Why HBO Max's $949 Million Dystopian Sci-Fi Has Become A Global Streaming Hit
HBO Max has a new worldwide hit on its slate, and it comes from one of the best dystopian sci-fi movie franchises to date. Sci-Fi has always been a popular genre, leading to some of the biggest movie franchises of all time. Everyone has, at the very least, heard about Star Wars, Star Trek, Dune, and other such sci-fi franchises.
That said, sci-fi possesses a wealth of exciting subgenres within it that explore wildly different concepts. Out of them, dystopian stories have become increasingly popular over the years. Recently, many of the best sci-fi TV shows have come from the dystopian subgenre. Those include one of HBO Max's most popular TV shows, The Last of Us, as well as Hulu's Paradise, Apple TV's Silo, Prime Video's Fallout, and more.
Before the age of streaming services made dystopian sci-fi shows incredibly popular, the genre was already performing well on the big screen. The 2010s were ripe with dystopian sci-fi movies. That is when franchises like The Hunger Games, Divergent, and more were adapted for the big screen. That includes the sci-fi franchise that is now returning as a global hit on HBO Max.
Signal Received · Deep Space Broadcast The Ultimate Sci-Fi TV Trivia Quiz “The truth is out there.”
🚀Deep
SpaceFinal frontiers
⌛Time
TravelWibbly wobbly
👽AliensWe are not alone
👁DystopiaThe black mirror
💡Upside
DownHawkins, 1983
01
The most famous opening monologue in TV sci-fi begins: “Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the ___.” Complete the line from the original 1966 Star Trek series.
✓ Engage! William Shatner’s iconic opening — “Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before” — has become one of the most quoted passages in all television. Later Trek series would adapt it, but the Enterprise is the one that started it all.
✗ Subspace interference! The answer is Starship Enterprise. USS Voyager belongs to the 1995–2001 series, the Defiant to Deep Space Nine, and the Discovery to the modern 2017 series. It’s the original Enterprise, captained by James T. Kirk, that William Shatner immortalized in that final-frontier monologue.
02
The Doctor’s time machine is disguised as a 1960s British police box and is famously bigger on the inside than the outside. What is the acronym it’s known by?
✓ Allons-y! TARDIS stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space. The name was coined by the Doctor’s granddaughter Susan in the very first 1963 episode. The police-box shape is the result of its chameleon circuit getting stuck while parked in 1963 London — and it’s stayed that way for sixty-plus years.
✗ Chronal distortion! The answer is TARDIS — Time And Relative Dimension In Space. The other options are invented distractors. The TARDIS first appeared in 1963 and has followed every regeneration of the Doctor since, though its interior famously redesigns itself whenever the showrunners want a fresh look.
03
The acclaimed 2004 Battlestar Galactica reboot — considered one of the greatest sci-fi TV shows ever made — was developed by which writer-producer, a veteran of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine?
✓ So say we all! Ronald D. Moore developed the modern Battlestar Galactica, reimagining Glen A. Larson’s 1978 original as a gritty, post-9/11 political allegory. Moore had cut his teeth writing many of TNG and DS9’s best episodes. His BSG aired 2004–2009 and tackled terrorism, torture, faith, and what it means to be human.
✗ Frak! The answer is Ronald D. Moore. J. Michael Straczynski created Babylon 5, David Eick was Moore’s co-executive-producer on BSG, and Glen A. Larson created the original 1978 Battlestar Galactica. Moore took Larson’s cheesy space opera and rebuilt it into a Peabody Award-winning meditation on war and morality.
04
Netflix’s ’80s-drenched sci-fi hit Stranger Things is set in a small American town sitting above a secret government lab that tore a hole into the “Upside Down.” What is the town called?
✓ Friends don’t lie! Hawkins, Indiana is the fictional town the Duffer Brothers invented for Stranger Things — home to Hawkins National Laboratory, where Dr. Brenner’s MKUltra-style experiments opened a rift into the Upside Down. The show is actually filmed in Jackson, Georgia, but the Hawkins sign is now an iconic TV landmark.
✗ The Upside Down! The answer is Hawkins, Indiana. Derry is Stephen King’s fictional town from IT, Castle Rock is another King town (and an anthology series), and Springwood is from A Nightmare on Elm Street. The Duffer Brothers deliberately evoked King’s small-town horror tradition when creating Hawkins.
05
In The X-Files, Fox Mulder has a famous poster hanging in his FBI basement office — a UFO photograph with a three-word tagline beneath it. What does the tagline say?
✓ The truth is out there! “I Want To Believe” sits below a blurry UFO photo on the poster that hangs in Mulder’s basement office throughout the series. The line became so associated with the show that it was used as the title of the 2008 feature film, The X-Files: I Want to Believe.
✗ File that one away! The answer is “I Want To Believe.” “Trust No One,” “Deny Everything,” and “The Truth Is Out There” are all iconic X-Files taglines — but it’s “I Want To Believe” that’s literally printed on the UFO poster in Mulder’s office, and which became the title of the franchise’s 2008 movie.
06
Apple TV+’s Severance — about office workers whose memories are surgically divided between their work and personal lives — was created by a first-time showrunner who used to be a customer service rep. Who is he?
✓ Praise Kier! Dan Erickson wrote the Severance pilot while working soul-crushing office jobs — literally daydreaming about splitting his mind so the “work-him” would suffer instead. Ben Stiller came on as executive producer and directed most episodes, but Erickson is the creator whose personal ennui gave us Lumon Industries.
✗ Outie interference! The answer is Dan Erickson. Damon Lindelof created Lost, The Leftovers, and Watchmen; Ben Stiller is Severance’s executive producer and primary director (but not its creator); Jonathan Nolan created Westworld and Person of Interest. Erickson’s script sat on the Black List for years before Stiller championed it.
07
In 2018, Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror released a groundbreaking feature-length episode that let viewers make choose-your-own-adventure style decisions for the protagonist. What was it called?
✓ Interactive transmission received! Bandersnatch followed young programmer Stefan as he adapted a choose-your-own-adventure novel in 1984. Viewers could make choices at key moments, branching the story into multiple endings. It was Netflix’s most ambitious interactive experiment — and the meta commentary on viewer control remains quintessential Black Mirror.
✗ Null pointer! The answer is Bandersnatch. USS Callister is the Emmy-winning Star Trek riff, San Junipero is the beloved ’80s romance episode, and Metalhead is the black-and-white robot-dog thriller. All are Black Mirror, but only Bandersnatch was the interactive choose-your-own-adventure special that launched in December 2018.
08
Joss Whedon’s space-western Firefly became a legendary cult classic after Fox infamously cancelled it — airing episodes out of order, burying the pilot, and pulling the plug. How many episodes aired on Fox before cancellation?
✓ Shiny! Only 11 of the 14 produced Firefly episodes aired on Fox in late 2002 before the network pulled the plug. The remaining three (including the two-hour pilot “Serenity”) first aired in proper order on the Sci-Fi Channel and eventually on DVD. Fan outcry led to the 2005 film Serenity — a rare cinematic rescue for a cancelled series.
✗ Fox strikes again! The answer is 11. Fourteen episodes were actually filmed, but Fox only aired 11 before cancellation, and they aired them out of order with the pilot held until last. The complete set finally aired on Sci-Fi Channel and DVD, and the fan-driven “Browncoats” campaign eventually convinced Universal to greenlight Serenity.
Transmission Complete · Signal Decoded Your Sci-Fi Rating
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Trekkie-level canon — or still buffering?
The Maze Runner is once again trending worldwide after the first film in the franchise, which was released in theaters on September 19, 2014, and its two sequels brought in a combined total of $949 million by the end of the trilogy. Led by the original The Maze Runner, the franchise is back as a global hit, now on streaming.
The Maze Runner Is Back As A Global Streaming Hit
According to FlixPatrol, The Maze Runner is currently the 6th most-watched movie worldwide on HBO Max. The dystopian sci-fi movie is trending 12 years after it was released in theaters, ranking higher on the streaming service's global charts than recent releases like the horror Lee Cronin's The Mummy and the animated sports movie GOAT. 2014's The Maze Runner is not the only movie from the successful series of novels to be adapted for the big screen that has now become a streaming sensation. The second movie in the trilogy, Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, is HBO Max's 9th most-watched movie worldwide.
Nearly all the streamer's global top 5 movies are led by franchise entries. The only standalone release is Emma Roberts' horror Abandoned at 5th. Above it and the two Maze Runner movies are Tom Holland's Spider-Man: Homecoming, Five Nights at Freddy's 2, Mortal Kombat, and Mortal Kombat II, respectively. At the time of writing, The Maze Runner is trending in 14 countries, all in Europe, ranking #1 in five of them. As for Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, the dystopian sci-fi sequel is also trending in the same 14 countries as its predecessor, though it is not HBO Max's most-watched in any of them.
Why The Maze Runner Is Worth Watching On HBO Max
The Maze Runner and Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials are available to rent or buy on the usual VOD platforms in the United States, with the sci-fi movies not being available on HBO Max nationwide. That said, they remain just as worth watching as they are on the streaming service for international viewers. The Maze Runner is the perfect franchise opener. It establishes a compelling dystopian setting where a group of teenagers deal with growing tensions as they try to survive and escape a giant maze that has claimed many lives over the years.
The Maze Runner stars Teen Wolf's Dylan O'Brien as Thomas, who had his memory erased, and emerges as the group's leader. In the sequel, Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, the dystopian sci-fi franchise's scope increases considerably, with the film exploring what this post-apocalyptic world looks like beyond the maze. The Maze Runner franchise's cast includes names like Kaya Scodelario, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Will Poulter, Patricia Clarkson, Giancarlo Esposito, Alan Tudyk, Aidan Gillen, and many more. Anyone looking for an immersive, action-packed dystopian sci-fi adventure on HBO Max worldwide will find it in The Maze Runner franchise.