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, theGuy 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)
01
How does your love story start? The first scene tells you what kind of story this is going to be.
02
What do the two of you keep arguing about? Every great romance has one fight it has over and over.
03
How do you show somebody that you love them? Grand gestures are easy to write. This is the harder question.
04
What is actually standing in the way? There is always something. Which something tells you the genre.
05
Which romantic moment gets you every single time? Be honest. There is one that works on you and you know which.
06
What would you actually risk for the right person? Every romance asks this. Most people find out far too late.
07
Where are the two of you in ten years? Some love stories are about the meeting. Some are about the staying.
08
Which of these sounds most like something you would say? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your 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.
When Harry Met Sally · 1989
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 · 2000
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 · Rachel Reid · HBO Max 2025
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 · 1997
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.
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
Producers
Brad Zimmerman, Brent Stiefel, David Michôd, Ed Sinclair, Justin Lothrop, Lia Buman, Olivia Colman, Ryan Heller, Tim Headington, Tom Carver
