Heated Rivalry Fans Fill a Los Angeles Cinema for Season 1 Anniversary

Fans packed a Los Angeles cinema on Sunday night to celebrate one year since Heated Rivalry first arrived on screens. The HBO Max and Crave series returned to the big screen for the occasion, and the crowd at the Regal Sherman Oaks Galleria showed up in matching gear. Variety reported on the event.

Many attendees wore Boston Raiders or Montreal Metros T-shirts. The Raiders and Metros are the fictional hockey teams that the show's two leads play for. Fans also carried special edition popcorn buckets and soda cups, and they watched the penultimate and final episodes of Season 1.

The series follows two rival hockey stars, Shane Hollander, played by Hudson Williams, and Ilya Rozanov, played by Connor Storrie. It is based on Rachel Reid's bestselling Game Changers books and adapted for television by Jacob Tierney.

The cinema run is part of a wider push to put the show in theatres. Regal scheduled Heated Rivalry screenings from November 6 to 30. Each ticket cost $9.99 and covered two episodes, and Regal said its offer included all six episodes of Season 1. Mashable reported the pricing when the dates were announced in October.

The theatrical run has also brought in money. Variety reported on November 8 that the release had generated $1.4 million in box-office grosses, meaning the total ticket sales before costs are taken out.

There is more to come for the story. Season 2 is currently in production, meaning cameras are rolling and the new episodes are being made. Author Rachel Reid has also said the next book in the series, Unrivaled, will now be published on June 1, 2027.

For the fans in the Sherman Oaks crowd, the evening was about watching the show together again. Many of them had already seen the episodes at home. Now they were sitting in the dark with a room full of people who had waited a year to see the story's biggest moments on a large screen.