New Trailers! Lanterns, The Audacity and The Miniature Wife
📺 Kyle Chandler & Aaron Pierre hunt intergalactic conspiracies in the heartland, Billy Magnussen embodies Silicon Valley greed, and Elizabeth Banks shrinks to doll-size!
📺 “Lanterns” Teaser Trailer: Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre Are Intergalactic Cops Tracking a Deadly Conspiracy in the American Heartland in This New DC Series — Premiering this August on HBO/HBO Max
Since the initial announcement of the new series based on DC’s Green Lantern comics, fans have been waiting with bated breath for even a mere glimpse. But here’s the thing: if you’re expecting wall-to-wall spandex and typical superhero action sequences... at least in the vein of James Gunn’s Superman, well, you might be in for a surprise. This one feels like it’s leaning into a neo-western vibe, complete with a small-town mystery, a bickering law-fighting duo, and a tough-talking sheriff in the form of No Country for Old Men actress Kelly Macdonald.
In Lanterns, DC’s latest pivot in bringing the cosmic tale of the Green Lantern Corps down to a much more grounded, gritty reality, Friday Night Lights star Kyle Chandler plays the legendary, albeit slightly “old and tired,” Hal Jordan. He’s playing opposite Rebel Ridge star Aaron Pierre as John Stewart, the new “junior” recruit set to take on the Green Lantern mantle once his training is done. They carry on like a squabbling odd couple: one is the jaded veteran mentor who’s seen it all, and the other is an eager-to-please freshman looking to prove his worth.
Co-created by Chris Mundy (Ozark), Damon Lindelof (Watchmen), and Tom King, with Mundy serving as showrunner, the HBO series seems to be trading deep-space dogfights for an Earth-bound mystery set squarely in the American heartland. Hal and John, as two intergalactic cops of sorts, are sent to investigate a local small-town murder with implications that go far beyond the borders of any one zip code, potentially unearthing a conspiracy that stretches across the stars.
With John not yet permitted to actually wear a power ring of his own—at least, not until the ring itself decides he’s ready—Hal is very much still the one carrying the heavy burden of experience as an aging lawman who still has a fire to prove he hasn’t lost his step. Especially now that he senses “something is off” with the town they’ve just rolled into.
Along with Kelly Macdonald as Sheriff Kerry, the cast also includes Garret Dillahunt, Poorna Jagannathan, Jason Ritter, Chris Coy, and Paul Ben-Victor, with Nathan Fillion reprising his role as Guy Gardner.
British helmer James Hawes, known for the Rami Malek spy thriller The Amateur as well as episodes of Slow Horses and Penny Dreadful, directs the first two installments of this eight-episode DC series, which will try its darndest to erase the widely panned 2011 Green Lantern movie from our memory banks.
Lanterns is set to premiere this August on HBO and HBO Max.
📺 “The Audacity” Trailer: Billy Magnussen and Zach Galifianakis Play Ego-Driven Tech Billionaires in a New Sharp Satire of Silicon Valley Excess with Sarah Goldberg — Premiering Sun, April 12th on AMC/AMC+
Decades ago, the burgeoning tech industry rolled onto the scene with an optimistic pitch: change the world, make it better for everyone. Well, we don’t need to point out what happened next. These so-called saviors? They aren’t. As Silicon Valley grew in power and influence around the world, the most dangerous players morphed into the very thing they claimed to be disrupting: masters of a new kind of control.
Created by Emmy winner Jonathan Glatzer (Succession, Better Call Saul), The Audacity is a new dark satire series taking aim at the tech world and what it has become: ego-driven, heartless, and utterly convinced of its own moral necessity. After all, disruption is just a polite word for domination.
Billy Magnussen (Aladdin, Game Night) stars as Duncan Park, a data-mining CEO who views humanity as a platform to be optimized rather than a species to be served. Fueled by a grand self-image and bolstered by the “billionaire man-children” in his elite circle, Duncan spirals out of control with no guardrails, no accountability, and no one willing to tell him no; mainly because everyone around him is either on his payroll or too busy building their own empires to care.
Magnussen is flanked by a stellar ensemble, including Barry breakout Sarah Goldberg as Joanne Felder, a poorly compensated therapist to the titan tech class who has grown completely fed up with their constant nagging and whining. Among her clientele, other than Duncan, is Carl Bardolph (played by Zach Galifianakis), a former tech pioneer who built his billion-dollar empire out of email spam and has zero interest in helping anyone but himself.
Joanne, who is about to burst at the seams out of pure exasperation, has only her husband, Gary (played by Paul Adelstein), to turn to; a fellow therapist who seems more interested in accommodating the needs of these tech blowhards than his own wife, so long as the pay is good.
Also surrounding the self-obsessed orbit of Duncan Park are Rob Corddry, Simon Helberg, Meaghan Rath, Lucy Punch, and Randall Park; all playing figures who have swapped their moral compasses for a key to the kingdom, feasting on the spoils of a system designed to serve no one but themselves.
If Mike Judge showed us the utter absurdity of the tech community with Silicon Valley, this one looks to be the dark side of what happens when that absurdity gains total, unchecked power.
The Audacity is due to premiere Sunday, April 12th on AMC and AMC+.
📺 “The Miniature Wife” Trailer: Elizabeth Banks Gets Shrunk to Doll-Size in Peacock’s Darkly Comic Marriage Series with Matthew Macfadyen — Premiering Thurs, April 9th on Peacock
Most couples have their share of ups and downs. But sometimes those downs take on a new literal meaning. In Elizabeth Banks’ latest role, she doesn’t just face a rough patch in her marriage: she gets shrunk down to the size of a Barbie doll. And no, we don’t mean emotionally.
Banks stars opposite Succession’s Matthew Macfadyen as a wife and husband team whose marriage gets tested in the most absurdly literal way possible in Peacock’s darkly comic new series The Miniature Wife. As the title might suggest, Banks’s Lindy Littlejohn wakes up one morning to find she’s been accidentally shrunk to doll-size by her scientist husband’s experimental technology; a cutting-edge process he calls “the miracle of miniaturization.”
Macfadyen’s Les Littlejohn is a genius inventor working to perfect his breakthrough invention. The problem is, shrinking isn’t the hard part — it’s bringing miniaturized things back to normal size that’s become the real challenge. And for his newly miniature wife, it means living in a dollhouse while he figures out how to undo what he’s done — assuming he can, that is.
Already dealing with a strained relationship, Les and Lindy have another problem to deal with: They only have thirty days to prove the restoration process works before the patent rights revert to a rival scientist named Hilton (played by comedian Ronny Chieng). And if they can’t figure it out? She stays doll-sized. He stays in the doghouse. Permanently.
Based on the short story by Manuel Gonzales and created by Goliath and Ash vs Evil Dead producers-writers Jennifer Ames and Steve Turner, the streaming series feels like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids if it were written by someone who just finished marriage therapy. Which is to say, it just might be the most literally on-the-nose relationship metaphor we’ve seen in a while.
The Miniature Wife premieres Thursday, April 9th on Peacock.
