General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Zero Day

Zero Day is a 2025 American political thriller limited series on Netflix in which Robert De Niro plays a former United States president appointed to investigate a devastating nationwide cyberattack. Created by Eric Newman, Noah Oppenheim, and Michael S. Schmidt and directed by Lesli Linka Glatter, it consists of six episodes and premiered on February 20, 2025.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Format	Six-episode limited series, TV-MA thriller, streaming on Netflix¹^•³
Premiere	February 20, 2025²
Creators	Eric Newman, Noah Oppenheim, and Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Michael S. Schmidt; all six episodes directed by Lesli Linka Glatter¹
Lead role	Robert De Niro as former President George Mullen, his first starring TV series role, which he also executive produced⁴
Premise	A cyberattack kills thousands across the United States; Mullen heads the Zero Day Commission to find the perpetrators²
Principal cast	Angela Bassett, Jesse Plemons, Lizzy Caplan, Connie Britton, Joan Allen, Matthew Modine, Bill Camp, Dan Stevens, and Gaby Hoffmann³
Reception	Metascore 52 from 39 critic reviews; 53% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer⁵^•⁶

Spoilers

Premise

The series opens with an attack in which every electronic system in the country shuts down for one minute, causing car accidents, train derailments, and thousands of deaths, while the message "This will happen again" appears on smartphones.⁷^•⁸ Sitting President Evelyn Mitchell (Angela Bassett), whose agenda is threatened by a hostile Speaker of the House (Matthew Modine as Richard Dreyer), authorizes a commission with unprecedented surveillance powers and the suspension of habeas corpus, and asks the respected former President George Mullen to lead it.⁷

Mullen's investigation is complicated by rampant disinformation and by the ambitions of power brokers in technology, Wall Street, and government, and it forces him to confront his own secrets.² His wife Sheila (Joan Allen) argues that no one should hold that much power, while his daughter Alex (Lizzy Caplan), a sitting congresswoman, warns him that "it's just temporary" is what dictators say.⁷ In the finale, Mullen publicly divulges the identities of everyone behind the attack.⁹

Production

Netflix announced the series on March 1, 2023, from Eric Newman's Grand Electric Productions deal, with Noah Oppenheim, the former president of NBC News, as co-creator and Jonathan Glickman as executive producer.¹ Schmidt, a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist covering defense matters, is credited as a creator and writer; Oppenheim said the early inspiration came from Schmidt and "the stories that kept him up at night."¹^•¹⁰

De Niro's involvement. The role is De Niro's first starring television series part, and the first series he both stars in and executive produces. He described the character's ethos as telling it straight: "Don't dodge anything. Don't play games."⁴^•² Newman called him a hands-on partner who read everything at every stage.²

The production consulted real-world advisers. Political strategist Eric Schultz, a former White House principal deputy press secretary under President Obama, spent several weeks on set advising on the Oval Office and briefing room, and is credited on screen as political consultant; cybersecurity expert Clint Watts, a former FBI special agent, also consulted, as did Jeremy Bash of Beacon Global Strategies.¹¹^•¹²

The title and real-world cybersecurity

The title borrows a term from cybersecurity. A zero-day is a vulnerability that is maliciously exploited before a patch is publicly available, so defenders have zero days to prepare.¹³^•¹⁴ The show's premise exaggerates the concept: experts note that a typical zero-day attack targets a single operating system or platform, whereas the series depicts a single attack taking down power, transit, air traffic control, phones, and life-support systems simultaneously, a scenario cybersecurity researchers called far-fetched even as the show's characters voice the same skepticism.⁸

The underlying threat is real. Google Threat Intelligence Group tracked 90 zero-day vulnerabilities exploited in the wild in 2025, below the record 100 of 2023 but above 2024's 78, with 48% targeting enterprise technologies, an all-time high.¹³ Attacks on critical infrastructure, the scenario the series dramatizes, are a documented concern of United States national security agencies.⁸

Reception

Critical response was mixed. The series holds a Metascore of 52, based on 39 critic reviews, and a 53% Tomatometer score.⁵^•⁶ Rotten Tomatoes' critics consensus credits the all-star cast led by De Niro while judging the plotting too weak for the show's self-seriousness.⁶ Positive reviews included The Guardian's description of "an astonishing amount of fun" grounded by De Niro's performance, and The Wall Street Journal's judgment that the premise was compellingly sound.¹⁵ The Washington Post found the great cast and a muddy story canceling each other out, and Time praised the show's evocation of contemporary unrest while noting its deliberate avoidance of partisan identification.⁷^•¹⁶

The series drew a large audience. It ranked sixth among streaming shows for the first half of 2025 in TVision's Power Score ranking, and in March 2025 it drew 3 million views in its fifth week on Netflix's English-language TV chart.¹⁷^•¹⁸ A viral video of De Niro apparently admonishing protesters was in fact a rehearsal scene from the series, as Netflix and De Niro's spokesperson confirmed.¹⁹

Other works titled Zero Day

The title has been used by several unrelated works. Zero Days (2016) is Alex Gibney's documentary about the Stuxnet malware worm, reportedly developed jointly by the United States and Israel against Iranian centrifuges, which holds a 90% Tomatometer score.²⁰ Zero Day (2003) is a low-budget drama about two teenagers planning a school shooting in the style of the Columbine attack.²¹ A separate Taiwanese series, also titled Zero Day, is a ten-episode 2025 fiction depicting a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, partly financed by the semiconductor billionaire Robert Tsao.²² David Baldacci's novel Zero Day is a crime thriller unrelated to the Netflix series.²³

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Scripted television and comedy series › Drama and prestige series (individual series) › Crime and thriller series › Spy and political thrillers

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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