On Monday, Netflix blessed its hordes of viewers with the first trailer for its upcoming summer spectacular, What Happened to Monday? We already knew that Swedish actress Noomi Rapace would be playing a family of seven identical sisters, but we didn’t know much about the roles for Hollywood veterans Glenn Close and Willem Dafoe.
The trailer is fast-paced and packed with exciting action sequences, mostly involving the seven sisters for whom the film was originally named. It’s hard to tell if each sister will have a unique personality, but there are a few bits of humor thrown in to keep the action fresh.
The trailer opens with Close — playing some sort of evil, dictatorial despot, it seems — talking about the “Child Allocation Bureau,” which appears to be some sort of government agency built to combat overpopulation via sinister methods. Dafoe, meanwhile, looks like he’s the father (or guardian) of the seven sisters, whom he keeps secret by naming them after days of the week and having them each impersonate the same woman on their assigned day.
Eventually, Close’s character finds out about the sisters and the chase is on. Sure, we have probably all had our fill of dystopian futures by now (and more are on the way!), but at least there is some originality in the concept. In any case, Rapace’s performance(s) will likely make or break the movie, which Netflix acquired in 2016.
Check out the official poster for What Happened to Monday? below, courtesy of Entertainment Weekly. The movie will hit Netflix on August 18, joining the service’s laundry list of excellent films.
Directed by Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters and Dead Snow filmmaker Tommy Wirkola, What Happened to Monday? unfolds in a dystopian future in which overpopulation and famine have forced the government to enact a strict single-child limit on families. Rapace plays each of seven identical sisters — who are forced to hide their existence from the outside world by assuming the identity of a single person on the one day each week they are allowed to go outdoors. Their system is thrown into disarray when one of the sisters, Monday, doesn’t come home.
The film is already generating some buzz due its original story — something of a rarity in today’s remake- and reboot-crazy Hollywood environment. The script for What Happened to Monday? was penned by Kerry Williamson (Alex Cross) and Max Botkin (Robosapien: Rebooted), with Marwan Kenzari, Christian Rubeck, and Pal Sverre Hagen also playing unidentified roles in the film.
Wirkola first hit Hollywood’s radar with his 2009 zombie-Nazi horror movie Dead Snow, which became a cult classic of sorts and spawned a 2014 sequel. That attention led to him directing Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton in the surprisingly successful, R-rated 2013 action-fantasy film Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, which earned more than $226 million worldwide. A sequel to that film is also in the works.
Update: Added trailer information for the film.
