New Netflix movies: the biggest films to stream in July 2023

Welcome to TechRadar’s new Netflix movies guide. In this article, we’ve compiled a list of all of the new movies that have recently joined the streaming platform, including Netflix Originals and third-party licensed films.

New movies are forever joining the world’s best streaming service, so it’s our job to whittle down the lengthy list and deliver a verdict on which ones you should watch. Hey, it’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it.

We should note that some of the entries on our list aren’t what you’d consider top-tier movies, mind you. We include every new Netflix Original flick that joins the service – and, unsurprisingly, some are better than others. Where applicable, we’ve stated which ones are worth your time, as well as those that you should pass on.

If you’re after a definitive guide on the very best films that the streaming giant has to offer, our best Netflix movies article should be your first port of call. For now, though, read on to find out about all the most notable new films to stream on Netflix in July 2023.

New Netflix movies: July 2023

Bird Box Barcelona

Release date: July 14

A spin-off/prequel to Bird Box, Netflix’s massive 2018 horror-drama movie hit, Bird Box Barcelona is a Spanish-language flick that explores the origins of the cataclysmic event that pushed humanity to the brink of extinction.

Mario Casas plays Sebastian, a father of one who must navigate his own survival through the desolate streets of the Catalonian city amid the unprecedented catastrophic event.

We expected this one to be as shocking and suspenseful as the Sandra Bullock-starring original. Based on its 57% critical score on Rotten Tomatoes, though, Bird Box Barcelona might not be one of those new Netflix movies that’s worth streaming.

The Out-Laws

Release date: July 7

This action-comedy film, which stars Pierce Brosnan and Adam Devine, will aim to deliver more thrills and jokes than its similarly positioned predecessors.

Devine plays Owen Browning, a bank manager who’s finally set to meet his fiance Parker’s (Nina Dobrev) parents. However, when Owen’s bank is held up by the infamous Ghost Bandits gang during his wedding week, he believes his future in-laws  Billy and Lily McDermott (Brosnan and Ellen Barkin), who have just arrived in town, are responsible for the heist.

File The Out-Laws under “looks fairly generic” for now. But hey, considering how popular other by-the-books Netflix films, such as Murder Mystery 2, have been this year, this could end up doing similarly well. Based on its 22% critical and 42% audience Rotten Tomatoes scores, though, it isn’t enthralling anyone.

Jumanji

Release date: July 1

Robin Williams was one of the world’s most beloved actors who elevated every movie he was in, including this 1995 fantasy comedy adventure.

In Jumanji, Williams portrays the aged-up version of Alan Parrish, a kid who’s sucked (and subsequently trapped) in Jumanji, a supernatural board game, in 1969. When two new kids on the block – Judy and Peter Shepherd (Kirsten Dunst and Bradley Pierce) – discover the same table top game 26 years later, they inadvertently rescue Alan from his fantastical but dangerous prison. Oh, and they let a bunch of jungle-based hazards loose on the small US town of Brantford. Oops.

Critics weren’t too kind to Jumanji upon its initial release but, bolstered by Williams’ undeniable star power, it became the 10th highest-grossing movie of 1995. Numerous TV and movie sequels have followed since, but this Williams-starring flick will always be the best entry in the franchise for us.

Star Trek (2009)

Release date: July 1

The legendary sci-fi franchise known as Star Trek might have found a permanent home on Paramount Plus these days. However, some of its many films and TV shows occasionally beam themselves up to other streaming platforms, such as Prime Video.

Now, two of the most recent Star Trek movies, including this 2009 JJ Abrams-directed reboot, aim to live long and prosper on Netflix. Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto play a new versions of James T. Kirk and Spock, who take charge of the USS Enterprise in a bid to stop the time-traveling Romulan called Nero (Eric Bana) from destroying the United Federation of Planets.

A soaring, modern take on the beloved series, 2009’s Star Trek is an absolute must-see for long time Trekkies and casual viewers alike. Its sequel – 2013’s Star Trek: Into Darkness – is also available to stream.

New Netflix movies: June 2023

Nimona

Release date: June 30

Nimona stars The Peripheral‘s Chloe Grace Moretz and Star Wars alumnus Riz Ahmed, and aims to follow in the footsteps of superb Netflix animated offerings like Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio and The Sea Beast.

Ahmed plays Ballister Boldheart, a knight in a futuristic medieval kingdom, who’s framed for a crime he didn’t commit. The only person who can prove his innocence is Nimona (Grace Moretz), a shapeshifter who Boldheart has been trained from birth to kill. Cue a blurring of the lines between what’s considered good and what’s seen as being bad in this classic buddy cop-style flick.

By all accounts, it’s another fantastic animated Netflix movie that’s unapologetically queer, fun, action-packed, heartfelt in equal measure. Stick it on your new Netflix movies watchlist.

Run Rabbit Run

Release date: June 28

Succession‘s Sarah Snook stars in this Australian psychological horror flick, which initially gave us Hereditary and Midsommar vibes, but falls short of truly terrifying or unsettling us like those similarly positioned flicks.

Run Rabbit Run follows fertility doctor and mom Sarah (Snook) and her daughter Mia (Lily LaTorre), who live alone in a home in rural Australia. After the inquisitive Mia asks Sarah what happened to Alice, Sarah’s sister, Sarah reveals the rabbit-loving Alice went missing when she was seven – the same age Mia, who also has a fondness of rabbits, is now. A messy, by-the-numbers thriller that, well, doesn’t exactly thrill at all.

The Perfect Find

Release date: June 23

Looking for a soppy new rom-com to stream during the summer (or winter, if you’re based in the Southern Hemisphere) months? The Perfect Find will be, well, the perfect flick for you.

Gabrielle Union stars as Jenna, a fashion designer whose world comes crashing down after she’s fired from her current job. Hitting the comeback trail to prove her worth, Jenna’s career revival hits a snag when she falls for her new, younger co-worker Eric (Keith Powers), who happens to be her new boss’ son. Yikes.

The Perfect Find has a respectable 70% critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so it’s not as generic or below-par as we’d expected. Well, if you don’t look at its 58% audience rating, anyway…

Extraction 2

Release date: June 16

Tyler Rake (Chris Hemsworth) is back, ladies and gentlemen. Everyone’s favorite black ops merc returns with a bang in Extraction 2, which is set nine months after Rake cheated death in the film’s 2020 predecessor. This time around, he’s tasked with liberating a Georgian gangster’s abused family from a prison.

Like Extraction, though, things won’t be made easy for Rake, as he’s chased down, set on fire, shot at, and stabbed by countless thugs – all the while trying to get a sense of closure on his tragic past. Expect character-rich moments and explosive action to be the themes of the day, then. Read our Extraction 2 review for our thoughts on the action-heavy sequel, too.

Once you’re done streaming it, read our exclusive chats with director Sam Hargrave to find out why Extraction 2‘s ambitious, action-packed one-shot sequence took so long to film. Then, read up on how that big cameo came to be (and why Marvel had a big hand in it), as well as our in-depth look at how its massive ‘oner’ was brought to life.

The Spider-Man trilogy

Release date: June 1

Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movie trilogy pioneered a lot of what we see in many Marvel, DCEU, and more of the best superhero movies today. 

Okay, the Tobey Maguire-starring films may have aged slightly in the 15 to 20 years since their initial releases, and they can come off as somewhat goofy, campy, and a tad misogynistic. But they’re everything a comic book movie should be – thematically rich, funny, action-packed, narratively dark when needed, gorgeous to look at, and come equipped with a banging score and original soundtrack.

With scintillating performances from Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, Willem Dafoe, and Alfred Molina (in Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 in particular), the webslinger’s first live-action films laid the foundations for many of its contemporaries, and proved there was a space for comic book films to thrive on the big screen.

(NB: UK viewers can stream all three films on Sky Cinema. Australian fans can check Spider-Man 1 and 2 on Disney Plus and Paramount Plus, and Spider-Man 3 on Netflix and Disney Plus, instead.)

New Netflix movies: May 2023

Mother’s Day

Release date: May 24

Less than two weeks after Jennifer Lopez’s The Mother joined the Netflix film party (more on this film in a moment), another maternal action-thriller flick has landed on the platform – and it’s doing as well as, if not better than, the J-Lo-led movie.

Mother’s Day is a Polish language film starring Agnieszka Grochowska as Nina Novak, a former NATO special operative who is presumed dead by those who knew her. However, when her 17-year-old son is kidnapped on May 26 – the date that Mother’s Day is celebrated in Poland – Nina comes out of hiding to rescue him.

It may sound pretty schlocky, but Mother’s Day is actually winning over a lot of viewers. In its first 48 hours on Netflix, it was the second most-popular movie in the US, and eighth most-streamed film in the UK. And, with reviews calling it “gutsy”, “a good mix of many things”, and a movie that’s “worth your time”, it might surprise you.

The Harry Potter movie collection

Release date: May 17

The Harry Potter films need no introduction. For those who have been living in a cave for the last 15 years, though, here’s a brief synopsis: they’re based on J.K. Rowling’s hugely successful fantasy book series, and tell the magical story of Harry Potter, a young wizard who attends Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Oh, and his increasingly dramatic and perilous conflict with Lord Voldemort, a dark wizard who wants to subjugate wizards and muggles (that’s non-magic wielders) alike.

With a cumulative box office haul of $7.7 billion, Harry Potter‘s multifilm adaptation was incredibly popular, and remains so to this day. For more coverage based on the movie series, find out how to watch the Harry Potter movies in order, or read our Harry Potter movies ranked piece while you’re here.

(NB: the Harry Potter movies is only available on Netflix in the UK and Australia. US audiences can stream them on Max.)

Ted

Release date: May 16

Ted stars Mark Wahlberg as John, a 35-year-old manchild who shares every aspect of his life with Ted (voiced by MacFarlane), his childhood stuffed bear that came to life one night when John wished for him to do so. The pair are inseparable and enjoy a hedonistic lifestyle, but soon find themselves at odds when John’s girlfriend Lori (Mila Kunis) gives him an ultimatum: grow up and enjoy their lives together without Ted in tow, or forever be associated as the single guy who lives with his anthropomorphic toy.

A raunchy and hilarious flick, albeit one with a somewhat generic plot, Ted is a film that you’ll either love or hate. Netflix users, however, should note it’s unavailable on Netflix outside of the US. UK fans can catch it on Sky and NOW TV, while Australian audiences will need to load up Binge or Stan.

The Mother

Release date: May 12

Cue generic Netflix thriller plot: in The Mother, a deadly female assassin (Jennifer Lopez) comes out of hiding to protect the daughter she gave up years before, while the pair go on the run from, well, dangerous and armed men. Hey, we did say it was pretty formulaic, even for a Netflix movie.

This one is a bit of a change of pace for Lopez after glitzy 2022 romcom Marry Me, though, and might go some way to appealing to fans of Lopez’s best movies (we’re thinking Hustlers, Out of Sight, and Blood and Wine). Based on its early critical reception, however, The Mother is another J-Lo special that sits around the “bang average” department. Watch one of these six other great Lopez movies instead.

The Austin Powers trilogy

Release date: May 1

An absolute must-see movie trilogy – albeit one you couldn’t get away with these days – the Austin Powers films are a satirical take on the oversaturated spy genre.

The film series stars Mike Myers as the titular British spy, who’s tasked with thwarting the increasingly hilarious attempts by Doctor Evil (also played by Myers) to extort large sums of cash from the world’s various governments.

A parody of legendary spy franchises like James Bond, Austin Powers is stuffed with outrageous plots, rampant sexual innuendo, humorously cringe-inducing jokes, tons of slapstick comedy (that luggage cart scene in International Man of Mystery will never get old), and ’60s-era one-dimensional characters. Each passing movie gets more repetitive and generic, but they’re still fun to watch.

Chicken Run

Release date: May 1

It’s high time this stone cold UK classic made its way onto Netflix. After all, its sequel – Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget – will debut exclusively on the streamer later this year.

Set on a British farm, Chicken Run stars Ginger (voiced by Julia Sawalha), a rebellious hen who constantly tries and fails to lead her fellow hens into breaking out of Tweedy Farm before they’re slaughtered by the evil partners who run the estate. The arrival of the seemingly flying rooster Rocky (voiced by, of all people, Mel Gibson) leads to a renewed effort on Ginger’s part to finally escape captivity. And, with the Tweedys enacting a new masterplan to turn Ginger and company into meat pies, Rocky appears to be the anthropomorphic hens’ last chance of success.

A stop-motion animated comedy that draws heavily from Steve McQueen’s iconic The Great Escape, Chicken Run is a seriously underrated flick that the whole family can enjoy. From its adult jokes to its kooky characters and original narrative, it’s designed to *ahem* fly high.

Léon: The Professional

Release date: May 1

Léon: The Professional is a storming urban action-thriller from acclaimed director Luc Besson. It follows the titular Italian hitman (played by Jean Reno), who becomes the surrogate protector of Mathilda (an extremely young Natalie Portman) after her family are murdered by the corrupt and drug-addicted DEA agent Norman Stansfield (Gary Oldman). Léon winds up taking Mathilda under his wing and teaches her the ways of being a hitman.

A stylish, witty, graphically violent, and oddly-moving thriller, Léon: The Professional contains standout performances from Reno and Oldman. The pair are overshadowed by the clear natural talents of Portman, though, who shines on her acting debut.

New Netflix movies: what’s coming in 2023?

Interested in reading about what other new Netflix movies – those developed in-house, anyway – are coming in 2023? Below, we’ve picked out some of the most eagerly anticipated Netflix Originals set for release before the year ends:

They Cloned Tyrone

Release date: July 21

Not too much is known about They Cloned Tyrone, but its synopsis reads as follows: “A series of eerie events thrusts an unlikely trio (Jamie Foxx, John Boyega, and Teyonah Parris) onto the trail of a nefarious government conspiracy in this pulpy mystery caper.” 

By the sounds of things, then, this new Netflix movie – from first time director Juel Taylor – has more than a few tricks up its sleeve. Its cast looks pretty great, while its official trailer makes it look like the unusual sci-fi comedy Netflix needs right now. Be sure to check back in with us ahead of launch day for our exclusive coverage on They Cloned Tyrone.

Miraculous: Ladybug and Cat Noir

Release date: July 28

Netflix’s family summer line-up of movies continues apace in late July with the arrival of Miraculous: Ladybug and Cat Noir.

An adaptation of the French animated series of the same name, Miraculous follows two Paris-based teens – Marinette and Adrien – who transform into their superhero aliases to protect the French capital from all manner of supervillains.

It seems like the movie adaptation will retread old ground, choosing to tell the duo’s superpowered origin stories in an effort to entice new viewers, rather than act as a continuation of the TV show. Our view? It looks quite generic as far as kids’ superhero genre fare goes. But hey, the TV series has been well received since its 2015 debut, and has run for five seasons so far. Maybe it’ll be another big Netflix family friendly hit in the vein of The Sea Beast? Time will tell.

Heart of Stone

Release date: August 11

With her time as Wonder Woman seemingly coming to an end in the DC Extended Universe (DCEU), Gal Gadot needs a new headline-making film franchise to lead.

Heart of Stone could be that movie series. Positioned as a Mission: Impossible-style franchise, this action thriller stars Gadot as Rachel Stone, a CIA agent who “is the only woman standing between her powerful, global peace-keeping organization and the loss of its most valuable – and dangerous – asset”. Its first trailer, which debuted at Tudum 2023, shows how Gadot could be the new Bourne or Bond, too.

Co-starring alongside Gador are Jamie Dornan (50 Shades of Grey), Matthias Schweighofer (Army of the Dead), Alia Bhatt (RRR), and Sophie Okonedo (The Wheel of Time). Peaky Blinders and Misfits director Tom Harper helms this entry in our new Netflix movies guide.

The Monkey King

Release date: August 18

Inspired by a popular Chinese tale, The Monkey King follows the, well, titular monkey protagonist and his magical staff as they battle hordes of demons, dragons, and even Gods. Oh, and the monkey’s own self-importance. Because it’s not a action-style film if there isn’t an inner struggle at the heart of it.

Jimmy O Yang, Stephanie Hsu, BD Wong, and Andrew Lang are among the starry cast of this animated fantasy-action-comedy family movie.

Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget

Release date: December 15

Having pulled off a death-defying escape from Tweedy’s farm, Ginger has finally found her dream – a peaceful island sanctuary for the whole flock, far from the dangers of the human world in Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget. When she and Rocky hatch a little girl called Molly, Ginger’s happy ending seems complete. But back on the mainland, the whole of chicken-kind faces a new and terrible threat. This long-awaited sequel is being helmed by Flushed Away director Sam Fell.

Rebel Moon

Release date: December 22

Army of the Dead director Zack Snyder is returning to Netflix this year with Rebel Moon, an epic space opera reportedly inspired by both Star Wars and Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. The film’s official synopsis reads as follows: “A peaceful colony on the edge of the galaxy is threatened by the armies of a tyrannical regent named Balisarius. The desperate civilians dispatch Kora, a young woman who has a mysterious past to seek out warriors from nearby planets to help them challenge the regent.”

Sofia Boutella, Charlie Hunnam, Ray Fisher, Djimon Hounsou, Jena Malone, Corey Stoll, Ed Skrein, and Anthony Hopkins are all confirmed to star, which we expect will enjoy a limited theatrical release before it lands on Netflix.

Maestro

Release date: TBA (2023 confirmed)

Produced by Todd Phillips, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and leading man Bradley Cooper (who also directs the film), Maestro centers on the life and legacy of West Side Story composer Leonard Bernstein. Judging by the prosthetics used to transform Cooper into the much older Bernstein, we expect this entry in our new Netflix movies list to be a shoo-in for next year’s Best Makeup and Hairstyling Oscar (release date depending). 

The Mothership

Release date: TBA (2023 confirmed)

The Mothership is a sci-fi adventure that follows Sara Morse (Halle Berry) one year after her husband (Omari Hardwick) mysteriously vanishes from their rural farm. When she discovers a strange, extraterrestrial object underneath their home, Sara and her kids embark on a race to find their husband, father, and – most importantly – the truth. Sounds ominous. 

For more Netflix-based coverage, read our best Netflix documentaries guide. Alternatively, find out how to sign up to Netflix or get the lowdown on whether it’s worth cancelling your Netflix subscription.