Netflix Teases Cliff Beasts 6, The Movie-Inside-A-Movie From Judd Apatow's The Bubble
Ready, cliffers!? After half a decade of waiting, we finally have a trailer for the hotly anticipated blockbuster event of the spring — "Cliff Beasts 6: Battle for Everest" (actually stylized as "Cliff Bea6ts"). The long-in-the-making sequel finds the team reuniting once again to fight the titular Cliff Beasts, an ancient dinosaur species that is threatening mankind, only this time the battle will take place on Mount Everest.
The trailer has everything you'd expect out of the "Cliff Beasts" franchise: beautiful landscapes, excellent and completely believable use of green screen, ominous shots of the team being stalked by beasts, Keegan-Michael Key doing a Deadshot in "Suicide Squad" impression, and Karen Gillan once again being nearly devoured by a dragon/T-Rex hybrid-like creature. In addition to the teaser, a Tweet from the official Netflix account promises the full trailer for "Cliff Beasts 6: Battle for Everest" will be released in two days, ahead of the film's release on April 1, 2022.
Of course, there is no such thing as "Cliff Beasts," as absolutely no one has heard about the first five films in the franchise — even if it's a very cool title. Instead, this is a faux teaser for the movie-within-a-movie from Judd Apatow's next project, "The Bubble."
A very meta comedy
This marks the first time Apatow makes a film for a studio other than Universal, teaming up with Netflix to produce and release the film. This is not a corny "Jurassic Park" meets "Journey 2: The Mysterious Island" knock-off, nor is it a "Tropic Thunder" type of film where the fiction becomes real. "The Bubble" will deal with the cast and crew of a blockbuster franchise trying to shoot a new film in the middle of the pandemic, and what happens while they're stuck in a quarantine bubble during filming.
Based on the dinosaurs in the fake trailer for "Cliff Beasts," it is likely Apatow was inspired by the extensive safety protocols implemented during the production of "Jurassic World: Dominion" back in the dark days of 2020. That film was one of the first blockbusters to resume production in the middle of the pandemic, and it's easy to imagine a bunch of high-on-themselves action movie stars trapped in a posh hotel for weeks at a time leading to some comedic chaos.
"The Bubble" being a Netflix release is not the only departure for Apatow, as the film's cast is not the familiar lineup of actors you'd expect from one of his projects. In addition to Key and Gillan, the film stars Pedro Pascal, Maria Bakalova, Fred Armisen, Peter Serafinowicz, David Duchovny, as well as familiar Apatow players Leslie Mann and Iris Apatow. Apatow directs and produces the film from a script he co-wrote with Pam Brady ("South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut").
Netflix describes the plot of "The Bubble" as such:
"Sneaking out. Hooking up. Melting down. The cast and crew of a blockbuster action franchise attempt to shoot a sequel while quarantining at a posh hotel."
This fake trailer ends with a mention of an April 1, 2022 release date. Does that mean we'll be seeing "The Bubble" on Netflix on that date? Stay tuned.