Anya Taylor-Joy’s 128-Minute Sci-Fi Thriller Is Officially One of Apple TV’s Biggest Movies Ever

Anya Taylor-Joy has had a benchmark year in 2026 with new movies and TV shows, but she’s not done yet as she’s been tapped to star in one of the biggest sci-fi movies of the year. Taylor-Joy reprised her role as Princess Peach in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, which was the first feature film of 2026 to reach $1 billion at the global box office. She also made her long-awaited return to TV in Lucky, the Apple TV crime thriller co-starring Timothy Olyphant that scored solid reviews from critics and fans throughout its first season. Taylor-Joy previously starred in one of the most-watched Netflix shows of all time in The Queen’s Gambit, and she returned to the platform in October to star opposite Chris Evans in Sacrifice. Taylor-Joy’s future is also looking bright with roles in the imminent Dune: Part Three as well as the upcoming The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum.

Apple TV has a reputation of nabbing big-time stars like Anya Taylor-Joy for its biggest projects, but it isn’t the first time that she’s worked with the platform. Last year on Valentine’s Day, the same day that Captain America: Brave New World hit theaters, Taylor-Joy teamed with Miles Teller (Top Gun: Maverick) to star in The Gorge, the sci-fi thriller that’s become an all-time streaming hit. As multiple new arrivals continue to fade from relevance, The Gorge has persisted on Apple TV watchlists, where it’s now been in the top 10 for over 300 days in 2026. What makes this feat even more impressive is that we’re barely 300 days into 2026, meaning the film has been a streaming hit for the entire year after it was also in the top 10 for almost all of 2025.

• The Wachowskis’ 1999 film won four Academy Awards, including Visual Effects and Film
  Editing.
• Bullet time was shot with a rig of roughly 120 still cameras firing in sequence around the
  actors.
• Keanu Reeves trained in martial arts for about four months before a frame was shot,
  recovering from neck surgery the whole time.
• It opened the same year as Fight Club and eXistenZ, in a run of films about not trusting the
  world in front of you.

• Mad Max: Fury Road won six Academy Awards in 2016, more than any other film that year.
• George Miller storyboarded the entire film as roughly 3,500 panels before there was a
  script.
• The chase was shot almost entirely practical in the Namib Desert, with real vehicles and
  real stunt performers.
• Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth carried the prequel, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, in 2024.

• Blade Runner 2049 won Roger Deakins his first Oscar for cinematography, on his fourteenth
  nomination.
• The film also took Best Visual Effects, 35 years after Ridley Scott’s 1982 original.
• Villeneuve shot it on large-format film and kept the fog and rain practical on set wherever
  he could.
• Three short films by Luke Scott and Shinichiro Watanabe bridge the 30-year gap between the
  two movies.

• Denis Villeneuve’s Dune won six Academy Awards in 2022, including Cinematography and
  Original Score.
• Hans Zimmer turned down Christopher Nolan’s Tenet so he could score Dune instead.
• Dune: Part Two arrived in 2024 and brought in Austin Butler, Florence Pugh and Christopher
  Walken.
• David Lynch’s 1984 version and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s unmade one are both their
  own legends by now.

• The 1977 original won six Academy Awards plus a special achievement award for sound effects.
• John Williams’ score was recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra and became the
  best-selling symphonic film soundtrack ever.
• Andor took the galaxy somewhere colder and earned Emmy nominations for drama series in both
  seasons.
• The saga now runs across eleven feature films and a growing shelf of series on Disney+.

What Is ‘The Gorge’ About?

In addition to Teller and Taylor-Joy, The Gorge also stars Sigourney Weaver, who is best known for her roles in sci-fi franchises like Avatar and Alien. The film was directed by Scott Derrickson, who is best known for directing the first Doctor Strange movie and also both of Ethan Hawke‘s Black Phone films. The official synopsis for The Gorge, which holds solid marks of 62% from critics and 74% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, reads as follows:

“Two highly-trained operatives (Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy) are appointed to posts in guard towers on opposite sides of a vast and highly classified gorge, protecting the world from an undisclosed, mysterious evil that lurks within. They bond from a distance while trying to stay vigilant in defending against an unseen enemy. When the cataclysmic threat to humanity is revealed to them, they must work together in a test of both their physical and mental strength to keep the secret in the gorge before it’s too late.”

“Two highly-trained operatives (Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy) are appointed to posts in guard towers on opposite sides of a vast and highly classified gorge, protecting the world from an undisclosed, mysterious evil that lurks within. They bond from a distance while trying to stay vigilant in defending against an unseen enemy. When the cataclysmic threat to humanity is revealed to them, they must work together in a test of both their physical and mental strength to keep the secret in the gorge before it’s too late.”

Check out The Gorge on Apple TV and stay tuned to Collider for more updates and coverage of Anya Taylor-Joy’s future projects.

The Gorge