Ridley Scott’s 118-Minute Sci-Fi Thriller Officially Crowned Movie on Prime Video

Widely known and celebrated as one of the greatest directors of all time, most fans and critics would agree that Ridley Scott is losing steam in the later stage of his career. Back at the end of 2024, Scott returned to the colosseum for the legacy sequel to Gladiator, but the film was not met with the same glowing reception as its predecessor. The movie struggled at the box office under the weight of its $250 million production budget, but it has gone on to become one of the most-watched movies of the last few years on Paramount Plus. Just one year before the release of Gladiator II, Scott reunited with Gladiator veteran Joaquin Phoenix for Napoleon, which was also a historic bomb at the box office — the film barely earned back its $200 million budget, and is estimated to have been a major loss for the studio.

Coming into the year, Scott was fresh off a few box office bombs, but the Oscar-nominated director sought redemption with the debut of The Dog Stars. Led by Josh Brolin and Jacob Elordi, The Dog Stars was Scott’s first sci-fi movie in almost 10 years — he last directed Alien: Covenant in 2017 — so there was some anticipation for the film. However, mediocre reviews out of the gate left not much desire for fans to make the trek to the theater, leading to The Dog Stars wrapping up its theatrical run after falling just short of $40 million at the global box office. Now that the film has been completely removed from all theaters, it’s only available to watch on VOD, where it’s now the movie in the world on Prime Video.

• 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 Dog Stars’ About?

The Dog Stars is based on the acclaimed sci-fi novel of the same name by Peter Heller, who also produced the film with screenwriter Mark L. Smith and director Ridley Scott. Additional cast members include Margaret Qualley (Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood), Guy Pearce (The Brutalist), and Benedict Wong (Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness). The official synopsis for The Dog Stars, which earned scores of 41% from critics and 69% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, reads as follows:

“Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars is a riveting, epic thriller set in a world where survival is instinct, but humanity is a choice. Scott tells the story of Hig, a young pilot who, together with a military survivalist, Bangley, has carved out an efficient but isolated homestead in a brutal post-apocalyptic world until a mysterious radio transmission spurs Hig to venture into the unknown in search of the hope and humanity he still believes exists.”

“Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars is a riveting, epic thriller set in a world where survival is instinct, but humanity is a choice. Scott tells the story of Hig, a young pilot who, together with a military survivalist, Bangley, has carved out an efficient but isolated homestead in a brutal post-apocalyptic world until a mysterious radio transmission spurs Hig to venture into the unknown in search of the hope and humanity he still believes exists.”

Check out The Dog Stars on VOD platforms like Prime Video and Apple TV and stay tuned to Collider for more updates and coverage of Ridley Scott’s future projects.

The Dog Stars