Anya Taylor-Joy and Miles Teller star in the new Apple TV+ Original film The Gorge, a genre-bending film about a pair of snipers assigned to guard a vast and mysterious gorge. Directed by Sinister and The Black Phone filmmaker Scott Derrickson, many horror lovers were excited to check out The Gorge when it debuted over Valentine's Day weekend and it seems like the streaming service's promotional material has paid off, with The Gorge becoming the biggest film debut ever for an Apple TV+ film.
According to Deadline, The Gorge is the "biggest film launch" in the streamer's history, surpassing even the numbers generated by Wolfs starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt, which debuted last fall.
Like some of the other streamers, Apple doesn't provide us with specific viewing numbers, but the company itself confirms that this premiere drove "double-digit growth globally for the service," and it boosted "new viewers by +80%, weekend over weekend, following its debut."
Deadline also noted that another genre-bending Apple TV+ series, Severance, has also been raking in the views, beating out Ted Lasso to become the most streamed show on the platform.
The Gorge is a unique film in that it starts out as a thriller pivots into a sweet romance and then twists into a horror movie. Taylor-Joy and Teller play Drasa and Levi, respectively, elite snipers who must stand guard over a deep chasm containing unspeakable horrors. A previous guard suggests the gorge might even be a door to Hell.
Drasa and Levi start to connect from their respective watchtowers using binoculars and whiteboards to communicate across the vast distance. Despite communication between the two being prohibited, they do it anyway. And then one of them falls into the gorge, leading to the pair descending into the depths and unraveling the disturbing mystery at the heart of the unprecedented operation. Sigourney Weaver also stars.
Derrickson has another big movie releasing this year with the highly-anticipated sequel to The Black Phone. He describes the second film as another coming-of-age horror story, although this time the main characters are in high school vs. middle school.
The Gorge is now streaming exclusively on Apple TV+.