Jason Statham's $530M Sci-Fi Franchise-Starter Is Officially Ready to Devour Streaming

Jason Statham has faced plenty of foes: hackers, mutineers, traffickers, mafia bosses, and more. But his biggest foe to date has been, well, quite literally enormous. And when you discover that there's a 75-foot enemy hunting you from the deep, what's the best ploy? Closing the beach seems sensible. You've seen Jaws, you know how it works. Staying on dry land feels even better. Not for the Stath.

Statham (The Beekeeper) stars in The Meg, which officially found a new streaming home last week when the sci-fi monster movie landed on HBO Max in the United States. Jon Turteltaub's (National Treasure) gloriously silly 2018 blockbuster became a much bigger hit than anyone expected, eventually earning more than $530 million worldwide and spawning a sequel.

In The Meg, a massive creature attacks a deep-sea submersible, leaving it disabled and trapping the crew at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. With time running out, rescue diver Jonas Taylor (Statham) must save the crew and the ocean itself from an unimaginable threat: a 75-foot-long prehistoric shark known as the megalodon.

The cast also features Li Bingbing (Transformers: Age of Extinction) as Suyin Zhang, Rainn Wilson (The Office) as Jack Morris, Ruby Rose (Orange Is the New Black) as Jaxx Herd, Cliff Curtis (Avatar: The Way of Water) as James “Mac” Mackreides, Winston Chao (The Wedding Banquet) as Dr. Minway Zhang, Page Kennedy (Rush Hour) as DJ, and Jessica McNamee (Mortal Kombat) as Lori.

How Good Is 'The Meg'?

Okay, so nobody was expecting "Jason Statham, Shark Puncher" to be a critical hit, let's be honest. And the reaction from critics reflects this, with the movie currently sitting at 46% on Rotten Tomatoes. But judging it on a scale of anything other than, well, Statham punching a shark seems silly, and audiences certainly understood the assignment. The Meg opened at No. 1 domestically before swimming all the way to approximately $530 million worldwide, including roughly $155 million in North America and another $155 million from China. It became the highest-grossing Chinese-American co-production at the time and comfortably earned itself another encounter with prehistoric sea life.

That sequel, Meg 2: The Trench, followed in 2023 with Statham returning as Jonas. It added more giant sharks and even more prehistoric monsters because, apparently, the lesson from the first movie was that one megalodon simply isn't enough. The Meg is streaming now on HBO Max in the United States.