When the Companion teaser dropped in October, the ambiguous nature of Sophie Thatcher’s Iris blurred the lines between human and android. The new trailer answers things immediately — Iris is a robot.
Iris is an android designed as the perfect girlfriend for Josh, played by Jack Quaid. After jailbreaking his “sex bot,” Jack experiences a weekend from hell with friends at a secluded cabin. Iris is somehow in the middle of everything, with the footage showing her entire face covered in blood.
“There have been two moments in my life when I was happiest,” Iris said in the trailer. “The first was the day I met Josh. And the second, the day I killed him.”
Companion’s ensemble includes Lukas Gage, Megan Suri, Harvey Guillén, and Rupert Friend.
What sets Companion apart from the other android-gone-bad movies — i.e. M3GAn — is how the robot, not the human, becomes who audiences root for after the breakup. It’s artificial intelligence gone right. “I love how the character with the most humanity is the robot in this story,” Quaid told EW. “It’s such a cool turn on several genres.”
Companion is written and directed by Drew Hancock. In that same interview with EW, Hancock described Companion as a “movie about self-discovery” and a “breakup movie about this woman finding empowerment through discovery of self.”
The creative team behind Barbarian — including writer-director Zach Cregger, Roy Lee, Raphael Margules, and J.D. Lifshitz — are producing Companion for New Line Cinema. Tracy Rosenblum and Jamie Buckner are listed as executive producers.
Companion opens in theaters on January 31, 2025.
