New Releases on Netflix This Week and Top 10 Movies & Series: October 17, 2026

Picture Credit: Universal Pictures

It’s Saturday, meaning it’s time for another end-of-week roundup of everything new on Netflix US! After last week’s enormous 65-title haul, things have calmed down a little on the numbers front, but what the week lacks in volume it more than makes up for in star power. Over the past seven days, 44 new releases (20 movies and 24 series) have touched down on the streaming service, headlined by a Michael Mann crime classic, a bonkers new Netflix Original thriller, and the return of one of the service’s best political dramas.

Whether you’re looking for a three-hour heist epic, a quick psychological thriller binge, or a reality fix now that the Love Is Blind pods have reopened in Boston, this week’s lineup has you covered. For more on what’s still to come throughout October, we’ve got you covered, and our November arrivals list is growing by the day. Don’t forget our new calendar list is updated daily with every new arrival we find.

We’re keeping our spooky season tradition alive with dedicated Halloween Highlights once again. But first, let’s take a look at our top streaming picks for the weekend:

Best New Movies and Shows on Netflix This Week

Sacrifice (2026) Netflix Original

Type: Movie
Genre: Thriller, Dark Comedy | Runtime: 1h 41m

One of the stranger acquisitions Netflix has made in a while, and we mean that as a compliment. Romain Gavras (Athena) directs Chris Evans as Mike Tyler, a washed-up action star attending a star-studded charity gala who ends up kidnapped by a radical cult led by Anya Taylor-Joy’s Joan. The group believes that unless three human sacrifices are thrown into a volcano within three days, the end of the world is coming. Vincent Cassel, Salma Hayek Pinault, John Malkovich and Charli xcx round out one of the wildest ensembles of the year. It divided critics badly when it premiered at TIFF last year, but Gavras describes it as a roller coaster you have to just strap into, and we’d agree.

The Diplomat (Season 4) Netflix Original

Type: TV Series
Genre: Drama, Political Thriller

Kate Wyler is back, and so is the chaos.

Picking up directly after that season 3 cliffhanger, the fourth season sees Keri Russell’s ambassador dealing with the fallout of President Grace Penn (Allison Janney) and Vice President Hal Wyler (Rufus Sewell) secretly orchestrating the theft of a Russian nuclear weapon, a plot that now has the US hurtling toward war. Netflix’s official pitch for the season is that “two marriages threaten to eat each other alive,” with Kate forming an uneasy alliance with Todd Penn (Bradley Whitford) to stop the Grace-Hal alliance before it blows up everything. All eight episodes dropped on Thursday, so it’s only had a couple of days to register on this week’s chart, but it’s already at #11 and should climb comfortably into the top 10 by next week.

Type: TV Series
Genre: Reality, Dating

The pods have relocated to New England. Season 11 brings thirty Boston singles into the dating experiment with Nick and Vanessa Lachey back as hosts, and after season 9 famously ended with zero weddings, the pressure is on for this batch to actually make it down the aisle. Netflix dropped the first five episodes on Wednesday, with new batches arriving every Wednesday through to the finale, so this is one to keep coming back to over the next few weeks. It’s landed at #8 on the TV chart in its first few days.

HALLOWEEN HIGHLIGHTS

Cocaine Bear (2023)

Type: Movie
Genre: Comedy, Horror, Thriller | Runtime: 1h 35m

If your idea of Halloween viewing leans more toward gleeful gore than slow-burn dread, Elizabeth Banks’ horror-comedy is exactly what it says on the tin. Very loosely inspired by a bizarre true story from 1985, the film follows a 500-pound black bear that ingests a duffel bag’s worth of cocaine dropped from a smuggler’s plane and proceeds to rampage through a Georgia forest, with a motley crew of park rangers, drug dealers, teenagers and a worried mother (Keri Russell, pulling double duty on Netflix this week) in its path. It also features one of Ray Liotta’s final performances. It’s gory, it’s ridiculous, and it’s already cracked the top 10 at #10.

The Trap (Limited Series) Netflix Original

Type: TV Series
Genre: Psychological Thriller, Mystery

For something to binge with the lights off that doesn’t involve a monster, this six-part German psychological thriller from the team behind the International Emmy-winning Dear Child is a great shout. Adapted from Melanie Raabe’s bestselling novel, it stars Friederike Becht as Lisa Konrad, a famous author who hasn’t left her house in nearly a decade since witnessing the unsolved murder of her sister. When she believes she recognizes the killer on television, she writes a novel based on the crime and invites the journalist she suspects (Hans Löw) into her home for an interview, using herself as bait.

Full List of New Releases on Netflix This Week

As always, you can find an expanded, filterable, and searchable version of this list via our New on Netflix hub page.

20 New Movies Added This Week

Blackout (2022) – TV-MA – English
Cocaine Bear (2023) – R – English
Enna Vilai: The Price of Dignity (2026) – TV-14 – Tamil
Free Leonard Peltier (2025) Netflix Original – TV-14 – English
Garuda: Dare To Dream (2026) – TV-Y7 – Indonesian
Heat (1995) – R – English
Instadocs: AI Gone Wild (2026) Netflix Original – TV-14 – English
Lego Friends: Heartlake the Musical (2026) – TV-Y – English
Michael Che: Shot in Minnesota (2026) Netflix Original – TV-MA – English
Norm: The Tale of Norm Macdonald (2026) Netflix Original – R – English
Sacrifice (2026) Netflix Original – R – English
Seriously Single Too (2026) Netflix Original – TV-MA – English
Sumukhi Suresh Hoemonal (2026) Netflix Original – TV-MA – Hindi
Terry McMillan Presents: Preach, Pray, Love (2025) – TV-14 – English
The Disciple (2026) Netflix Original – R – English
The Fate of the Furious (2017) – PG-13 – English
The Foreigner (2003) – R – English
The Storm (2026) Netflix Original – TV-MA – Swedish
Therapy Done Right (2026) Netflix Original – TV-MA – Spanish
Transformers One (2024) – PG – English

24 New TV Series Added This Week

Alas Roban The Series (Season 1) – TV-14 – Indonesian
Anjaan Saaye (Seasons 1-2) – TV-MA – Hindi
Dragon Ball Super: Beerus (Season 1 – New Episodes Weekly) – TV-14 – Japanese
Eken Sirji Jungle Mein (Season 1) – TV-14 – Hindi
Eken Sirji Purulia Mein (Season 1) – TV-14 – Hindi
Eken Sirji Samundar Mein (Season 1) – TV-14 – Hindi
Hollywood Arts (Season 1) Netflix Original – TV-PG – English
Lady of Steel (Seasons 1-5) – TV-MA – Spanish
Lajja (Seasons 1-2) – TV-MA – Bengali
LOST10 (Season 1 – New Episodes Weekly) – TV-14 – Japanese
Love Is Blind (Season 11 – Boston) Netflix Original – TV-MA – English
Madam Inspector (Season 1) – TV-MA – Hindi
Money Trap (Season 1) Netflix Original – TV-MA – Turkish
Pororo – The Little Penguin (Season 9) – TV-Y – Korean
Roadies Rebirth (Season 1) – TV-MA – Hindi
Sampurna (Seasons 1-2) – TV-MA – Bengali
Solar Opposites (Season 6) – TV-MA – English
Spike (Season 1) – TV-Y – English
The Besties (Season 1) – TV-PG – English
The Diplomat (Season 4) Netflix Original – TV-MA – English
The Trap (Limited Series) Netflix Original – TV-MA – German
TYSON (Limited Series) Netflix Original – TV-MA – English
Wayne (Season 1) – TV-MA – English
Where the Mask Ends (Season 1) – TV-MA – Chinese

Most Popular Movies This Week

Now, let’s take a look at what people have actually been watching on Netflix US over the past seven days!

Over on the Movies list, Ben Affleck’s political kidnapping thriller Animals, which he also directed and co-wrote, has done exactly what you’d expect a Ben Affleck Netflix movie to do in 2026 and gone straight to #1 with 80 points. The reviews have been rough, but that hasn’t stopped it from topping the charts in the US and well beyond. Doing Life continues to impress, holding steady at #2 for a second week (68 points), while last week’s champion, The Widower: ‘Til Death Do Us Part, has slipped down to #5 (40 points).

The Ice Age marathon shows no signs of slowing down either. In fact, the original 2002 film has climbed from #5 to #3 (45 points) and Collision Course follows directly behind at #4 (43 points), with Dawn of the Dinosaurs and The Meltdown still hanging around at #11 and #12. Continental Drift is the only entry to have dropped off the list entirely.

Animals (80 points)
Doing Life (68 points)
Ice Age (45 points)
Ice Age: Collision Course (43 points)
The Widower: ‘Til Death Do Us Part (40 points)
The Breadwinner (38 points)
Twilight (28 points)
Terry McMillan Presents: Preach, Pray, Love (18 points)
UNABOMBER (17 points)
Cocaine Bear (16 points)
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (16 points)
Ice Age: The Meltdown (9 points)
Sacrifice (8 points)
The Fate of the Furious (7 points)
Transformers One (5 points)
Norm: The Tale of Norm Macdonald (2 points)

Most Popular TV Series This Week

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On the TV Series charts, the Josh Hartnett sea creature series Below has made the single biggest leap we’ve seen in a while. The six-part Newfoundland-set limited series only managed #13 (10 points) in its first few days last week, but a full week of word of mouth has sent it soaring to #1 with a dominant 80 points. That’s enough to knock the Florence Pugh-led Steinbeck adaptation East of Eden off the top spot, although #2 with 55 points is still a very healthy second week.

It’s been a week of big swings further down the chart, too. Last week’s #2, A Different World, has crashed to #14, Wonka’s The Golden Ticket has fallen from #4 to #17, and The Great British Baking Show has slid from #3 to #7 (28 points). Taking their place is a wave of new blood: Is It Cake? Halloween debuted at #3 (38 points), the latest quick-turnaround Netflix doc Instadocs: AI Gone Wild, which digs into this summer’s Hugging Face hack, took #4 (34 points), and the four-part Mike Tyson docuseries TYSON arrived at #6 (29 points).