'Weird City' Trailer: Jordan Peele's YouTube Sci-Fi Show Brings The Funny To A Futuristic Dystopia
Jordan Peele may be horror's new favorite son, but the ever-busy writer/producer/director is finding ways to acknowledge his comedy roots. Jordan Peele and former Key & Peele writer Charlie Sanders teamed up to create the YouTube Premium series Weird City, a sci-fi anthology that brings the funny to futuristic dystopias. Set in a society where classes are starkly divided by the haves and have-nots, labeled in this case as "Above the Line" and "Below the Line," Weird City stars LeVar Burton as a mad scientist who introduces all kinds of bizarre gadgets to better optimize love and life — to hilarious results according to the Weird City trailer.
Weird City Trailer
In a near-future dystopian city divided by "The Line," the impoverished live separate from the high-tech, sleek urbanites. But all of them are guinea pigs to the mysterious Dr. Negari (Burton), who is the one recurring constant in each episode of this anthology series. Every episode he introduces a new innovation that will improve dating, healthcare, transportation, or sex, but resulting in ridiculous situations that the denizens of Weird City just accept as par for the course. One such disastrous experiment includes a computer program that matches people up with their life partners. Sound familiar? Basically, it's like Black Mirror, but funny.
Here is the official synopsis for Weird City:
From the mind of Jordan Peele and Charlie Sanders comes WEIRD CITY, a satirical anthology set in the not-too-distant future metropolis of Weird. In this dystopian setting of our show, the middle class has completely vanished dividing Weird City into two sections: Above the Line (The Haves), and Below the Line (The Have Nots). Presiding over the denizens of the city is the strange and mysterious Dr. Negari, who weaves all of our stories together. Each episode is a topic that pertains to present day life in America and the world: social media addiction, online dating, fitness obsession, etc.. WEIRD CITY captures the unease of modern urban living, in a bizarre and peculiar lens.
Michael Cera, Awkwafina, Rosario Dawson, Dylan O'Brien, Laverne Cox, Steven Yeun, Ed O'Neil, Hannah Simone, Mark Hamill, Yvette Nicole Brown, Trevor Jackson, and Auli'i Cravalho are among the stars of Weird City, which is just one of Peele's many projects across film, TV, and streaming platforms. Peele's highly anticipated sophomore feature Us hits theaters in March, while next month will see the release of Lorena, a four-part documentary on Lorena Bobbitt that he produced for Amazon. And Peele seems to love putting his hands in the sci-fi pot, with his upcoming Twilight Zone reboot for CBS All Access.Weird City premieres on February 13, 2019 on YouTube Premium.