July 10, 2026

88% on Rotten Tomatoes and built from a viral Twitter thread, Zola is the standout of today's Netflix drop

Five titles landed on Netflix US this Friday, led by the A24 critical hit. Plus a Sunny Deol courtroom drama, two documentaries, and Sneaky Pete's final hours on the service.

The pick of the day: Zola

Zola arrives on Netflix today, the 2021 A24 film that director Janicza Bravo and playwright Jeremy O. Harris adapted from A'Ziah "Zola" King's 148-tweet viral thread about a Florida road trip that curdled into a 48-hour nightmare. Taylour Paige stars as Zola, a Detroit waitress and dancer who gets lured to Tampa by a new acquaintance named Stefani (Riley Keough), and finds herself trapped with a pimp (Colman Domingo), a hapless boyfriend (Nicholas Braun), and a situation she never agreed to.

• It holds 88% on Rotten Tomatoes across 258 critic reviews, with RogerEbert.com calling it "the kind of film that tells its story well while simultaneously showing the joy of the creative act." The New Yorker, NPR, and Rolling Stone all ran glowing reviews on release.
• At 87 minutes and rated R, it's a fast, propulsive watch, not a slow burn. The audience score sits lower at 68%, largely because the ending cuts off abruptly, a flaw even the positive reviews concede.
• If you were on Twitter in October 2015 when King's thread exploded, the film is a time capsule. If you weren't, it's a stylish, discomfiting crime comedy that earned its reputation and is the easiest thing in today's drop to press play on.

The day's other new original: Ikka

Ikka is a Netflix Original Hindi courtroom thriller and the day's other headline release. Sunny Deol plays Arjun Mehra, a celebrated lawyer nicknamed "Ikka" (the ace) for his unbeaten record, who is forced to defend a murder suspect he once put behind bars, played by Akshaye Khanna. It reunites the two actors 29 years after the 1997 war epic Border and marks Deol's first straight-to-streaming film after a career built on theatrical releases.

• Early reviews are positive: actor-turned-critic Kuldeep Gadhvi gave it 4.5 stars at Filmibeat, calling Khanna "phenomenal" and Deol's turn "one of his most mature and restrained performances in recent years."
• At 2 hours 19 minutes, it's a dialogue-heavy legal drama that leans on performance and moral tension rather than action. Tillotama Shome plays the public prosecutor who once idolized Arjun and now faces him in court, a mentor-versus-protege dynamic the trailer flagged as a highlight.

Two documentaries land today

• Shipwrecked: Nightmare at Sea (Netflix Original, 90 min, TV-14) reconstructs the 2012 Costa Concordia disaster off the Italian island of Giglio, which killed 32 people and sent Captain Francesco Schettino to prison for 16 years. Director Chiara Messineo weaves survivor interviews with cell-phone footage from the night and translations of the ship's black-box recordings, which expose the bridge decisions that turned a sail-by salute into a catastrophe. For true-crime and disaster-doc viewers.
• Miguel Ángel Blanco: The 48 Hours that Changed Spain (Netflix Original documentary) revisits the 1997 ETA kidnapping of a 29-year-old town councilor that mobilized millions of Spaniards and, per its directors Jon Sistiaga and Juanjo López, marked the moment Basque society lost its fear of the terrorist group. King Felipe VI appears as a first-person witness, a striking get for a streaming doc. For anyone interested in modern European history.

The skip

The Paradise Murders (2025, 84 min) is a Lifetime network TV-movie about a couple's resort getaway that turns into a murder investigation and a plot to destroy their marriage. It sits at 65% on Rotten Tomatoes with thin coverage. Fine background noise if you're folding laundry, not the thing to build a Friday night around.

Weekend watch: the eight-episode binge you can start tonight

Yesterday's lead, Little House on the Prairie, dropped all eight episodes of its first season, and it's the natural weekend marathon if today's single-film additions don't fill a Saturday. The reboot re-centers the Osage story the 1974 series ignored, and critics are genuinely divided, with Collider and The Hollywood Reporter on the positive side and Time, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Star Tribune finding it heavy-handed. Eight episodes is roughly six hours, a one-weekend commitment. If you'd rather start something shorter, Zola's 87 minutes is the single-sitting pick.

Leaving soon

Sneaky Pete (all three seasons) leaves Netflix US today, July 10, exactly one year after it arrived from Amazon Prime Video. If you're mid-binge, today is the last day to finish it before it returns exclusively to Prime. Bob Marley: One Love follows on Sunday, July 12. Looking further out, the Soderbergh thriller Side Effects departs July 15 and the entire eight-film Saw franchise leaves July 19. The full leaving schedule is on Netflix's Tudum page.

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