Jon Hamm Has Promotion in His Sights in Delightfully Surreal Trailer for Corner Office

The American white collar office is always a ripe target for satire or parody, which admittedly does mean it’s a setting we’ve seen effectively lampooned many times before. We’ve even seen actor Jon Hamm in this setting, of course, playing one of the most consequential TV protagonists of the last 20 years in the form of Don Draper on Mad Men. His role in upcoming comedy dark film Corner Office, on the other hand, looks like an inversion of the Draper dynamic–here he’s playing a nebbish office drone who opens the wrong door, exposing himself to a world of greater and more daring possibilities. He’s essentially playing a guy who wishes he had the conviction of Draper, the confidence to turn his dreams into reality.

The first trailer for the film, the directorial debut of Joachim Back (adapted from the novel The Room by Jonas Karlsson), has a pleasantly surreal air to it, a sense that this office is perhaps situated at the crossroads between purgatory and hell. Apple TV’s Severance is the obvious comparison to make, as they both seem to have a timeless, retro-future setting and characters who have been stripped of their humanity by the crushing, drab formality of the office. But the surreal, magical-like nature of what happens to Hamm’s character also calls to mind films such as Being John Malkovich or even Boots Reilly’s Sorry to Bother You, concepts that thread the impossible into everyday life. As the official synopsis puts it:

In this workplace comedy reminiscent of Office Space and Severance, misfit Orson (Jon Hamm) finds himself trapped in the absurdities of corporate life. As The Authority’s newest employee, Orson finds it difficult to connect with his enigmatic desk mate, Rakesh (Danny Pudi), as well as with the rest of his colleagues. His alienation deepens when he discovers a room he’s told doesn’t exist – a place that unleashes his true potential, leading to an ascent up the corporate ladder. Buoyed by his newfound confidence, Orson invites a receptionist (Sarah Gadon) into his sanctuary, sparking a climactic clash between the corporate world’s harsh realities and his own wild fantasies.

So it’s sort of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, but with a magical corner office that infuses the user with the confidence to get things done? Consider us intrigued. Corner Office is scheduled to hit theaters, digital and on demand on Aug. 4, 2023. Check out the claustrophobic but magical trailer below.