Mads Mikkelsen’s 85% Rotten Tomatoes Horror Actioner Leads This Week’s Must-Watch Arrivals on HBO Max

written by Craig Ellison

April 13, 2026 2:20 pm

Mads Mikkelsen’s 85% Rotten Tomatoes Horror Actioner Leads This Week’s Must-Watch Arrivals on HBO Max — Image credit: Legion-Media

HBO Max heats up April 13-19, 2026, with a 2025 fantasy-action headliner starring Mads Mikkelsen, and on April 17 adds Lionsgate’s Dust Bunny, Bryan Fuller’s dark tale of Aurora, a child who enlists a hit man to hunt the monster she fears.

Okay, let’s dig into another week of new stuff hitting HBO Max—some genuinely interesting releases, and a few odd TV relics making their last stand. If you’re trying to keep up with the streaming shuffle—or just want to see what’s worth your eyeballs—here’s what’s new from April 13 to 19, 2026.

That Bryan Fuller-Mads Mikkelsen Team-Up... Finally Streaming

The big arrival: Dust Bunny lands on April 17. This one comes from director Bryan Fuller (yep, that Bryan Fuller), who doesn’t exactly flood cinemas with movies, so when he does something new, it’s worth a look. Here, you’ve got the always-watchable Mads Mikkelsen playing a hitman—because typecasting can be a beautiful thing—caught up in a weird fantasy action setup.

Plot’s delightfully odd: there’s a kid named Aurora (Sophie Sloan) convinced that some monster killed her parents. So what does she do? She goes full genre logic and hires Mikkelsen’s character to take it out. The twist: he’s sure it was just run-of-the-mill assassins targeting him, not some kid’s monster. Also in the mix are Sigourney Weaver and Sheila Atim, so the cast is stacked.

If you care about scores, Dust Bunny pulled in an 85% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 6.5/10 on IMDB—so critics mostly vibed with it, even if audiences were a touch more lukewarm. Honestly, not bad for a movie that sounds like someone dared Bryan Fuller to merge Leon: The Professional with a creepy fairy tale.

Smiling Friends Bows Out With a... Whimper?

For the animation crowd, Smiling Friends is dropping the last of its third season episodes this week. These are technically the 'leftovers'—creator Zach Hadel himself called them 'little stragglers' instead of proper finales. If you’ve followed the show since its 2025 season 3 premiere, this is your final serving. Don’t expect a grand sendoff, but hey, new episodes are new episodes.

Other Stuff Incoming

If you’re after pure comfort TV (or just masochistically addicted to reality competitions), HBO Max is dropping a pile of ongoing series and franchise additions. Here’s what’s showing up over the week:

April 13: Boy Band Confidential: A Hollywood Demons Event Season 1 (ID), Smiling Friends Season 3B (Adult Swim)
April 14: Rock The Block Season 7 (HGTV), The Dark Wizard (HBO Original fantasy, for all you wand people)
April 15: Nanny McPhee Returns (just when you thought that franchise was over), World's Bargain Dream Homes Season 1 (HGTV)
April 16: One Day In My Body Season 1 (TLC – get ready for oversharing)
April 17: Dust Bunny (the headline grabber), House Hunters: Volume 11 and Season 253 (I’m not kidding) of House Hunters (HGTV)
April 18: Belle Collective Season 7 (OWN Network), Krypto Saves the Day: Coastal Catastrophe (something for the young or the stoned)

Wrap-Up

So that’s the big picture for this week. The main event is clearly Mads Mikkelsen’s monster-hunting turn in Dust Bunny and the modest, anticlimactic wrap of Smiling Friends. Everything else is gravy (or background noise, if we’re being honest). Happy streaming.