Emma Stone and Jonah Hill find some “multi-reality, brain magic shit” in ‘Maniac’ trailer
[divider style=”normal” top=”20″ bottom=”20″]
From Cary Joji Fukunaga (Beasts of Nation, True Detective, The Alienist) comes Maniac, a new mind-bending limited series starring Oscar winner Emma Stone (La La Land) and Oscar nominee Jonah Hill (Moneyball, The Wolf of Wall Street).
The pair star as Annie Landsberg and Owen Milgrim, two strangers drawn to the late stages of a mysterious pharmaceutical trial conducted by Dr. James Mantleray (Justin Theroux, The Leftovers) who administers his own pills and version of therapy. “Is this therapy now?” asks Annie. “It’s not therapy, it’s science,” Mantleray says. “Once you begin to appreciate the structure of the mind, there’s no reason to believe anything about us can’t be changed. Pain can be destroyed. The mind can be solved.”
Through trips, dreams and hallucinations, Annie and Owen are constantly separated yet keep finding themselves in their alter-realities.
Official synopsis:
[box type=”shadow” align=”” class=”” width=””]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, 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.[/box]
The cast also includes two-time Oscar winner Sally Field (Norma Rae, Places in the Heart, TV’s Brothers and Sisters), Jemima Kirke (Girls), Julia Garner (Ozark), Billy Magnussen (Game Night) and Sonova Mizuno (Ex Machina).
Created by Patrick Somerville (The Leftovers, The Bridge), all 10 episodes are directed by Fukunaga and written by Somerville and Mauricio Katz (The Bridge).
Maniac arrives exclusively on Netflix September 21st.
He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.
- Association of Motion Picture Sound (AMPS) Television and Nonfiction Nominations Announced: ‘Adolescence,’ ‘Black Mirror,’ ‘Slow Horses’ and More - March 20, 2026
- Trailer Watch: ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day,’ ‘Dune: Part Three,’ Disclosure Day,’ ‘Wild Horse Nine’ - March 20, 2026
- Six Join 51st Residence of the Festival de Cannes, including Harry Lighton, Mansi Maheshwari, Oliver McGoldrick - March 20, 2026
Director Watch Podcast Ep. 144 – ‘A Matter of Life and Death (Powell and Pressburger, 1946) with Special Guest Jesse Nussman 
Association of Motion Picture Sound (AMPS) Television and Nonfiction Nominations Announced: ‘Adolescence,’ ‘Black Mirror,’ ‘Slow Horses’ and More 
Trailer Watch: ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day,’ ‘Dune: Part Three,’ Disclosure Day,’ ‘Wild Horse Nine’ 
‘Anima’ Review: Sydney Chandler and Takehiro Hira Ground Brian Tetsuro Ivie’s Low-Fi Sci-Fi Road Movie [B+] SXSW