Russell Crowe & Denzel Washington’s Forgotten Sci-Fi Thriller Sets New Streaming Home

©Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection Published Oct 25, 2026, 4:00 PM EDT Brennan Klein (he/him) is a senior news writer at Screen Rant, host of the Attack of the Queerwolf podcast, and contributor at Alternate Ending and Horror Press. He has been writing and podcasting about pop culture (especially horror movies) for over a decade at platforms including Blumhouse, Fangoria, Dread Central, The Backlot, and Arrow in the Head. Sign in to your ScreenRant account A sci-fi movie starring Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington will be streaming for a whole new audience. Both iconic stars are Oscar winners with multiple nominations. Crowe has won one Oscar (Best Actor for 2000's Gladiator) in addition to nominations for 1999's The Insider and 2001's A Beautiful Mind, while Washington has won two (Best Actor for 1989's Glory and 2001's Training Day) plus nods for 1987's Cry Freedom, 1992's Malcolm X, 1999's The Hurricane, 2012's Flight, 2016's Fences (he was also nominated for Best Picture as a producer), 2017's Roman J. Israel, Esq., and 2021's The Tragedy of Macbeth. The movie in question is 1995's Virtuosity, which was their first of two collaborations, as they later co-starred in Ridley Scott's 2007 movie American Gangster. The sci-fi feature was directed by Brett Leonard (The Lawnmower Man) from a screenplay by Eric Bernt (Romeo Must Die) and followed ex-policeman Parker Barnes (Washington) hunting down the virtual reality being SID 6.7 (Crowe) who is made up of various serial killers' personalities and has become corporeal. The movie underperformed both critically (earning $37 million against a reported $30 million) and commercially (it currently has a 28% score on Rotten Tomatoes). Crowe & Washington's Virtuosity Is Bringing Its Sci-Fi Thrills To Paramount+ Paramount+ has officially announced that Virtuosity will be joining its library on November 1, alongside a slew of other licensed titles, including 13 Going on 30, Mousehunt, The Outsiders, Twister, and Rambo III. This will take place shortly after Virtuosity departs several of its current streaming homes on October 30, namely FuboTV and MGM+. This will expose the movie to a much wider streaming audience, as Paramount+ is under the same streaming umbrella as HBO Max, SkyShowtime, and Discovery+ after the recent merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery (now known collectively as Skydance). The streaming services have a combined 252.7 million subscribers, which is larger than the 205 million that MGM+ and Prime Video (both of which are under the Amazon MGM Studios umbrella) can collectively boast or the 6.2 million that FuboTV has. The Film Was Ahead Of its Time In Many Ways While Virtuosity was a disappointment when it originally debuted, the movie was ahead of its time in multiple ways. The storyline about virtual reality and the digital world bleeding into the real world is still firmly in the science fiction realm, but in an age where artificial intelligence technology and virtual reality systems are growing significantly more sophisticated, the world of the 1990s cult classic is beginning to feel much more credible. Another significant way that the movie was ahead of its time was the fact that it gave a major role to Russell Crowe. While Denzel Washington was already an Oscar winner by the time he starred in Virtuosity, Crowe had not yet broken out in the United States, which wouldn't happen until he starred in the Oscar-winning 1997 movie L.A. Confidential. Additionally, the underrated sci-fi movie was the theatrical feature debut of three-time Emmy nominee Kaley Cuoco, who would later rise to superstardom thanks to her role in the hit CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory. Release Date August 4, 1995 Runtime 106 Minutes Director Brett Leonard