HBO Max released the first teaser trailer and images Tuesday of its upcoming post-apocalyptic limited series Station Eleven.
Adapted from Emily St. John Mandel’s 2014 novel of the same name, Station Eleven follows the stories of several survivors who, in the wake of a global pandemic that devastates much of the planet, search for a means to reimagine and rebuild what they have lost.
Starring an ensemble cast including Mackenzie Davis (Black Mirror), Himesh Patel (Yesterday, Tenet), and Gael García Bernal (Y tu mamá también, Old), the 10-episode series is executive-produced and written by Patrick Somerville (Made for Love, Maniac) — who also serves as the series’ showrunner — and directed by Hiro Murai (Atlanta).
The teaser opens on Jeevan (Patel) and Kirsten (Matilda Lawler) at the checkout line of a supermarket at night during the early days of the pandemic. When asked by the cashier if the reason why they are buying so much food is because of “that thing” and if he should go somewhere, Jeevan calmly tells the man to go home before proceeding to push a row of carts through a snowy parking lot. The trailer cuts to alternating scenes presumably before and after the pandemic, with shots of hospitals swarming with frightened masses, burning Ferris wheels, a caravan of horse-drawn campers driving along a riverside road, and an ominous skull-masked figure in what appears to be a wedding gown holding a lit torch.
Station Eleven was originally announced and ordered back in summer of 2019, and to say that the series is being released in a radically different world than the one in which it was originally imagined is a colossal understatement. The series, much like Netflix’s Sweet Tooth or Hulu’s Y: The Last Man, is yet another post-apocalyptic drama whose premise of a worldwide pandemic has taken on an newfound and uncanny resonance in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Filming on the series began in Chicago in January 2020, but due to COVID-19, production was moved to Mississauga, Ontario, and concluded in July of last year.
Station Eleven will premiere on HBO Max on Dec. 16.
