Senior Sleuths Are on the Case in First Trailer for Netflix’s The Thursday Murder Club

Septuagenarian sleuths, assemble: Netflix has unveiled the first teaser trailer for would-be senior blockbuster entertainment, the murder mystery The Thursday Murder Club. Sporting an extremely impressive ensemble cast of well-seasoned Hollywood performers, and directed by none other than … Chris Columbus? … one gets the sense that Netflix is really trying to tap a major, unexploited market for older streaming audiences on this one. The film is adapted from author Richard Osman’s 2020 novel of the same name, the first in an extremely popular murder mystery series that now includes five entries, up to this year’s upcoming The Impossible Fortune. The first book in the series, meanwhile, bears this official synopsis:

A group of pensioners (Elizabeth Best, Ron Ritchie, Joyce Meadowcroft and Ibrahim Arif) set about solving the mystery of the murder of a property developer in the luxurious Cooper’s Chase retirement village near the fictitious village of Fairhaven in Kent.

They are, of course, the titular Thursday Murder Club, all retired but still passionate about solving cold cases, when a very warm case indeed finally drops into their laps. It’s hard not to be reminded of other properties, of course–Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building is the obvious comparison point, although we seem to be lacking the younger generational tie-in here that Selena Gomez provides. There’s also more than a fair bit of Rian Johnson’s Knives Out series in this particular formula.

What The Thursday Murder Club quite obviously has going for it is an extremely impressive cast, which includes Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley and Celia Imrie as our central four. The greater ensemble, however, has plenty more marquee names: David Tennant, Jonathan Pryce, Naomi Ackie, Richard E. Grant and more. An odder name to see is that of Chris Columbus, whose last film was 2020’s The Christmas Chronicles 2 for Netflix. Let’s hope the now 66-year-old who helmed Home Alone and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone still has some gas in the tank. Looking at the first footage below, it certainly feels like the charm brigade is out in full force.

The Thursday Murder Club lands its investigations on Netflix on Aug. 28, 2025. Check out the first trailer below.