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In 2009, Bobby Jandu sent Kirat Assi a friend request on Facebook. Without realizing it, Kirat Assi began a ten-year journey of online deception. In Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare, she writes about being ensnared in a virtual relationship with a man who didn’t exist. This Netflix documentary, which is based on a podcast, presents her narrative in a chronological format, showing how she gradually fell into a relationship full of lies.

This documentary is important for more than just showing a personal tragedy; it’s about a bigger societal problem. Sweet Bobby emphasizes the flimsiness of trust in a digital age where connections frequently trump face-to-face action. Kirat’s story is a microcosm of how easily the alluring promise of connection can seduce a man.

This tale evokes past occurrences in which individuals were duped by charismatic leaders, such as cult leaders whose enticing appearances conceal evil intentions. In our quest for connection,...

As true crime fans, we’ve seen our fair share of wild Netflix stories, but Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare is on another level. This jaw-dropping documentary peels back the layers of a nearly decade-long deception that turned London radio host Kirat Assi’s life upside down. After years of emotional investment, Kirat discovered that “Bobby,” her supposed soulmate and fiancé, was a figment of her cousin Simran’s imagination. But now, fans are torn over where the blame truly lies.

Is Simran a manipulative villain who deserves punishment for an extended psychological “prank,” or is Kirat partly to blame for never meeting Bobby in person over all those years? It’s a loaded question, one that’s sparked heated discussions among fans, and Sweet Bobby forces us to confront how far someone can be deceived in a digital age where so many of our relationships begin — and sometimes end — online.

The third season of “The Lincoln Lawyer” was the top title on Luminate’s weekly measurement of streaming originals for the Oct. 18-24 viewing window, hitting a strong 2.4 billion minutes watched in its first full week of availability. Season 3 has also brought renewed attention to Seasons 1 and 2, which charted at No. 8 with 317.9 million minutes watched and No. 10 with 266.2 million minutes watched, respectively.

The legal drama approximately tripled the viewership of the next-most-watched streaming original series in the U.S., which was “Love Is Blind” Season 7. The unscripted dating show was watched for 805.3 million minutes from Oct. 18 to Oct. 24, which marked the third full week of availability for the first six episodes, the second full week of availability for Episodes 7-9 and the first full week of availability for Episodes 10 and 11, while also including two days of availability for Episode 12.

With 647.9 million minutes watched, "Tulsa King" Season 2 was the third place TV series for the week,...

A $549 million Kung Fu Panda movie has landed on Netflix's global chart. The animated martial arts franchise began in 2008 with the release of Kung Fu Panda, centering on the journey of Po Ping (voiced by Jack Black), a giant panda who is unexpectedly chosen as the foretold Dragon Warrior and trains to become a kung fu master. Po's journey is one of proving his worth and embracing his destiny, despite his initial self-doubt and the skepticism of others. The franchise is set in a wuxia-inspired fantasy version of ancient China filled with anthropomorphic animals.

The Kung Fu Panda franchise consists mainly of four animated films Kung Fu Panda (2008), Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011), Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016), and Kung Fu Panda 4 (2024). All four films have achieved critical and commercial success, collectively earning over $2 billion and ranking as the seventh highest-grossing animated film franchise. The franchise also includes three TV...

Sam Raimi is known for his work as the director of the original Spider-Man trilogy, but his credits also include producing. His latest project, a horror thriller for Netflix, is now the streamer's top movie.

Don't Move topped the global charts for movies on Netflix between Oct. 20 and Oct. 27. The horror bested Anna Kendrick's Woman of the Hour for number one, with a total of 20.2 million views or 31 million hours viewed. The numbers alone are impressive and almost Woman of the Hour's entire run of 23.1 million in two weeks, but Don't Move did it in only two days, considering it hit Netflix on Oct. 25, two days before the streamer stopped counting.

Related Netflix Drops Intense Trailer for New Horror Movie From Sam Raimi

Don't Move, a Netflix horror movie produced by Sam Rami, has a new teaser trailer.

Don't Move follows a woman's struggle after a seasoned killer...

Netflix's new survival thriller with a 75% Rotten Tomatoes score has become a global hit just days after its release. Since 2015, the popular streaming service has been producing original movies that fall into a wide range of genres from action, horror, thriller, romantic comedy, and science-fiction. Within this wide range, thrillers are particularly popular, with many of Netflix's 2024 movies falling into the genre, including Rebel Ridge, Trigger Warning, The Union, and many more.

Among Netflix's original movies, survival thrillers seem to hold an extra special appeal, focusing on characters fighting against extreme odds and often blending elements from various genres, mainly horror. In 2018, Sandra Bullock's Bird Box became one of Netflix's most-watched movies in its history. Additionally, the Spanish-language The Platform, packed with social commentary, and the French-language Under Paris are among Netflix's most-watched non-English movies. The former was followed by a sequel, The Platform 2, in 2024, which briefly became the No.

Two films shared top spots on VOD charts. The newly released “Transformers One” (Paramount) leads at Fandango (which ranks by revenue), while “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” (Warner Bros.) in its third week returned to #1 at iTunes (calculating by transactions). Both films rent for $19.99.

Netflix continues its string of originals placing first on its top 10 movie list (briefly interrupted by “Bad Boys Ride or Die”), with “Don’t Move” (a horror/thriller with Sam Raimi as one of the producers) taking over the #1 spot.

“The Wild Robot” (Universal), still the #3 film in theaters this weekend, placed second on both charts (it was #1 once during the week at iTunes). “Transformers One” is fourth at iTunes, though it was #1 initially earlier in the week. “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” is #3 at Fandango.

Now in its second week, “Alien: Romulus” (Disney), renting at an unusually high $24.99 (as are “The Wild Robot” and “Deadpool & Wolverine”), dropped #5 at Fandango and #7 at iTunes.

Russell Crowe remains one of the most recognizable names and faces in Hollywood. Crowe remains best known for several seminal performances in the late '90s and early '00s, including as a rule-breaking detective in L.A. Confidential (1997), a big tobacco whistleblower in The Insider (1999), a mathematical genius in A Beautiful Mind (2001), and a just captain in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003). It's his role as Maximus in Gladiator, however, that arguably remains his most iconic part.

The early '00s saw Crowe frequently playing more traditionally heroic characters and this would largely continue in subsequent years, but there were also some outliers. He played a violent and yet charming criminal in 3:10 to Yuma (2007) and Henry Jekyll in The Mummy (2017). Jekyll had marked one of Crowe's most outwardly villainous roles at the time, and it ended up setting the stage for an even darker...

Liam Hemsworth's 2024 romantic drama, Lonely Planet, has claimed the top spot on Netflix's weekly chart. Released direct to the streaming platform on October 11, Lonely Planet tells the story of a successful novelist suffering with writer's block, played by Laura Dern, who finds love in an exotic place with Hemsworth's finance manager. The movie, which was written and directed by Academy Award nominee Susannah Grant, also stars Diana Silvers, Younes Boucif, Adriano Giannini, and Rachida Brakni.

Now, in its first full week of availability, Lonely Planet is enjoying success on Netflix, with it hitting the top spot on the streaming platform's Global Top 10 Movies chart for the week of October 14 to October 20. The movie debuted at #1 on the charts, with 13.7 million views this week, edging out Woman of the Hour, Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare, The Menendez Brothers, Sing, Bad Boys: Ride or Die, The Predator, Unhinged, Jurassic World Dominion,...

Woman of the Hour has become a Netflix hit. Inspired by the show The Dating Game, this crime-thriller is a story about a woman named Sheryl Bradshaw who searches for a new love on a 1970s reality TV show, only to find out that the man she chose is not who he appears to be. The Netflix film is directed by actor Anna Kendrick, who also stars in the film. In addition to Kendrick, Woman of the Hour features a leading cast including Tony Hale, Daniel Zovatto, Nicolette Robinson, Pete Holmes, and Autumn Best.

Now, Woman of the Hour has managed to make it onto the Netflix charts. The film made it to no. 2 on the Netflix Global Top 10 for the week of October 14 to October 20. In this time period, Woman of the Hour amassed 9.9 million views. It came in right behind Lonely Planet, which made it onto the top...

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“Outer Banks” Season 4 held onto its title as Netflix’s most-watched TV show of the week for the second week in a row.

After the first half of Season 4 debuted atop the list following its Oct. 10 premiere with 15.5 million views, “Outer Banks” Season 4 maintained its dominance on the English TV list with 8.8 million views during the week of Oct. 14, despite its viewership nearly being cut in half. Viewing also spiked for “Outer Banks” Season 1, which rose to the No. 8 spot on the list with 2.2 million views.

Viewership for “Outer Banks” Season 4 narrowly outpaced the newest season of “The Lincoln Lawyer,” which debuted its third season on Oct. 17 and scored 7 million views to land in second place on the English TV list.

Netflix hits “Nobody Wants This” and “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story...

Laura Dern and Liam Hemsworth are stealing audiences’ hearts on Netflix with their new romance flick Lonely Planet.

In its first full week on the streamer, from October 14 to 20, the film captured 13.7M views. That put it at the top of the English films list and made it the most-watched title of the week, up nearly 3M from the viewership in its debut weekend.

Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut came in second place among English films with 9.9M views, putting it on the list for the first time. As usual, true crime stole the show, with The Menendez Brothers documentary, which features new interviews with the brothers, remained on the list, albeit dropping a few spots to fourth place with 6.9M views.

Rounding out the top five in film was Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare in third with 7M views, and Sing in fifth place.

On the TV side of things,...

The big news in home movie viewing this week isn’t that new-to-pvod “The Wild Robot” (Universal) and “Alien: Romulus” (Disney) split the #1 positions on the iTunes and Fandango top 10 charts.

The significant development is that both, like “Deadpool & Wolverine” (Disney), rent for 48 hours at $24.99, not the standard $19.99. That’s a 25 percent increase for PVOD, an increasingly essential source of studio revenue.

A few big hits have tested the $24.99 rental, including “Dune 2” and “Inside Out 2,” but “Robot” and “Alien” are successes of just over $100 million, not blockbusters.. Studios get 80 percent of the cost after a small carrier fee; the $5 increase represents about $4 more for each rental.

DreamWorks Animation’s “Robot” arrives after its third weekend in theaters. That’s not unusual for Universal, although in recent months they sometimes held back another week or two for bigger titles.

Marketing for the home showings may boost theater attendance.

Warning: Contains Spoilers for Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare

Kirat Assis life was turned upside down by a decade-long catfishing scheme, now explored in the Netflix documentary Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare (2024). This chilling real-life story follows Assi, a former radio presenter, as she falls victim to an intricate deception that began in 2010. What started as an online friendship with a man named Bobby Jandu whom she believed to be a charming cardiologist evolved into a romantic relationship spanning several years. However, Bobbys identity was entirely fabricated by someone shockingly close to Assi: her cousin, Simran Bhogal, who orchestrated an elaborate web of lies involving over 60 fictional characters.

Sweet Bobby's astonishing catfishing story begins with Assi receiving a Facebook request from Bobby, a fellow member of her Sikh community in London. Despite never meeting him in person, their relationship grew through constant messaging, with Bobby concocting increasingly bizarre excuses to avoid in-person meetings.

Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare is the newest addition and is already one of Netflixs most baffling true-crime documentaries, but for an unexpected reason. While the true-crime movies and series on Netflix are predominantly known for being shockingly gruesome, bloody, or straight-up evil, this documentary, which was directed by Lyttanya Shannon, sends chills down the viewers' spines because of a heart-breaking and vicious discovery.

At the center of Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare is radio host Kirat, whose long-distance partner puts her through a disquieting ordeal when he comes up with meticulously planned lies in order to avoid meeting in real life. Clearly, dark secrets linger between them, as years of emotional pain drag by. The documentary takes viewers beyond what is comprehensible and completely shocks them with the revelation of whom the real person behind the catfish for all those years was. Sometimes danger and betrayal can come from a beloved person,...

Netflix's new documentary Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare chronicles the harrowing eight-year ordeal of Kirat Assi, a thirty-something marketing executive from London, England who fell prey to the online deceit now known as "catfishing." Catfishing involves an individual inventing, or borrowing, an online persona to dupe their victim - usually romantically. Assi's story is particularly shocking since it is revealed at the end of Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare that her tormentor was her cousin and confidante, Simran Bhogal.

Bhogal's astonishingly intricate web of lies and deception lasted nearly a decade. By stealing the identity of one Bobby Jandu, originally on Facebook, Bhogal inched her way into Assi's affections, who she knew to be desperate for marriage and children. Placing Bobby in Nairobi, Kenya, and then moving him to New York while concocting a series of bizarre events including a shooting, enrollment in a witness protection program, and a heart attack,...

As the Halloween holiday and the end of the year quickly approaches, our weekends will become more and more packed with activities and errands. That's why it's more important than ever to set aside some time to relax and watch some new Netflix movies and shows. But if you don't want to waste your time endlessly scrolling and finding something to watch, we're giving you some recommendations.

The current titles current taking up spots on the Netflix top 10 lists are Outer Banks, Love is Blind, Unhinged, Bad Boys: Ride or Die, Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins, Nobody Wants This, Ancient Apocalypse: The Americas, Deceitful Love, and more. After watching these, make some room on your watch list for a few new releases are coming this weekend.

Wondering whether you should watch or skip Woman of the Hour, Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare, and The Lincoln Lawyer season 3? Here's what...

Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare is the third time Kirat Assi’s story has been released for public consumption. Before the documentary, it was packaged as a multi-episode podcast that debuted in 2021 — but before that, Assi’s story went public without her involvement or consent. “My witness statement was shared,” she tells Tudum. “I didn’t decide to put the story out there. It was done without my knowledge.”

That witness statement led the creators of the Sweet Bobby podcast to contact Assi, a former radio host who now runs a marketing company, about telling her story on her own terms. While Assi hadn’t planned on sharing her story, she realized if she didn’t participate, it would be too easy for “stupidly sensational lies” to overpower the truth. “So I just went with it,” Assi recalls. “I thought it would be a small thing. I thought, ‘There’s...

Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare took me by surprise, because I couldn’t wrap my head around how a person could pretend to be someone else for almost a decade and what kind of kick they got out of it that fueled their actions and kept them going. I mean, literally speaking, a lot of work is required to create a fake profile and make it look genuine. In today’s age, one can easily spot a fake profile, and so one needs to do extensive research to make it look authentic. I think you’d only go that far if you were really getting some satisfaction out of it. Kirat Assi connected with Bobby Jandu on Facebook, and she didn’t know the kind of havoc it would wreak on her personal life.

Kirat was 32 years old back then, and after a bad breakup, she decided to live her...

“Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare” is a true crime documentary on Catfishing. We live in a world where nobody can live without the internet. With the use of the internet comes online frauds and scams. Today, it has become easier to find love online through dating apps and social media sites. While this is convenient, and many people have found their true love, it also becomes a breeding ground for people wanting to commit crimes like catfishing. People ignore all the red flags because they are vulnerable, especially when finding love.

In this documentary, we hear of one such case. It starts with Kirat accepting a Facebook friend request after seeing her cousin as a mutual friend to a stranger named Bobby. One thing leads to another; the next thing you know, Kirat and Bobby start dating. For over nine years, Kirat has been in a relationship with Bobby until one day,...

The Netflix documentary Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare makes us privy to the dark side of social media culture and how an innocent woman became a victim of catfishing. The fact that surprised me the most was that she was kept in the dark for almost a decade, and she had no clue that she had been talking to an imposter. Harkirat “Kirat” Kaur Assi connected with Bobby Jandu on Facebook, and both of them started talking. Kirat was in that phase of life when her friends were getting married, and she didn’t have any potential prospects, which somewhere made her feel something of a void within her. Kirat bumped into the real Bobby in a club in 2011, and that, I believe, was a very important event in the scheme of things. I say that because it made Kirat believe that whoever she was talking to on Facebook was an actual person.

The jaw-dropping facts of an elaborate catfishing scheme will surprise those unfamiliar with the story, but they are revealed in a rushed and perfunctory film

When Kirat Assi received a Facebook friend request from a man named Bobby Jandu, in 2009, she had no reason to view it suspiciously. It was 2009 – everyone was expanding their Facebook networks. Bobby’s family was well-known in the Kenyan Punjabi Sikh community and the two shared many mutual friends online. Bobby’s younger brother, JJ, was dating Kirat’s younger cousin Simran. They were both in long-term relationships, and both posted frequently about their lives. Though the two had never met in person – Bobby, a cardiology assistant, bounced between the UK and Kenya, and Kirat, a marketing professional, lived in London – they struck up a friendship online.

Over nearly a decade, that friendship deepened into a virtual romance, an engagement and eventually an all-consuming web...