Leave it to Steven Soderbergh to do some experimental stuff that people weren’t prepared for. Last night at the Metrograph in New York, he debuted a new dystopian sci-fi series, Command Z, starring Michael Cera, JJ Maley, Roy Wood, Jr. and Chloe Radcliffe.
The 90-minute series is available to stream now at Soderbergh’s website, CommandZseries.com, and is influenced by Kurt Andersen’s book Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History.
Cera’s giant head plays a deceased billionaire who tasks three people, all wearing matching blue jumpsuits, with going back in time to July 17th 2023 to convince titans of industry not to screw up the world. Things get really weird when the trio must drink a psychedelic substance while staring into a washing machine while the movie theme from Mahogany plays, all before taking a wormhole into the past. Their targets include familiar faces such as Liev Schreiber as a greedy financier and Succession‘s Zoë Winters as a liberal obsessed with nuclear power.
The eight total episodes, which makes it sound like a movie broken up into pieces, were penned by Andersen and The Simpsons writer Larry Doyle, along with Wood, Radcliffe, and more.
For Soderbergh, this marks his third project already this year following Magic Mike’s Last Dance and the MAX series Full Circle.