First Trailer for Netflix’s Bigbug Promises a Bevy of Quirky, Startling Delights

From the mind of legendary French fantasist Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the director of Delicatessen, The City of Lost Children and Amélie, comes a new Netflix sci-fi spectacular that looks like nothing we’ve seen in quite a while. Bigbug is a colorful, garish look at one possible future, in which humankind has grown highly dependent upon android helpers in both our homes and society at large. Not exactly a rare sci-fi theme, there—nor is the inevitable android revolt—but rarely has such a plot been tackled with this kind of whimsical artistry. As the official synopsis puts it: ” A group of suburbanites is locked in for their own protection by their household robots, while an android revolt rages outside.”

But oh, what a visual style Jeunet seems to have in store for his audience, turning a plot that bears similarities with the likes of Terminator into something else entirely. The images here are saturated with neon colors and light, while the fashions reflect classic 1950s styles, rendering the final visuals somewhere in the cheerfully fanciful neighborhood of cult TV series Pushing Daisies. There’s a sense of both danger and dreamy unreality in the air for these characters as they grapple with the downfall of their robotically enhanced society.

As a feature film director, Jeunet has been out of the limelight for a while, as it’s been almost a decade since his last major release, The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet. This foray to Netflix represents a leap to a new medium for the director, and yet another indication of how streaming has transformed the mediums available to artists. Bigbug is scheduled for release on Netflix on Feb. 11, 2022. Check out the imaginative trailer below.