Blue Moon Is Coming to Streaming: When and Where to Watch Ethan Hawke’s New Movie
Blue Moon reunites Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater for a biographical drama that premiered at Berlin and hit US theaters October 17 via Sony Pictures Classics, with Margaret Qualley and Andrew Scott headlining.
Hawke and Linklater are back at it. Their ninth team-up, Blue Moon, just did the festival circuit, is rolling out in theaters now, and it already has critics buzzing. Here is what you need to know, where you can expect to watch it, and why it is a big swing for theater nerds and movie fans alike.
What Blue Moon is actually about
Blue Moon zeroes in on one fraught night between legendary Broadway partners Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers. Hart is spiraling — alcoholism, depression, the works — while Rodgers is fresh off the triumph of Oklahoma!. The film tracks Hart moving from envy to a reluctant kind of praise for his partner’s new direction.
"One of the greatest shows I’ve ever seen."
That line is the emotional crux: a compliment that tastes like defeat. Richard Linklater pulls from real accounts of Hart drinking hard at the Oklahoma! opening-night party, which the movie filters through a tense exchange between Ethan Hawke’s Hart and Bobby Cannavale’s bartender. The vibe, as one review put it, is a bitter Broadway breakup. It is tight, talky, and very much a deep theater-nerd cut — right down to appearances from names like Oscar Hammerstein II, Stephen Sondheim, and even E. B. White.
Hawke, for his part, goes all-in on Hart’s unraveling; Andrew Scott plays Rodgers with a cool certainty that makes every scene sting.
Festival debut, early buzz, and awards
Blue Moon had its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival on February 18, 2025. It was up for the Golden Bear and Andrew Scott walked away with the Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance. Critics are into it: the film is sitting at 92% on Rotten Tomatoes as of now.
Release dates and how to watch
Sony Pictures Classics opened Blue Moon in the U.S. with a limited theatrical run on October 17, 2025, expanding wide on October 24, 2025.
When does it hit home? SPC tends to follow a pretty standard 30-day theatrical-to-PVOD window lately. Recent examples they handled:
- "I’m Still Here" (their words: the most recent Best International Feature Oscar winner) opened broadly on February 14, 2025, and hit premium VOD on March 11, 2025.
- "Call Me By Your Name" went wide January 19, 2018, and landed for digital purchase February 27, 2018.
- "The Father" opened February 26, 2021, and arrived on PVOD March 26, 2021.
If Blue Moon follows suit, expect early digital access about a month after its wide date — roughly November 24, 2025 — on the usual PVOD spots: Apple TV, Fandango At Home, and Amazon Video.
As for streaming subscriptions, SPC titles are scattered. Whiplash is on Tubi, The Father is on the Starz Apple TV Channel, Call Me By Your Name streams on Hulu, and Midnight in Paris is on The Roku Channel. Translation: there is no single home for Sony Pictures Classics titles, and there is no firm streamer to point to yet for Blue Moon.
For context on SPC’s track record, they have a habit of backing strong awards players: Amour, Whiplash, Midnight in Paris, Call Me By Your Name, and yes, the recently anointed "I’m Still Here."
The cast
- Ethan Hawke as Lorenz Hart
- Andrew Scott as Richard Rodgers
- Bobby Cannavale as Eddie Sardi
- Margaret Qualley as Elizabeth Weiland
- Jonah Lees as Morty Rifkin
- Sinom Delaney as Oscar Hammerstein II
- Cillian Sullivan as Stephen Sondheim
- Patrick Kennedy as E. B. White
The bottom line
Between Hawke’s cracked-porcelain Hart and Scott’s steelier Rodgers, who hits harder for you? I lean Hawke by a hair, but Scott’s Silver Bear is not a fluke. Either way, the movie is a sharp little pressure cooker about a partnership falling apart in real time — and it is worth catching in theaters before it sneaks onto PVOD around late November.