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6 Years Later, Anya Taylor-Joy’s Career-Defining Netflix Hit Doesn’t Have a Bad Episode

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2026 is quietly angling to be one of the most productive years of Anya Taylor-Joy’s career, and it’s not just because of her role as Princess Peach in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, which is set to be the first $1 billion feature film of 2026. She’s set to make her long-awaited return to Apple TV this summer with Lucky, the new crime drama premiering on July 15 that also stars Timothy Olyphant. ATJ previously starred in The Gorge for Apple TV, which is still one of the platform’s most popular movies, now more than a year removed from its streaming debut. Later this year, on December 18, Taylor-Joy will also return to Arrakis to star opposite Robert Pattinson and Jason Momoa in Dune: Part Three. The third and final Dune movie in Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi trilogy may yet be one of the most successful sci-fi movies of the year.

It’s no easy task pinpointing the exact project that turned Anya Taylor-Joy into the star she is today, but there is one that deserves the bulk of the credit. Back in 2020, when the entire world was on shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Netflix released all episodes of The Queen’s Gambit onto its platform. The show didn’t just take over Netflix streaming charts, it took over the world, dominating every water cooler conversation and group chat, spreading like wildfire. Netflix was already the biggest streaming service in the world at the time thanks to other hits like Stranger Things and Ozark, but The Queen’s Gambit solidified it as the go-to streamer for fans looking for bingeable content. Nearly six years later, it’s still one of the platform’s most popular watches.

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Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz
Which Oscar Best Picture
Is Your Perfect Movie?

Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country

Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.

🪜Parasite

🌀Everything Everywhere

☢️Oppenheimer

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🐦Birdman

🪙No Country for Old Men

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01

What kind of film experience do you actually want?
The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.





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02

Which idea grabs you most in a film?
Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?





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03

How do you like your story told?
Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.





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04

What makes a truly great antagonist?
The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?





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05

What do you want from a film’s ending?
The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?





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06

Which setting pulls you in most?
Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.





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07

What cinematic craft impresses you most?
Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.





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08

What kind of main character do you root for?
The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.





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09

How do you feel about a film that takes its time?
Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.





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10

What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema?
The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?





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The Academy Has Decided
Your Perfect Film Is…

Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.

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Parasite

You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.

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Everything Everywhere All at Once

You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.

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Oppenheimer

You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.

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Birdman

You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.

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No Country for Old Men

You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.

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What Is ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ About?

The Queen’s Gambit follows the young introverted prodigy Beth Harmon (played by Anya Taylor-Joy), who discovers and masters the game of chess in America in the 1960s. However, becoming a massive star at such a young age comes at a cost she couldn’t have possibly predicted. The Queen’s Gambit won a remarkable 11 Emmys, yet somehow one didn’t go to ATJ for her lead performance. Her co-star Moses Ingram, who plays Reeva in the Star Wars Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi, was recognized by the TV academy for her performance in the show.

Check out all episodes of The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix, and stay tuned to Collider for more updates and coverage of all the hottest projects on streaming.


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Release Date

2020 – 2020-00-00

Showrunner
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Scott Frank

Directors

Scott Frank

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Writers

Scott Frank

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