The Perfect ‘Gone Girl’ Replacement Is Officially Streaming for Free Next Month
Based on Gillian Flynn’s novel, the 2015 film *Dark Places* will be available to stream free on Plex from 1 November 2026. The article presents it as a twist-filled mystery for viewers seeking a follow-up to *Gone Girl*, and notes that Flynn wrote the novel before her better-known book.
Charlize Theron stars in the adaptation, which arrived a year after *Gone Girl* and had a very different commercial result. While *Gone Girl* earned more than $370 million worldwide, *Dark Places* took $5.6 million against a reported $11.9 million budget; its source novel has received more than 823,000 Goodreads user ratings.
In short
- *Dark Places* arrives free on Plex on 1 November 2026.
- Charlize Theron stars in the Gillian Flynn adaptation.
- The film earned $5.6 million against an $11.9 million budget.
Explained simply
Gillian Flynn is an American author whose novels often centre on secrets, crime and unreliable accounts of the past. Her 2012 book Gone Girl became a major film in 2014, starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike, and drew a much wider audience to her work.
Dark Places is based on Flynn’s earlier novel and stars Charlize Theron. It arrived a year after Gone Girl, but the two adaptations had very different commercial results: Gone Girl earned more than $370 million worldwide, while Dark Places made $5.6 million against a reported budget of $11.9 million.
The books’ readership and the films’ box-office results offer different measures of their reach. That contrast helps explain why Dark Places may be less familiar to viewers, despite sharing its author and crime-mystery themes with Gone Girl.