Sarah Michelle Gellar‘s reign as one of the modern era’s biggest scream queens continues with a new streaming hit.

Gellar is probably best known for playing the title role in the cult favorite series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but she has starred in many major horror and horror-adjacent movies, particularly in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This includes I Know What You Did Last Summer, Scooby-Doo and its sequel, Scream 2, and The Grudge. Although she stepped away from horror for some time, she recently returned to the genre. In addition to joining the cast of Dexter: Original Sin, she has appeared in the 2025 IKWYDLS legacy sequel and a new movie that is a sensation on streaming.

The movie in question is the 2026 sequel Ready or Not 2: Here I Come. The follow-up to the 2019 horror-comedy about a woman who is forced to play a deadly game of hide-and-seek with her husband’s family on her wedding night saw Samara Weaving return in the lead role opposite franchise newcomer Kathryn Newton as her sister, who is forced to fight alongside her in a new game with even higher stakes. The ensemble cast surrounding them includes Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shawn Hatosy, Néstor Carbonell, Kevin Durand, David Cronenberg, and Elijah Wood.

After premiering in theaters on March 20, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come made its streaming debut on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ on July 2. It has more or less instantly risen to become a major smash hit on the platform worldwide. This includes it hitting No. 1 on Hulu‘s daily chart of the most-watched movies in the United States on July 3 and so far maintaining that position through July 5.

In the U.S., it is outpacing major titles including Independence Day (No. 2 over the Fourth of July semiquincentennial holiday weekend), the new Gore Verbinski sci-fi movie Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die (No. 3), Sam Raimi’s 2026 survival thriller Send Help (No. 6), and the original Toy Story (No. 9 as Toy Story 5 continues to dominate in theaters).

Flixpatrol, which uses proprietary methodology to measure streaming success, shows that Ready or Not 2: Here I Come is also a smash hit globally. It is currently the No. 2 movie worldwide on Disney+, behind only the smash-hit James Cameron sequel Avatar: Fire and Ash and is charting in the Top 10 in six dozen individual territories, peaking at No. 1 in the United Kingdom, but hitting No. 2 in 37 more regions, including Canada, France, Germany, Hong King, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland.

The Sarah Michelle Gellar movie was only a modest success in theaters, but if it maintains this level of streaming viewership over the next few weeks, it may prove itself to the point that a third installment in the franchise is greenlit. The ending of Ready or Not 2: Here I Come didn’t necessarily tee up a third movie, but it left the door open for more hide-and-seek mayhem should audiences connect with the second movie enough to cement it as a hit.