George R.R. Martin & Dave Bautista’s Dark Fantasy Epic Finds New Life As One Of Streaming's Biggest Hits

Published Sep 28, 2026, 7:09 PM EDT

Felipe Rangel is a Movie and TV Journalist ScreenRant. He has been writing about movies and TV since 2021. Felipe joined ScreenRant in 2022, working across different teams, covering everything from breaking news to features to reviews and more.

Felipe is a writer who is an avid film and TV fan, with superhero movies and series being his biggest passion. He graduated from college in 2019, having studied Journalism. Before college, he spent a month studying at the Oxford English Centre. His superhero knowledge expands to the comics, with his undergraduate thesis being "Politics Reflected In American Comics."

Dave Bautista is one of the stars of this dark fantasy movie that connects to Game of Thrones franchise creator George R. R. Martin, which is now a streaming hit around the world. Bautista has starred in many high-profile movies over the years. After a long and successful run in the WWE, Bautista has come to play Drax in the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Guardians of the Galaxy franchise and other movies, with the actor also appearing in Denis Villeneuve's masterpiece sci-fi movies Blade Runner 2049, Dune, and Dune: Part Two. In 2026, the actor starred in Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender as Tagah.

Bautista's career has not only led to the actor working in great franchises, but also projects that came from the source material of gene-favorite creators. One of those is Martin, who penned the A Song of Ice and Fire series of novels that birthed one of the best TV shows of all time, HBO's Game of Thrones. That fantasy franchise has since continued with House of the Dragon and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Bautista starred in 2025's In the Lost Lands, which was based on a short story written by Martin, and it is now trending on HBO Max internationally.

In The Lost Lands Is Resurrected From The Dead On HBO Max

Image via MovieStillsDB

At the time of writing, In the Lost Lands stands as the 2nd most-watched movie on HBO Max worldwide, according to FlixPatrol. The dark fantasy movie is not available on HBO Max in the United States, where it streams on Hulu instead, as per JustWatch. In the Lost Lands has had a meteoric rise on the HBO Max chart, as the movie debuted on the list on September 27, immediately ranking #1 on the streaming service worldwide. Right now, the only movie performing better than Bautista's is Supergirl, which comes from James Gunn's DC Universe. Gunn directed Bautista in the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise.

While In the Lost Lands might still have to top Supergirl on HBO Max's global chart, the dark fantasy has already left many movies in the dust. Those include films like Natalie Portman's revenge movie Leon: The Professional, Liam Neeson's action thriller Ice Road: Vengeance, Tom Hardy's star-studded gangster thriller The Bikeriders, Tom Cruise's The Last Samurai, and more. According to FlixPatrol data, Bautista's In the Lost Lands is currently trending on HBO Max in 21 countries as the most-watched movie on the streamer in all of them. Those nations include Brazil, Costa Rica, Mexico, Peru, and many more.

Bautista's Adaptation Of George R.R. Martin's Fantasy Epic Was Maligned

Directed by Resident Evil's Paul W. S. Anderson and co-starring the main player from those video game adaptations, Milla Jovovich, Bautista's In the Lost Lands followed a witch and a hunter as they traversed a violent and dark fantasy land in search of an artifact. In the Lost Lands ended up becoming a box office bomb, grossing only $6.5 million on a reported budget of $55 million.

On Rotten Tomatoes, it stands at a disappointing 24% critics' score based on 76 reviews. The fantasy based on Martin's work is also at a low 48% audience score, but In the Lost Lands now finds new life as a hit on HBO Max.