It’s a big one, folks. October marks the start of Netflix’s official awards season push, with several big-name premieres on the calendar, none bigger than Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite. An unbearably tense political thriller about a nuclear attack on the United States, it’s being touted as a potential Best Picture nominee for the streamer. But that’s not all. In addition, there’s Edward Berger’s follow-up to Conclave, plus new seasons of popular series The Witcher, The Diplomat and one of last year’s standout TV debuts, Nobody Wants This – not to mention another season of Love is Blind. Surprisingly, given that it is spooky season, the month is light on fresh horror, but there is another instalment of Ryan Murphy’s true-crime anthology, focused on 1950s serial killer Ed Gein. (And if it’s frights you’re after, there’s plenty in the back catalogue.) Here are the 13 new titles most worth making time for.
What’s new on Netflix October 2025 at a glance:
📍Movies: A House of Dynamite (Oct. 24), Ballad of a Small Player (Oct. 29), Steve (Oct. 3)
📍Shows: Love Is Blind (Oct. 1), Nobody Wants This (Oct. 23), The Witcher (Oct. 30)
📍Limited Series: Monster: The Ed Gein Story (Oct. 3)
📍Documentaries: The Perfect Neighbor (Oct. 17), Starting 5 (Oct. 16)
Recommended:
💻 The best Netflix original series to binge
📺 The best TV and streaming shows of 2025 (so far)
Love is Blind season 9
The pod people return to see if everlasting love can precede – or in some cases supersede – physical attraction. (Spoiler alert: sure it can, but it helps that everyone on the show is hot.)
Premieres October 1
Monster: The Ed Gein Story
Ryan Murphy’s true-crime anthology series reaches back to the 1950s to chronicle one of midcentury America’s most notorious serial killers, whose atrocities inspired both Psycho and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Charlie Hunnam plays the murderous mama’s boy and looks creepy doing so.
Premieres October 3
Steve
Cillian Murphy plays the year’s second-most important cinematic Steve, a teacher at a reform school in the midst of a mental breakdown over the course of one immensely challenging day. Tim Mielants, who previously directed Murphy in last year’s Small Things Like These, excels at these sort of intimate psychological profiles, and Murphy is, well, Cillian Murphy, simply one of the best actors around.
Premieres October 3
The Woman in Cabin 10
Gaslight ahoy! In this psychological thriller, based on a book by crime novelist Ruth Ware, Keira Knightley is a journalist covering the maiden voyage of a luxury cruise ship who witnesses a body being thrown overboard, only for the other super-rich passengers to insist she didn’t see what she knows she saw. Guy Pearce and Hannah Waddingham are also in the cast.
Premieres October 10
The Diplomat season 3
Keri Russell returns to her Emmy-nominated role as Kate Wyler, newly appointed US ambassador to the United Kingdom, in this soapy thriller steeped in international intrigue. And the crap has really hit the fan now: the president is dead, power-hungry VP Allison Janney is in control and Kate’s husband may have orchestrated the whole deal. And now here comes Bradley Whitford as the new First Gentleman!
Premieres October 16
Starting 5
In the second season of this sports docuseries, produced by the combined powers of LeBron James, Peyton Manning and the Obamas, cameras follow five pro-ballers through the grueling NBA season, including Kevin Durant, reigning MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Tyrese Haliburton, who improbably dragged the Indiana Pacers to the Finals, only to tear his Achilles almost literally the moment he got there.
Premieres October 16
The Perfect Neighbor (10/17)
In 2023, simmering tensions between neighbors in the town of Ocala, Florida, boiled over, leaving 35-year-old Ajike Shantrell Owens dead and sparking nationwide debates over the state’s controversial ‘stand your ground’ laws. Using a wealth of police bodycam footage, director Geeta Gandbhir traces the conflict between Owens, his children and his killer, Susan Lorincz, in a film that cuts far deeper than the typical true-crime doc.
Premieres October 17
The Twits
The first in a slew of Roald Dahl projects coming to Netflix is also the first-ever film adaptation of the iconic children’s author’s overlooked late-period works. The titular Twits are diabolical amusement-park owners who find themselves in conflict with two orphans and a family of magical pet monkeys called Muggle-Wumps. Yep. Natalie Portman, Emilia Clarke and Jason Mantzoukas lend their voices, while David Byrne contributed three original songs, including a collaboration with Paramore’s Hayley Williams.
Premieres October 17
Nobody Wants This season 2
Nobody Wants This, and yet we’re getting more of it? Something doesn’t add up. One of the television standouts of 2024, this sharply observed romcom stars Kristen Bell as an unreligious sex podcaster who falls for a handsome young rabbi, played by Adam Brody. Leighton Meester joins the cast as Bell’s longtime arch-nemesis.
Premieres October 23
A House of Dynamite
After a quiet few years, director Kathryn Bigelow returns with another tense political thriller, only with stakes even higher than Zero Dark Thirty, tracking the direct aftermath of a foreign missile launch against the United States. Word out of the festivals is that it looks like a Best Picture contender.
Premieres October 24
Nightmares of Nature
Nature documentary meets horror movie? Honestly, great idea from the scare-meisters over at Blumhouse. Maya Hawke narrates footage of animal-on-animal cruelty, and she surely does well. But let’s be real: there was only one person for this job.
Premieres October 28
Ballad of a Small Player
Director Edward Berger’s followup to last year’s deliciously catty papal drama Conclave tracks a down-and-out gambler (Colin Farrell) hiding out amongst the neon lights of Macau as he desperately tries to claw his way out of serious debt. Reviews so far have been mid, but Farrell is one of the most compulsively watchable actors out there and, like all of Berger’s films, it should be nice to look at.
Premieres October 29
The Witcher season 4
Netflix’s answer to Game of Thrones enters its penultimate season embroiled in drama, not all of it onscreen. Star Henry Cavill is out, Liam Hemsworth is in as the lusciously-locked warrior Geralt of Rivia. (An already-filmed spinoff was also cancelled earlier this year, with some of the footage now apparently stitched into the main series.) Sounds like the makings of a lot of fan upset, but who are we to question the powers of House Hemsworth?
Premieres October 30
Everything New Coming to Netflix in October 2025
Available Oct. 1:
About My Father
Austin Powers in Goldmember
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
Beverly Hills Cop
Beverly Hills Cop II
Beverly Hills Cop III
Blue Crush
The Book Club Murders
Casper
The Christmas Contract
Coach Carter
Coming to America
Daddy Day Care
Death Becomes Her
Dirty Dancing
Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax
Dracula
Eddie Murphy: Raw
Elysium
Fifty Shades Darker
Fifty Shades Freed
Fifty Shades of Grey
Friends with Benefits
The Goonies
Hacksaw Ridge
Halo - Seasons 1-2
The Hurt Locker
I Still Know What You Did Last Summer
Law Abiding Citizen
Love Is Blind - Season 9
The Lincoln Lawyer
The Mask
Meet Joe Black
Molly’s Game
Mr. & Mrs. Smith
NCIS - Seasons 18-19
Pineapple Express
Point Break
Red Dragon
RIV4LRIES
Scarface
Sinister 2
Sister Act
Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit
Slender Man
The Strangers
Taxi Driver
Training Day
The Way Home - Seasons 1-2
When a Stranger Calls
The Wrath of Becky
Available October 2:
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
Dudes
The Game: You Never Play Alone
The Martian
Rockstar: DUKI from the End of the World
Available October 3:
Genie, Make a Wish
Monster: The Ed Gein Story
The New Force
Old Dog, New Tricks
Rhythm + Flow France: After the Beat
Steve
Available October 4:
Angel Has Fallen
Night of the Living Dead
Ranma 1/2 - Season 2
Available October 5:
Despicable Me 3
Ip Man
Ip Man 2
Ip Man 3
Ip Man 4: The Finale
Available October 6:
Dr. Seuss’s Horton!
Available October 7:
Nurse Jackie - Seasons 1-7
True Haunting
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Available October 8:
Caramelo
Is It Cake? Halloween
Néro the Assassin
Available October 9:
Boots
The Maze Runner
Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials
Maze Runner: Death Cure
The Resurrected
Victoria Beckham
Available October 10:
Kurukshetra: The War of Mahabharata
My Father, the BTK Killer
Old Money
Swim to Me
The Woman in Cabin 10
Available October 11:
Typhoon Family
Available October 14:
Everybody Loves Me When I’m Dead
Splinter Cell: Deathwatch
Available October 15:
Held Hostage in My House
Inside Furioza
No One Saw Us Leave
Six Kings Slam 2025
Taken in Plain Sight
Available October 16:
The A Team
Confessions of a Shopaholic
The Diplomat - Season 3
Romantics Anonymous
Starting 5 - Season 2
The Time That Remains
Available October 17:
27 Nights
Good News
The Perfect Neighbor
She Walks in Darkness
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
Turn of the Tide - Season 2
Turn of the Tide: The Surreal Story of Rabo de Peixe
The Twits
Available October 20:
Don’t Say a Word
Available October 21:
Michelle Wolf: The Well
The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon - Season 2
Who Killed the Montreal Expos?
Available October 22:
Mob War: Philadelphia vs. The Mafia
The Monster of Florence
October 23:
The Elixir
Nobody Wants This - Season 2
Available October 24:
A House Of Dynamite
Parish - Season 1
Available October 25:
The Dream Life of Mr. Kim
Available October 27:
The Asset
Dark Winds - Season 3
Sliding Doors
Available October 28:
Babo: The Haftbefehl Story
Mo Amer: Wild World
Nightmares of Nature: Lost in the Jungle
Available October 29:
Ballad of a Small Player
NOS4A2 - Seasons 1-2
Rulers of Fortune
Selling Sunset - Season 9
Available October 30:
Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers
Amsterdam Empire
Juan Gabriel: I Must, I Can, I Will
Son of a Donkey
The Witcher - Season 4
Available October 31:
Bad Influencer
Breathless - Season 2
Rhythm + Flow France - Season 4