The Game-Changing 165-Minute Western Saddles Up on a New Streamer

There was a legitimate argument to be made that Leonardo DiCaprio won his first Oscar far too late in his career. By the time he actually won, he had delivered numerous award-worthy performances already, and it felt more like an honorary gesture than a truly earned victory. DiCaprio famously picked up his first Academy Award for his performance in The Revenant; every frame of the epic Western film showed him in different kinds of distress. However, he should have won an Oscar three years prior for his performance in another epic Western. Shockingly, he wasn’t even nominated on that occasion, but his already honored co-star ended up walking away with a second trophy. The movie in question is riding onto a new streaming home this March, where younger audiences can finally understand where that one meme comes from.

No, not the one from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, although the Western in question was also directed by Quentin Tarantino. We’re talking, of course, about Django Unchained. Headlined by Jamie Foxx, who played an enslaved man who goes on a vengeful mission to reunite with his wife, the movie also featured Christoph Waltz and Kerry Washington. DiCaprio played the primary antagonist, Calvin Candie. Everything about the movie, from its title to its stylized violence, was Tarantino’s grand tribute to spaghetti Westerns. He made another kind of revisionist Western next — The Hateful Eight — but it wasn’t nearly as successful as Django Unchained.

Here’s Where You Can Watch Quentin Tarantino’s “Incendiary Masterpiece”

Released in 2012, Django Unchained grossed $450 million worldwide against a reported budget of $100 million. It’s the second-highest-grossing Western of all time, behind only The Revenant, which made $533 million worldwide against a reported budget of $135 million. Django Unchained earned Tarantino his second Best Original Screenplay Oscar and was nominated in five categories overall. It holds a “Certified Fresh” 87% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics’ consensus reads, “Bold, bloody, and stylistically daring, Django Unchained is another incendiary masterpiece from Quentin Tarantino.” The filmmaker is now putting together what he intends to be his final movie. DiCaprio, meanwhile, is up for Best Actor at the Oscars this year, for his performance in Paul Thomas Anderson‘s One Battle After Another.

You can watch Django Unchained on Peacock from March 1. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.