Netflix has unveiled the first trailer for their upcoming dark comedy series Maniac, which stars Emma Stone (La La Land), Jonah Hill (21 Jump Street) and Justin Theroux (The Leftovers). The show will also star Oscar winner Sally Field in an unspecified role.
Annie (Stone) and Owen (Hill) join the pharmaceutical trial based on the promise that the sequence of pills being tested can repair any trouble of the mind, from mental illness to heartbreak. The inventor of the pills, Dr. James K. Mantleray will be played by Justin Theroux.
The trailer shows Emma Stone’s Annie and Jonah Hill’s Owen silently sitting at a table and staring at one another in Neberdine Pharmaceutical jumpsuits, as various colored lights begin to flash.
Through narration, the man who invented the drug trial, Dr. James K. Mantleray (played by Justin Theroux), claims that he can fix any mind: “Once you begin to appreciate the structure of the mind, there’s no reason to believe that anything about us can’t be changed. The mind can be solved.”
Based on the Norwegian show of the same name, the dark comedy comes from the novelist Patrick Somerville (The Leftlovers), and Cary Joji Fukanaga (True Detective), who directed all 10 episodes.
The Norwegian Maniac sounds like more of a straight-forward comedy, which follows a man in a mental asylum who often escapes into grand fantasies of a lavish life. While Fukunaga’s Maniac is described as a black comedy, as you can probably tell from the trailer, it looks like the emphasis might more on the black and less on the comedy.
Maniac marks Stone’s first major TV after previously co-starring on the short-lived Fox series Drive in 2007. Hill previously starred on Oxygen’s Campus Ladies, and created and voiced the title character for the animated series Allen Gregory.
This show also sees the reunion of Stone and Hill, who were last seen sharing screen space in the 2007 comedy Superbad.
The series will be released by the streaming service on 21 September.
> Mar Martínez
Emma Stone and Jonah Hill Star in Netflix's Maniac Trailer
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