Emma Stone and Jonah Hill blankly stare at each other in the disorienting first teaser for Maniac, the upcoming Netflix limited series directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga.
Theres no reason to believe that anything about us cant be changed. The mind can be solved, a voiceover states before the staring contest flickers with alternating green, blue and red light.
The much-anticipated Maniac arrives on the streaming service on September 21st. In addition to the minute-long teaser, Netflix also shared a detailed synopsis for the 10-episode limited series, an adaptation of the Norwegian series of the same name.
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, the synopsis states.
Annies 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 treatmenta sequence of pills its inventor, Dr. James K. Mantleray (Justin Theroux), claims can repair anything about the mind, be it mental illness or heartbreakdraws them and 10 other strangers to the facilities of Neberdine Pharmaceutical and Biotech for a three-day drug trial that will, theyre assured, with no complications or side effects whatsoever, solve all of their problems, permanently. Things do not go as planned.
Fukunaga will direct all 10 episodes of Maniac, marking the directors return to television after helming the entire first season of HBOs True Detective. Patrick Somerville created and executive produced the series.