Scott Z. Burns has a habit of creating eerily prescient dramas—the BAFTA-nominated writer, director, and producer penned 2011’s Contagion, which memorably became one of the most widely streamed films during the early weeks of the pandemic. His latest vision for an apocalyptic future? Extrapolations, a new eight-part Apple TV+ series about the impending end of the world, which has—undeniably—the most star-studded cast of any release of this year so far.
According to its official log line, the show will introduce “a near future where the chaotic effects of climate change have become embedded into our everyday lives, [and feature] eight interwoven stories about love, work, faith and family from across the globe [which will] explore the intimate, life-altering choices that must be made when the planet is changing faster than the population. Every story is different, but the fight for our future is universal. Are we brave enough to become the solution to our own undoing before it’s too late?”
On the frontlines of this fight are a bevy of A-listers including Meryl Streep, Gemma Chan, Yara Shahidi, Marion Cotillard, and Sienna Miller, who’s currently in the midst of a small-screen renaissance. Joining them will be Hari Nef, Diane Lane, Keri Russell, Heather Graham, Edward Norton, Forest Whitaker, David Schwimmer, Eiza González, and Tobey Maguire. There’s also The White Lotus and The Last of Us’s Murray Bartlett; Game of Thrones’s Kit Harington and Indira Varma; The Serpent’s Tahar Rahim; and Judd Hirsch, currently an Oscar nominee for his scene-stealing performance in The Fabelmans.
Burns has both written and helmed the project, and his moody, atmospheric visual style is evident in the first trailer, launched by the streaming giant on February 15. “Human history is the story of one terrible catastrophe after another,” Cotillard declares in its opening shots, as Miller soars over burning forests in a helicopter. We then see glimpses of Manhattan, now surrounded by floodgates; a smoke-filled London; one-percenters sailing through an ocean of melting ice caps; civilians with oxygen masks; and a hologram of Shahidi as an impassioned activist rallying a crowd of protesters. “Stop being angry about the past,” Streep’s character is then shown telling Miller. “The future is now.”
Will they be able to turn the tide? Tune in on March 17 for the first three episodes, with the following five arriving weekly until mid April.
This article was originally published on Vogue.com.
