXT QUESTION →
08
Which of these sounds most like something you would say? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your romance.
AI would rather talk to you than anybody else, forever. BI am not giving up either of us. We find a way to have both. CThis is mine, and I am not explaining it to anyone. DI would do the whole thing again, even knowing how it ends.
REVEAL MY ROMANCE →
Roll The Credits Your Romance Is…
Four love stories, four completely different ideas of what it means to be somebody's person. This is the one that matches how you actually fall, and what it would ask of you.
Harry & Sally
You do not fall for strangers. You fall for the person you have already been talking to for years, which is the slowest and by some distance the most durable way anybody has found to do this.
- When Harry Met Sally made the case that the best romance is an argument you enjoy, conducted over a decade, by two people refusing to admit what is happening.
- You want to be known rather than swept away. Somebody who remembers your worst story is doing better work than anybody arriving with flowers.
- The film is unusually honest about timing. These two are wrong for each other repeatedly until suddenly they are not, and neither of them engineered it.
- You would still be talking about everything at eighty. That is the entire promise.
Love & Basketball
You want a partner, not an audience. Somebody who wants their own life as badly as you want yours, and who would never ask you to be smaller to make the relationship easier.
- This is the rare romance where both people have a real career and the film takes both of them equally seriously.
- You would rather be pushed than protected. The right person for you is also a bit of a rival, and that never entirely goes away.
- It understands the actual problem in ambitious relationships. Not whether you love each other, but whose turn it is this year.
- You would still be competing at forty. That is how you would know it was working.
Heated Rivalry
The intensity was never the problem. The secrecy is. You are drawn to a love that lives entirely in private, and to the particular ache of wanting somebody you are not supposed to want.
- Heated Rivalry runs on the oldest engine in romance: two people on opposite sides, meeting in secret, getting far more attached than either of them planned.
- You keep your private life genuinely private, and something in you finds hidden things more real than public ones.
- The tension is not only between the two of them. It is between what they have and what it would cost either one to say it out loud.
- Years of this, and the whole story is really about whether either of them will finally stop hiding.
Titanic
You do not do this cautiously. When it happens for you it is immediate and total and it rearranges everything, and you would not accept a smaller version of it.
- Titanic gave us the biggest romance in film history and then made it last about five days, which is precisely the point of it.
- You measure love by intensity rather than duration. A few days of the real thing beats decades of something merely comfortable.
- The film is not only about the romance. It is about a woman who went on to live an enormous life afterwards because of it.
- You would still be telling this story at a hundred years old, and telling it exactly the same way.
↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ
Here's How Much the Genre-Bending Movie Has Grossed at the Box Office
We're talking, of course, about Wicker. Directed by Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson, the film holds a "Certified Fresh" 94% critics' score and a "Verified Hot" 92% audience score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. The site's consensus reads, "Wicker is a charming fable that strikes the right balance between naughty and nice, drawing much of its appeal from deftly deployed salty humor, seamless creature effects, and Olivia Colman's eminently lovable performance."
Also starring Elizabeth Debicki, the movie opened in nearly 1,500 theaters three weeks ago. Its theatrical footprint was expanded to almost 2,400 theaters in week two, before dropping to around 2,100 theaters in week three. Wicker will enter its fourth week of release in fewer than 2,000 theaters nationwide. The movie is slated to debut on digital on November 24, along with Aaron Sorkin's high-profile box-office bomb The Social Reckoning.
Wicker is in theaters now. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
Release Date October 23, 2026
Runtime 105 minutes
Director Eleanor Wilson, Alex Huston Fischer
Writers Eleanor Wilson, Alex Huston Fischer
English (US) ·