The mind plays tricks on Jonah Hill and Emma Stone in Maniac trailer

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

After co-writing the initial screenplay, Cary Joji Fukunaga dropped out of directing the Stephen King adaptation IT over creative differences, but it looks like things have worked out in the long run: while Andy Muschietti ended up directing IT, which made over $700 million at the global box office (with Fukunaga still receiving a writing credit on the final film), Fukunaga has been busy directing the ten episode Netflix series Maniac.

Netflix has released a trailer for the series, and it looks like it's going to be an entertaining and intriguing brain scrambler.

Starring Emma Stone, Jonah Hill, Justin Theroux, and Sally Field, Maniac is "set in a world somewhat like our world, in a time quite similar to our time." It tells the story of 

Annie Landsberg and Owen Milgrim, 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 has 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, claims can repair anything about the mind, be it mental illness or heartbreak — draws them and 10 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.

Created and executive produced by Patrick Somerville, Maniac is set to arrive on Netflix on September 21st.

The last time Fukunaga directed an entire season of television we got the fantastic first season of True Detective, so I will definitely be checking out Maniac when it's available to binge.

Check out the trailer and see what you think: