HBO Max has a slightly unusual problem for a streaming service, which is that its own library keeps competing with its new releases. Thanks to the Warner Bros. vault, the platform’s movie charts are routinely clogged with twenty and thirty-year-old titles, and on any given week you’ll find Se7en, V for Vendetta, or Men in Black holding Top 10 spots that most streamers would reserve for fresh originals. That makes the chart a genuinely tough room for a newcomer.
The Evil Dead franchise, as it happens, has always been well suited to that kind of fight. Sam Raimi’s original 1981 film built its legend on video store shelves rather than in theaters, and every entry since has tended to find its biggest audience at home. The newest installment appears to be keeping that tradition alive, because a couple of weeks into its streaming run, Evil Dead Burn has planted itself at number one on HBO Max worldwide.
Evil Dead Burn Hits No. 1 on HBO Max Worldwide
Per FlixPatrol’s global movie rankings, the Sébastien Vaniček-directed sequel is currently topping the platform’s worldwide Top 10, sitting above an eclectic field that includes Contagion, Superbad, Hunter Hunter, V for Vendetta, the new heist movie Play Dirty, and Zodiac. Burn hit HBO Max on Oct. 2, grabbed the number one spot in the U.S. within days, briefly ceded the crown to Sydney Sweeney’s The Housemaid, and has now reasserted itself globally in the thick of the Halloween viewing season, which is arguably the most competitive window of the year for a horror title.
Beating two David Fincher classics and a pile of comfort-watch staples in mid-October suggests the film is drawing both franchise loyalists and the casual spooky-season crowd. The streaming run also puts a friendlier frame around what was, candidly, a modest theatrical outing.
The Horror Sequel Is Finding a Bigger Audience on Streaming
Burn opened in July to $13.7 million domestically, well under tracking and fourth place for the weekend, before settling at $72.4 million worldwide. Against a $20 million budget that’s comfortably profitable, more than tripling its cost, but it marked a step down from Evil Dead Rise’s numbers and prompted some hand-wringing about franchise fatigue. The reviews told a more encouraging story. Vaniček, the French filmmaker who broke out with the spider thriller Infested, swapped the series’ usual cabin setup for a grieving widow trapped at a family wake that curdles into Deadite carnage, and critics largely credited him with finding a nastier, more emotionally grounded register for the material.
The film holds 70% on Rotten Tomatoes with an audience score in the mid-70s, and its opening-week scores briefly set franchise records, which is respectable company in a series this beloved. If there’s a takeaway, it’s probably that Evil Dead remains a home-viewing franchise at heart, and Warner Bros. seems to understand that. The studio leaned into the streaming debut with an HBO linear triple bill alongside the 2013 reboot and Evil Dead Rise, and it has already dated the next chapter, Evil Dead Wrath from director Francis Galluppi, for April 2028.