Published May 31, 2026, 7:46 PM EDT
Chris is a Senior News Writer for Collider. He can be found in an IMAX screen, with his eyes watering and his ears bleeding for his own pleasure. He joined the news team in 2022 and accidentally fell upwards into a senior position despite his best efforts.
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In this day and age, a political thriller might seem as terrifying as a horror movie, especially one that, even more than 20 years later, seems as horrifyingly resonant now as it did at the time. Are we selling the movie to you? Great! Based on a 1962 old War classic, this 2004 remake ended up trading in the Iron Curtain paranoia for things like media control, and it worked really well. Interested? Good. Now you can stream it.
The Manchurian Candidate is brainwashing its way onto Paramount+ in June, giving viewers another chance to revisit the political thriller, which follows Major Ben Marco, a Gulf War veteran plagued by strange nightmares about his unit and their supposedly heroic rescue. After some time, Marco begins to be massively suspicious about what actually happened overseas, and starts wondering what the true story is, particularly how it pertains to Raymond Shaw, a fellow soldier who has since become a rising political figure.
The cast includes Denzel Washington (Training Day) as Major Ben Marco, Liev Schreiber (Spotlight) as Raymond Shaw, Meryl Streep (The Devil Wears Prada) as Senator Eleanor Prentiss Shaw, Jon Voight (Midnight Cowboy) as Senator Thomas Jordan, Vera Farmiga (The Departed) as Jocelyne Jordan, and Jeffrey Wright (American Fiction) as Al Melvin. The film was directed by Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs). Washington is on top form here as Marco, who seems to be slowly losing his grip on reality. And, as you’d expect, Streep is magnificent as Eleanor, a woman whose need to be on top feels less like a desire and more like a supernatural obsession.
Your answers point to the world your instincts were built for. This is the universe your temperament, your survival instincts, and your particular brand of stubbornness were made for.
You took the red pill a long time ago — probably before anyone offered it to you. You’re a systems thinker who can’t help but notice the seams in things.
The wasteland doesn’t reward the clever or the well-connected — it rewards those who are hard to kill and harder to break. That’s you.
You’d survive here because you know how to exist in moral grey areas without losing yourself completely.
Arrakis is the most hostile environment in the known universe — and you are precisely the kind of person it rewards.
The galaxy far, far away is vast, loud, and in a constant state of violent political upheaval — and you wouldn’t have it any other way.
It was a modest success. You wouldn’t call it a flop, but it washed its face at the box office and that was about it. It grossed about $96.1 million worldwide, including roughly $66 million domestically,** against a reported $80 million budget.** Adjusted for inflation, that’s roughly $160 million worldwide and $110 million domestic in today’s money, so you could say it made money in theaters, but wasn’t massively profitable once marketing costs are factored in. Critically, it was more of a success. The film has a positive 79% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, with the consensus saying it’s “well-acted” and has “chilling resonance.”
The Manchurian Candidate streams on Paramount+ in June.
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Major Bennett Ezekiel Marco
Senator Eleanor Prentiss Shaw (D-VA)
Congressman Raymond Prentiss Shaw (D-NY)