'Daybreak' Trailer: Matthew Broderick Heads Back To School In Netflix Series About The Apocalypse

Matthew Broderick played one of the most famous high school students in cinema history in the John Hughes classic Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and then returned to campus as a teacher years later in Alexander Payne's political satire Election. Now he's graduated to playing a principal in Daybreak, a new teen-centric Netflix series about a group of students who band together to survive a post-apocalyptic, Mad Max-style future. Check out the teaser trailer for the upcoming series below.

As a huge Ferris Bueller's Day Off fan (my license plate in high school said DAY OFF), I think the last few seconds of this teaser take things a bit too far. The Ferris connection is already explicit with the fact that Broderick is even there in the first place, so I'm not sure they needed to recreate one of that character's famous poses and swipe a line of dialogue ("and you thought we weren't going to have any fun...shame on you"). Still, it looks like it could be kind of fun. Some parts of high school can feel like the end of the world, so why not make that concept literal and see what happens?

Daybreak is based on Brian Ralph's 2011 comic of the same name. I haven't read the comic myself, but it's described as "an art-house take on the classic zombie genre." That's...not really the vibe I'm getting from this trailer, so I wonder how much this show will diverge from its source material. Daybreak is directed (at least in part) by Brad Peyton, who directed the Dwayne Johnson action films San Andreas and Rampage and three episodes of the Jason Momoa Netflix series Frontier.

The show stars Colin Ford (Under the Dome, We Bought a Zoo), Alyvia Alyn Lind (The Young and the Restless, Future Man), Austin Crute (Booksmart), Sophie Simnett, Gregory Kasyan, Krysta Rodriguez, Jeanté Godlock, Cody Kearsley, and Matthew Broderick.

Here's a brief synopsis:

Daybreak finds 17-year-old high school outcast Josh searching for his missing girlfriend Sam in post-apocalyptic Glendale, California. Joined by a ragtag group of misfits including a pyromaniac 12-year-old Angelica and Josh's former high school bully Wesley, now turned pacifist samurai, Josh tries to stay alive amongst the horde of Mad Max-style gangs (evil jocks, cheerleaders turned Amazon warriors), zombie-like creatures called Ghoulies, and everything else this brave new world throws at him.

Daybreak hits Netflix on October 24, 2019.