Russell Crowe's 'Mindhunter' Replacement Explodes Past 40M Views on Netflix

1 hour ago 15

Holt McCallany and Jonathan Groff show a crime scene photo to someone off-screen in Mindhunter.

Published Oct 8, 2026, 6:00 AM EDT

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.

Netflix didn't produce a third season of the cult hit series Mindhunter, but seven years after the show's abrupt ending, the streamer has released a psychological thriller movie that picks up from where it left off. Like Mindhunter, which follows a team of FBI profilers conducting state-of-the-art investigations into the psychology of mass murderers, the new movie revolves around the study of a future terrorist's mind. Russell Crowe plays a Harvard professor who conducts scientific experiments on a young Ted Kaczynski, who is played in the film by former child star Jacob Tremblay.

The two appear prominently in one of the film's two parallel storylines, with the other focusing on the FBI's decades-long manhunt for Kaczynski, later dubbed the Unabomber. In the second storyline, Shailene Woodley appears as the lead investigator handling the Unabomber case. Directed by Janus Metz, the new movie opened to poor reviews, standing in contrast to the filmmaker's earlier work on shows such as Andor and True Detective. It also stood in stark contrast to another movie starring Crowe, released around the same time. The other film, The Weight, debuted theatrically and emerged as Crowe's top-rated title in nearly three decades, according to the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes.

Collider Exclusive · Villain Personality Quiz Which Criminal Mastermind Would Be Your Nemesis? Lecter · Joker · Moriarty · Chigurh

Four of the finest criminal minds ever put on screen. One of them would look at you and see something worth their time. Eight questions decide which one comes for you, why they picked you, and what they would want when they arrived.

🍷Lecter

🃏Joker

♟️Moriarty

🪙Chigurh

MEET YOUR NEMESIS →

What would a criminal mastermind notice about you first? Great villains choose their opponents carefully. Something about you got their attention.

AMy manners, and everything I am careful not to say. BThat I still believe people are basically decent. CThat I am clever, and quietly enjoy proving it. DThat I handle things myself, and always have.

NEXT QUESTION →

How do they make first contact? The introduction tells you everything about what is coming next.

AA polite letter. Beautiful handwriting. Quietly wrong. BSomething on fire, with a message left beside it. CA puzzle, left where only I would look. DNo contact. Just the aftermath, and a coin.

NEXT QUESTION →

What do you actually believe about right and wrong? Every nemesis is really an argument about the thing you believe most.

AThere are lines. Mine are private and absolute. BRules are the only thing keeping us from being animals. CMorality is a system, and systems can be solved. DThings happen. Most of it was never up to me.

NEXT QUESTION →

What finally gets under your skin? Everybody has a pressure point. Finding yours is the whole plan.

ABeing seen clearly by somebody I cannot read. BWatching good people do something ugly. CLosing to someone who was simply better prepared. DHaving no move left that changes anything.

NEXT QUESTION →

They have made their move. How do you fight back? This is the part of the film where the audience finds out who you are.

ACarefully, and never where they expect to be touched. BLoudly. I would rather lose than play their game. CWith a better plan. I can out-think this. DDirectly, once, with whatever is closest to hand.

NEXT QUESTION →

What would they use against you? A good villain never brings a weapon you have not already handed them.

AMy privacy. I have kept far too much to myself. BMy conscience. I will not cross the line they want. CMy ego. I cannot resist a worthy opponent. DMy certainty that I can handle it alone.

NEXT QUESTION →

What do they actually want from you? The money is never the point. Something else always is.

ATo understand me better than anyone ever has. BTo prove I am no better than they are. CTo finally be beaten by someone worth the trouble. DNothing at all. I stepped into the wrong path.

NEXT QUESTION →

How does it end between the two of you? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides who comes for you.

AA conversation I will be replaying for years. BA choice forced on me that has no clean answer. COne final move, and the better mind wins. DA coin in the air, and nothing I can say.

REVEAL MY NEMESIS →

The Case File Is Complete Your Nemesis Is…

Four criminal masterminds. One of them was always going to be yours. Here is who comes for you, why they picked you out of everyone available, and what they want from the encounter.

Hannibal Lecter

Your nemesis does not want to beat you. He wants to know you completely, and he is patient enough to wait for it. The frightening part is how good the conversation is.

Lecter is the most dangerous kind of opponent: the one who finds you interesting. He never raises his voice, because he has never needed to.
You keep a great deal to yourself and you are careful about what you show. That reserve is exactly the door he would knock on.
The films understood something other thrillers missed. The horror is not the violence. It is being perfectly understood by the wrong person.
He would be unfailingly polite about all of it. That is the worst part.

The Joker

Your nemesis is not after money, territory or revenge. He is after a demonstration, and you are the person he has chosen to prove his point on.

The Joker only picks opponents who believe in something. Your decency is not a defence against him. It is the entire reason he showed up.
He has no plan you can predict and nothing you can take away, which removes every tool you would normally reach for.
His whole argument is that you are one bad day away from being him, and you would spend the rest of your life proving him wrong.
He would call it a magic trick. You would call it the worst night of your life.

Moriarty

Your nemesis respects you, which sounds flattering until you work out what it means. He chose you because nobody else was worth his time.

Moriarty is the original criminal mastermind, the template every later one borrows from: a mind the equal of the hero's, pointed the wrong way.
You enjoy being the cleverest person in the room. He is counting on exactly that, and he has already built the room.
This is the rare nemesis who would be genuinely disappointed if you lost badly. He needs the game to be worth playing.
It ends the way these things always end. Two people, one problem, and only one way down.

Anton Chigurh

Your nemesis has no personal interest in you whatsoever, and that is precisely what makes him unsurvivable. You are not a rival. You are a stop on the way.

Chigurh does not negotiate, gloat or explain. He arrives, he asks one question, and the answer was decided long before you opened your mouth.
You trust yourself to handle things. He is the one problem in the world that has no interest in how capable you are.
No Country for Old Men rewrote the screen villain by removing the thing audiences quietly rely on: the sense that talking might work.
Call it. He will wait.

↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ

Russell Crowe's New Movie Is the Latest in Netflix's Streak of Mid-Budget Hits This Year

While The Weight holds a "Certified Fresh" 94% Rotten Tomatoes score, Crowe's Unabomber is sitting at a 26% score on the website. Despite the poor reception, the film delivered 16 million views in its opening week of release. According to the latest edition of Netflix's weekly viewership report, Unabomber retained its crown as the streamer's most-watched movie, adding another 24 million views between September 28 and October 4. This puts the film's total views at 40 million, which means that it qualifies as the latest in Netflix's stellar streak of mid-budget hits this year. It comes on the heels of fellow genre movies such as War Machine, The Rip, Thrash, Apex, The Last House, and more recently, The Whisper Man. Several of these films were able to hit the coveted 100-million-views mark, and Unabomber seems primed to join them.