It looks like we’ll be getting at least two genre movies starring Chris Hemsworth this summer! The first is obviously Marvel’s Thor: Love and Thunder, and the second one is a Netflix film called Spiderhead.
If the title Spiderhead sounds familiar, that’s because it’s based on a 2010 New Yorker short story by George Saunders, “Escape from Spiderhead.” (Later included in Saunders’ excellent collection, Tenth of December.) Like the short story, the movie focuses on a prison where those incarcerated are test subjects for drugs that immediately and drastically alter their emotions and capabilities.
Check out the official synopsis for the movie below:
In a state-of-the-art penitentiary run by brilliant visionary Steve Abnesti (Hemsworth), inmates wear a surgically attached device that administers dosages of mind-altering drugs in exchange for commuted sentences. There are no bars, no cells, or orange jumpsuits. In Spiderhead, incarcerated volunteers are free to be themselves. Until they’re not. At times, they’re a better version. Need to lighten up? There’s a drug for that. At a loss for words? There’s a drug for that, too. But when two subjects, Jeff (Miles Teller) and Lizzy (Jurnee Smollett), form a connection, their path to redemption take a twistier turn, as Abnesti’s experiments start to push the limits of free will altogether.
Director Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick) in an Entertainment Weekly interview calls Hemsworth’s character “the genius visionary behind the whole Spiderhead program” who has “noble intentions, but there are some darker things lurking underneath the surface with him.” Kosinski also had words about the characters Teller and Smollett play, saying Teller’s character is “a guy that’s grappling with a mistake he made” and Smollett’s character has a “mysterious past.”
The Spiderhead screenplay was written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (Zombieland, Deadpool). The cast also includes Mark Paguio, Tess Haubrich, Angie Milliken, and Stephen Tongun.
The movie drops on Netflix on June 17; check out other first images from the film below if you’re looking for more clues about the film before then.
