There hasn't been a lot for the theatrical industry to celebrate over the last eighteen months, with tens of billions of dollars being lost to the pandemic, but there finally seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel.
We know that the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Spider-Man: No Way Home is going to feature returning villains from both the Sam Raimi and Marc Webb franchises, and the trailer hinted that a spell cast by Doctor Strange to aid Peter Parker going awry is the cause of the multiversal chaos.
The marketing blitz for Season 2 of The Witcher has been slowly ramping up, with character posters revealing Geralt of Rivia, Yennefer and Triss all arriving in close proximity to a new full-length trailer, which admittedly faced a bit of flak for using a rap song over sweeping visuals of a fantasy world inhabited by witches, mages and monsters.
Michael Bay's Transformers arrived in the summer of 2007, and while the narrative was lacking in almost every regard, the spectacle and visual effects were nigh-on flawless. Giant alien robots turning into vehicles in a series of intricate, complex CGI sequences had never been done before on a blockbuster scale, and it ended up saving a key scene from Iron Man.
Things could have turned out very differently for the Thor franchise, the Marvel Cinematic Universe at large and Anthony Hopkins, had the acting legend not ended up landing the role of Odin in Kenneth Branagh's Asgardian epic.
Edgar Wright's breakthrough feature Shaun of the Dead became an instant cult classic when it arrived in 2004, going on to earn a solid $30 million at the box office on a budget of $6 million, before instantly finding a new lease of life on home video.
Nobody was expecting any fireworks from the box office this weekend when everyone was otherwise occupied readying themselves for Halloween, but a weak frame is still disheartening when theatrical business has been booming all month, with October 2021 tracking just 4% behind pre-pandemic levels.
Sales of all media relating to The Witcher have risen dramatically since the Netflix series first premiered in December 2019, so fans will be more well-versed in the lore than ever before when Henry Cavill's second run of adventures as Geralt of Rivia lands on the platform in December.
Kit Harington dedicated almost a decade of his life to Game of Thrones, with the HBO Max phenomenon turning the unknown actor into a household name, so he'll always remain immensely in the show's debt.
Now that the multiverse is officially in play, it can't be definitively ruled out that a few familiar faces from Fox's X-Men mythology could end up returning as part of official Marvel Cinematic Universe canon.