An acclaimed 2012 political thriller starring Chris Pratt is leaving Netflix in a few weeks. The Oscar-winning film Zero Dark Thirty chronicles the decade-long hunt for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden following the 9/11 attacks, told from the perspective of a fictional CIA intelligence agent.
Zero Dark Thirty set to leave Netflix next month
Zero Dark Thirty is leaving Netflix on Wednesday, April 1, 2026 (via What’s on Netflix).
The film centers around the character Maya, a CIA analyst, as she follows several leads through years of intelligence work to locate Osama bin Laden. Her investigations result in the Navy SEAL team raid on a compound in Pakistan that kills bin Laden.
Kathryn Bigelow directed the movie from a script by Mark Boal. The two also collaborated on 2008’s The Hurt Locker. The film’s cast features Jessica Chastain, Chris Pratt, Jason Clarke, Mark Strong, and Kyle Chandler, among others.
Prior to working on Zero Dark Thirty, Bigelow and Boal were close to making a film based on the December 2001 Battle of Tora Bora. But after the news of bin Laden’s death became public, they “redirected” their efforts towards working on a new script and scrapped their previous one (via Entertainment Weekly).
However, their previous efforts didn’t all go to waste. Boal said, “A lot of the homework I’d done for the first script and a lot of the contacts I made carried over.” Reportedly, the film’s working title was For God and Country. They ultimately changed the title to Zero Dark Thirty, a military term. It refers to the time the SEALs killed bin Laden, which was around 1 a.m. Pakistan Standard Time.
Interestingly, the writer based Maya on a real-life CIA agent he learnt of through his sources. He said the unnamed woman played a “big role” at the CIA and was on the ground as one of the CIA’s liaison officers (via Rolling Stone).
The film faced a lot of criticism before its release, which was originally scheduled close to the 2012 presidential election. As a result, its premiere was delayed to December 10, 2012, and it was released worldwide on January 11, 2013. It ended its theatrical run with a global collection of $132 million, per Box Office Mojo. The film has an impressive 91% approval rating from 314 critics on Rotten Tomatoes.
