GOT Director’s Survival Movie With Oscar Winner Tops HBO Max Charts

Game of Thrones director Brian Kirk’s survival psychological thriller has emerged as a massive streaming success on HBO Max. Having found its audience and amassed a strong viewership, the film has not only become the most-viewed movie on HBO Max but has also achieved the highest rank on streaming analytics charts.

Dead of Winter tops HBO Max movie charts

As of March 1, 2026, Dead of Winter, starring Emma Thompson, is the #1 movie on HBO Max’s top 10 movies list, according to data shared by FlixPatrol.

The film thus outranks other films in the list: If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (#2), Chris Fleming: Live at The Palace (#3), 2073 (#4), Masterminds (#5), Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (#6), The Smashing Machine (#7), Robin Hood (#8), The Pope’s Exorcist (#9), and Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked (#10).

Dead of Winter originally premiered at the 78th Locarno Film Festival’s Piazza Grande section on August 8, 2025, before hitting U.S. theaters on September 26, 2025. Following its release, the film grossed an estimated $2 million at the box office.

Set in northern Minnesota, the film’s story follows a widow named Barb, who drives to Lake Hilda to scatter the ashes of her late husband, Karl, as per his final wish. During her journey, she crosses paths with a teenage girl, Leah, and interrupts her kidnapping by a cruel couple with ulterior motives. Realizing that the nearest town is quite far and that she can’t access phone service, Barb undertakes a perilous quest to save and protect Leah.

The film holds healthy scores on review aggregator websites. It has a 76% critical score and 78% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Meanwhile, on Metacritic, the film has a “generally favorable” Metascore and user score of 69 and 7.2, respectively.

Brian Kirk helmed the film from Nicholas Jacobson-Larson and Dalton Leeb’s screenplay. Meanwhile, Jon Berg, Jonas Katzenstein, Maximilian Leo, and Greg Silverman produced the movie.

In addition to Thompson, Dead of Winter features Judy Greer, Marc Menchaca, Laurel Marsden, Gaia Wise, Cúán Hosty-Blaney, Dalton Leeb, Paul Hamilton, Lloyd Hutchinson, and Brían F. O’Byrne.

Source: Comingsoon.net