This Julia Roberts movie was Netflix’s most-watched of 2023

Leave The World Behind, starring Julia Roberts, has been revealed as Netflix’s most-watched film of 2023.

• READ MORE: The 20 best TV shows of 2023

Earlier this week, the streaming platform published the second part of its yearly What We Watched engagement report, capturing viewing figures from July to December 2023.

The report revealed that the Sam Esmail disaster thriller generated 121 million views, making it the most-streamed film of the year, and also the platform’s fifth most popular movie of all time.

Based on the 2020 novel by Rumaan Alam, Leave The World Behind follows a family who rent out a luxury house in Long Island, only to be interrupted by a man and a woman who bear news of an impending cyberattack. The strangers also claim to be the actual owners of the house, raising tensions as the threat of a potential global crisis grows.

Alongside Roberts, the film also stars Ethan Hawke, Mahershala Ali, Myha’la, and Kevin Bacon.

Following the release of the film, Tesla CEO Elon Musk was mocked on social media for seemingly misunderstanding one of the movie’s most memorable scenes.

The moment concerns a scene in which Roberts and Hawke’s characters are chased by malfunctioning Tesla cars, which are moving without drivers. Ultimately, the tech-heavy vehicles begin to crash into one another and lead to a huge pile-up in the road.

“Teslas can charge from solar panels even if the world goes fully Mad Max and there is no more gasoline!” Musk wrote on X/Twitter at the time, seemingly believing that the scene contained a plot inaccuracy, claiming that the cars would still work during an apocalypse, rather than realising that the cars depicted were hacked to chase people.

“Elon should rewatch the movie,” one user wrote in response (via The Independent), while a second questioned whether he saw the film at all: “This guy didn’t watch the movie”.

“Maybe it’s just me, but in the movie Leave the World Behind, It appears Obama is taking a direct shot at Elon Musk and Tesla in the crash scene. Coincidence? I think not,” another wrote, looking into the meaning of the scene.

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