A quick look at the Top 10 on HBO Max reveals some surprising details about the audience on the streaming service. One of these observations is that they apparently like Deadpool 2 so much that they’re watching two different cuts enough to place it in the Top 10. Even more obvious than that, though, is how much the subscribers love horror and thriller movies. Ranging from grounded and gritty films like A24’s Warefare, to the campy and over-the-top The Meg, but also recent horror hits like Undertone and Lee Cronin’s The Mummy. That 2026 reboot may have flopped with critics, but it climbed to the top of HBO Max.
Over the weekend, though, another major title arrived on HBO Max that some had been waiting to see, enough that it dethroned Lee Cronin’s The Mummy from the top spot. Premiering on Friday, July 10, The Long Walk, a long-awaited adaptation of Stephen King’s novel, premiered on HBO Max. Having previously streamed on Starz earlier this year, the film has moved over to the more popular streaming service and become an immediate hit, dethroning the revival of The Mummy that had held the top spot for over a week.
A quick look at HBO Max’s Top 10 confirms that The Long Walk has secured the #1 position, but the charts available on FlixPatrol tell the full story. As the site reveals, The Long Walk immediately became the #1 movie on HBO Max in the United States the day it premiered, pushing everything else down a notch and securing the top spot.
At the time that The Long Walk premiered in theaters last year, the movie had a rough opening weekend at the box office. For starters, the film opened against the buzz saw that was The Conjuring: Last Rites, the highest-grossing film in the long-running horror franchise, but also the stunning success of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba Infinity Castle. The Long Walk opened at $11.7 million, sitting at the #4 position, which at one point might have been enough to consider it a disappointment.
Like the young men at the center of the film, though, The Long Walk didn’t give up. Over the next seven weeks, The Long Walk climbed to $35 million, which may not seem like much to some, but with its $20 million budget and another $28 million internationally, it brought the movie to a $63 million global box office haul. Compared to its $20 million budget, that’s a win, even if it’s a small one
Fittingly directed by The Hunger Games‘ director Francis Lawrence, The Long Walk is adapted from Stephen King’s 1979 novel of the same name, about a competition between one boy from every US State that has to walk until there’s only one left. The winner is promised money and a wish, but the bleak nature of the entire competition and the desolate landscape of America that they have to walk through paint a grim picture of the world.
It’s easy to see why audiences have flocked to The Long Walk and made it an HBO Max hit.. Not only does Lawrence manage to take a premise that could easily become tiresome and frequently find new ways to inject suspense and surprise into its plot, but it has a great ensemble cast in front of the camera. Starring Cooper Hoffman (Licorice Pizza), David Jonsson (Alien: Romulus), Ben Wang, Charlie Plummer, Judy Greer, and Mark Hamill, The Long Walk is a film that keeps you on your toes, even as it shows you the nasty effects of the titular event on others.
