A Beloved Bradley Cooper Hit Leaves Netflix In Days — Watch It Before It’s Gone
Last call: Netflix is dropping Bradley Cooper’s 2011 sci-fi thriller Limitless in January, leaving subscribers just days to stream Neil Burger’s box office hit.
Heads up if you were planning a Bradley Cooper rewatch over the holidays: Netflix is about to drop Limitless right at the top of the year. Classic New Year licensing shuffle. If it has been a minute since you watched him go full super-brain on NZT, you are on the clock.
When it leaves and why you might care
"Limitless leaves Netflix on January 1, 2026."
It is one of those movies that sits in the sweet spot: big studio polish, one irresistible sci-fi hook, and enough swagger to make you forgive the occasional eye-roll. Back in 2011, it turned a modest $27 million budget into about $161.8 million worldwide, which is a tidy win by any measure.
What the movie actually is
Limitless follows Eddie Morra (Cooper), a blocked writer whose girlfriend dumps him because he cannot get his life together. Enter Vernon, who slips him a designer pill called NZT-48. One dose and Eddie starts operating like a human cheat code: memory sharpens, cognition spikes, success comes fast, and so do the enemies. The higher he climbs, the messier the consequences, and the more dangerous the truth behind the drug gets.
Quick facts
- Leaving Netflix: January 1, 2026
- Release year: 2011
- Director: Neil Burger
- Screenplay: Leslie Dixon
- Based on: The Dark Fields by Alan Glynn (2001)
- Cast: Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, Abbie Cornish, Andrew Howard, Anna Friel, Johnny Whitworth, Tomas Arana, Robert John Burke, Darren Goldstein
- Box office: ~$161.8 million worldwide on a $27 million budget
- Rotten Tomatoes: 68% critics, 74% audience
- Metacritic: 59 metascore from 37 critic reviews; 7.3 user score from 537 ratings
How it landed
Critical reaction landed in that familiar 'mixed but leaning positive' zone: stylish, propulsive, and very watchable, even if the science is basically movie magic. Audiences were clearly on board.
The spinoff you might have missed
The film spawned a CBS series in 2015 that ran one season (September 2015 through April 2016). Different lead, same pill: Jake McDorman played Brian Finch, while Cooper popped in occasionally, reprising Eddie in a new role as a U.S. Senator — a development teased at the end of the movie. It did not last, but it expanded the NZT sandbox in some fun ways.
Bottom line: if you want the Cooper-De Niro cat-and-mouse energy and that glossy, neon-brain vibe, you have until New Year’s Eve before it disappears from Netflix.