Emma Stone & Jonah Hill star in tense, colorful teaser for Netflix’s Maniac

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Jonah Hill and Emma Stone may have shared some laughs in the movie SUPERBAD almost a decade ago, but they sure aren’t having as good a time in the new teaser for the upcoming Netflix show, MANIAC. The short tease for the new black comedy series from Cary Fukunaga (TRUE DETECTIVE, BEASTS OF NO NATION) finds the pair staring awkwardly at one another, making you wish one of them would say something. At least talk about how white that room is. It’s blinding.

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Here is the synopsis for the series.

Set in a world somewhat like our world, in a time quite similar to our time, Maniac tells the stories of Annie Landsberg (Emma Stone) and Owen Milgrim (Jonah Hill), two strangers drawn to the late stages of a mysterious pharmaceutical trial, each for their own reasons.  Annie’s disaffected and aimless, fixated on broken relationships with her mother and her sister; Owen, the fifth son of wealthy New York industrialists, has struggled his whole life with a disputed diagnosis of schizophrenia. Neither of their lives have turned out quite right, and the promise of a new, radical kind of pharmaceutical treatment—a sequence of pills its inventor, Dr. James K. Mantleray (Justin Theroux), claims can repair anything about the mind, be it mental illness or heartbreak—draws them and ten other strangers to the facilities of Neberdine Pharmaceutical and Biotech for a three-day drug trial that will, they’re assured, with no complications or side-effects whatsoever, solve all of their problems, permanently.  Things do not go as planned.

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Fukunaga is directing all ten episodes of the series, making it his first major directorial effort after the stunning BEASTS OF NO NATION (also distributed through Netflix) and after separating from IT (eventually directed by Andres Muschietti). The show looks odd and intriguing, plus it has that all-star cast, so there’s really no reason for you not to check it out when it arrives September 21.