DARK MATTER Trailer (2024) Jennifer Connelly, Joel Edgerton

DARK MATTER Trailer (2024) Jennifer Connelly, Joel Edgerton

DARK MATTER Trailer (2024) Jennifer Connelly, Joel Edgerton, Alice Braga
© 2024 - Apple TV+

Thoughtful science fiction concepts grounded in emotional experiences drive Dark Matter's narrative.
Dark Matter's story structure acts as a genius tool, maintaining suspense and intrigue with dual plotlines.
The outstanding acting, particularly by Joel Edgerton, brings depth and complexity to character identities.
Loving science fiction can mean many different things. The genre has an infinite number of modes, ranging from the smallest of speculative changes to space-faring epics in worlds we hardly recognize, and creatives can use that framework to tell any kind of story. Even if someone appreciates the full range, everyone has an ideal mode; not just the nature of the story, but the way it's told, and the kinds of questions it explores. Their sci-fi happy place. Dark Matter hits that spot for me.

Dark Matter 2024 TV Series Poster
ScreenRant logo
Based on his novel of the same name, Dark Matter is a sci-fi drama-thriller television series created for Apple TV+ by Blake Crouch. The series follows a physicist who is kidnapped and thrown into an alternate reality where he witnesses one potential path his life could have taken. However, he learns that the lives of his family are in jeopardy by an alternate version of himself.

Pros
Thoughtful approach to its science-fiction concepts
Always grounds its ideas in the characters' emotional experiences
Often plays like a gripping thriller
Lets its cast shine, especially a magnetic Joel Edgerton
It's heady and thoughtful, structured like a thriller but unafraid to sometimes challenge the audience. It has a knack for asking the right questions about the subjects it wants to explore, and is more interested in teasing them out than providing easy answers. It embraces the means of its medium to explore its themes, and treats the actors like its greatest special effect. The scope of its story is intellectually grand but dramatically quite personal. It comes closest to the feeling of watching Dark as anything I've seen since.

Dark Matter is based on the 2016 novel of the same name by Blake Crouch, who is also the showrunner – he himself has claimed this adaptation is better than the source material. I haven't read it, and so can't comment. But I can say, having seen the full, nine-episode season, that I came away convinced that TV was the ideal way to tell this story.

Dark Matter's Story Structure Is Its Smartest Decision
The show can have its cake and eat it, too
Staying limited to what's been revealed so far, the premise is as follows: Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton) begins the show with a what if? moment. He teaches physics at a local university, but when his old friend Ryan (Jimmi Simpson) continues his rise to prominence by winning a prestigious science prize, we get the sense he could've been much more. Instead, his priority has been his loving marriage to Daniela (Jennifer Connelly) and home life with their teenage son, Charlie (Oakes Fegley). He might not be unhappy, exactly, but we've caught Jason at a time of wondering what might've been.

Then he gets abducted. After a strange sequence of events and an even stranger conversation with his masked assailant, he is drugged unconscious. When he wakes, he's in some facility he doesn't recognize, surrounded by people he's never met or hasn't seen in years acting like they have shared history. What they say about his life isn't what he remembers to be true. Meanwhile, his assailant walks unmasked into Jason's home and is greeted with recognition. He is another Jason – one who reached his what if? moment earlier and had the scientific means to do something about it.

Crouch's show is as interested in the impact of its ideas on its characters as in the intellectual concepts themselves, and the same is true for the audience experience. To feel confused is, sometimes, to empathize with a certain character, even from our more privileged perspective.

Jason2 discovered a way to traverse the infinite number of parallel realities that branch each time we make a decision, and found a world where he didn't let Daniela go to pursue his research. He then forced upon Jason1 an opportunity to trade lives. Only, the abductee gets to experience the world where he's a successful scientist as a dissociative nightmare. Dark Matter then follows two separate plotlines: Jason1's desperate struggle to find out what happened and return home, and Jason2's delicate performance of a life he hasn't lived, where the smallest mistake could turn trust into suspicion.

This structure is its genius. Dark Matter plays out like two different kinds of thriller, one propulsive and mysterious, the other insidious and paranoid. Information of all kinds is treated as a precious commodity, doled out to us slowly. We have time to mull over what each new wrinkle in the mechanics of the multiverse means, both narratively and thematically. When a new difference between the Jasons is revealed, it both sheds light on the show's exploration of identity and foreshadows trouble for the impostor.

Confusion is similarly wielded as a tool. While the show isn't overly opaque, close guarding of information sometimes means we don't fully understand what we're seeing when we see it. This uncertainty is very clearly intentional. Crouch's show is as interested in the impact of its ideas on its characters as in the intellectual concepts themselves, and the same is true for the audience's experience. To feel confused is, sometimes, to empathize with a certain character, even from our more privileged perspective. And in Dark Matter, empathy is the path to understanding.

Dark Matter (2024)
Drama
Sci-Fi
Thriller
Cast
Joel Edgerton , Jennifer Connelly , Alice Braga , Jimmi Simpson , Oakes Fegley , Dayo Okeniyi
Release Date
May 8, 2024
Seasons
1
Writers
Blake Crouch
Directors
Jakob Verbruggen
Creator(s)
Blake Crouch
Where To Watch
Apple TV+

Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Connelly’s Apple TV+ sci-fi series Dark Matter has unveiled trailer.

The May-launching show is based on Blake Crouch’s novel. Hailed as one of the best sci-fi novels of the decade, it follows Jason Dessen (played by Edgerton), a physicist, professor and family man who — one night while walking home on the streets of Chicago — is abducted into an alternate version of his life. Wonder quickly turns to nightmare when he tries to return to his reality amid the mind-bending landscape of lives he could have lived.

The series also stars Alice Braga, Jimmi Simpson, Dayo Okeniyi and Oakes Fegley.

It joins the likes of Silo, Foundation and Severance in Apple TV+’s growing roster of sci-fi series.

Crouch serves as creator, executive producer, showrunner and writer alongside executive producers Matt Tolmach and David Manpearl for Matt Tolmach Productions. Edgerton also serves as executive producer. Dark Matter is produced for Apple TV+ by Sony Pictures Television.
"What if the person that abducted me is me?" Apple TV has unveiled the first official trailer for their next new sci-fi series titled Dark Matter, adapted from the acclaimed book of the same name by Blake Crouch. Crouch (who also created the series "Good Behavior") is adapting and showrunning this new series, which is about a physicist who is kidnapped and sent to a parallel universe where another version of his life unfolds because of a different choice he made years previously. The story draws on the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics which posits that every possible outcome of every decision creates a new universe or world that runs parallel to our own. Joel Edgerton stars as a man abducted into an alternate version of his life. Amid the mind-bending landscape of lives he could've lived, he embarks on a harrowing journey to get back to his true family and save them from a most terrifying foe: himself. Also starring Jennifer Connelly, Alice Braga, Jimmi Simpson, Dayo Okeniyi, & Amanda Brugel. This kind of reminds me of Richard Ayoade's The Double. Yet another multiverse sci-fi concept, with some extra emotional twists. Check it out.

Here's the first official trailer (+ poster) for Apple TV+'s series Dark Matter, direct from YouTube:

Dark Matter Series Trailer

Dark Matter Series Poster

Hailed as one of the best sci-fi novels of the decade, Dark Matter is a story about the road not taken. The series will follow Jason Dessen (played by Joel Edgerton), a physicist, professor and family man who — one night while walking home on the streets of Chicago — is abducted into an alternate version of his life. Wonder quickly turns to nightmare when he tries to return to his reality amid the mind-bending landscape of lives he could have lived. In this labyrinth of realities, he embarks on a harrowing journey to get back to his true family and save them from the most terrifying, unbeatable foe imaginable: himself. Dark Matter is a series created and showrun by author Blake Crouch, who also created & wrote the series "Wayward Pines" & "Good Behavior". Writing by Couch, Jacquelyn Ben-Zekry, Megan McDonnell, Ihuoma Ofordire. Adapted from Couch's book of the same name published in 2016. Featuring episodes directed by Jakob Verbruggen, Celine Held, Logan George, Roxann Dawson, & Alik Sakharov. It's executive produced by Blake Crouch, Matt Tolmach, David Manpearl, Don Kurt, Jakob Verbruggen, & Joel Edgerton. Apple will debut Dark Matter streaming on Apple TV+ starting May 8th, 2024 coming soon. Who's interested? Look good?
Thoughtful science fiction concepts grounded in emotional experiences drive Dark Matter's narrative.
Dark Matter's story structure acts as a genius tool, maintaining suspense and intrigue with dual plotlines.
The outstanding acting, particularly by Joel Edgerton, brings depth and complexity to character identities.
Loving science fiction can mean many different things. The genre has an infinite number of modes, ranging from the smallest of speculative changes to space-faring epics in worlds we hardly recognize, and creatives can use that framework to tell any kind of story. Even if someone appreciates the full range, everyone has an ideal mode; not just the nature of the story, but the way it's told, and the kinds of questions it explores. Their sci-fi happy place. Dark Matter hits that spot for me.

Dark Matter 2024 TV Series Poster
ScreenRant logo
Based on his novel of the same name, Dark Matter is a sci-fi drama-thriller television series created for Apple TV+ by Blake Crouch. The series follows a physicist who is kidnapped and thrown into an alternate reality where he witnesses one potential path his life could have taken. However, he learns that the lives of his family are in jeopardy by an alternate version of himself.

Pros
Thoughtful approach to its science-fiction concepts
Always grounds its ideas in the characters' emotional experiences
Often plays like a gripping thriller
Lets its cast shine, especially a magnetic Joel Edgerton
It's heady and thoughtful, structured like a thriller but unafraid to sometimes challenge the audience. It has a knack for asking the right questions about the subjects it wants to explore, and is more interested in teasing them out than providing easy answers. It embraces the means of its medium to explore its themes, and treats the actors like its greatest special effect. The scope of its story is intellectually grand but dramatically quite personal. It comes closest to the feeling of watching Dark as anything I've seen since.

Dark Matter is based on the 2016 novel of the same name by Blake Crouch, who is also the showrunner – he himself has claimed this adaptation is better than the source material. I haven't read it, and so can't comment. But I can say, having seen the full, nine-episode season, that I came away convinced that TV was the ideal way to tell this story.

Dark Matter's Story Structure Is Its Smartest Decision
The show can have its cake and eat it, too
Staying limited to what's been revealed so far, the premise is as follows: Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton) begins the show with a what if? moment. He teaches physics at a local university, but when his old friend Ryan (Jimmi Simpson) continues his rise to prominence by winning a prestigious science prize, we get the sense he could've been much more. Instead, his priority has been his loving marriage to Daniela (Jennifer Connelly) and home life with their teenage son, Charlie (Oakes Fegley). He might not be unhappy, exactly, but we've caught Jason at a time of wondering what might've been.

Then he gets abducted. After a strange sequence of events and an even stranger conversation with his masked assailant, he is drugged unconscious. When he wakes, he's in some facility he doesn't recognize, surrounded by people he's never met or hasn't seen in years acting like they have shared history. What they say about his life isn't what he remembers to be true. Meanwhile, his assailant walks unmasked into Jason's home and is greeted with recognition. He is another Jason – one who reached his what if? moment earlier and had the scientific means to do something about it.

Crouch's show is as interested in the impact of its ideas on its characters as in the intellectual concepts themselves, and the same is true for the audience experience. To feel confused is, sometimes, to empathize with a certain character, even from our more privileged perspective.

Jason2 discovered a way to traverse the infinite number of parallel realities that branch each time we make a decision, and found a world where he didn't let Daniela go to pursue his research. He then forced upon Jason1 an opportunity to trade lives. Only, the abductee gets to experience the world where he's a successful scientist as a dissociative nightmare. Dark Matter then follows two separate plotlines: Jason1's desperate struggle to find out what happened and return home, and Jason2's delicate performance of a life he hasn't lived, where the smallest mistake could turn trust into suspicion.

This structure is its genius. Dark Matter plays out like two different kinds of thriller, one propulsive and mysterious, the other insidious and paranoid. Information of all kinds is treated as a precious commodity, doled out to us slowly. We have time to mull over what each new wrinkle in the mechanics of the multiverse means, both narratively and thematically. When a new difference between the Jasons is revealed, it both sheds light on the show's exploration of identity and foreshadows trouble for the impostor.

Confusion is similarly wielded as a tool. While the show isn't overly opaque, close guarding of information sometimes means we don't fully understand what we're seeing when we see it. This uncertainty is very clearly intentional. Crouch's show is as interested in the impact of its ideas on its characters as in the intellectual concepts themselves, and the same is true for the audience's experience. To feel confused is, sometimes, to empathize with a certain character, even from our more privileged perspective. And in Dark Matter, empathy is the path to understanding.

Dark Matter (2024)
Drama
Sci-Fi
Thriller
Cast
Joel Edgerton , Jennifer Connelly , Alice Braga , Jimmi Simpson , Oakes Fegley , Dayo Okeniyi
Release Date
May 8, 2024
Seasons
1
Writers
Blake Crouch
Directors
Jakob Verbruggen
Creator(s)
Blake Crouch
Where To Watch
Apple TV+
The multiverse has infinite realities is a tagline that would probably fit snugly within a Marvel movie. But the same ideas apply and work perfectly well within the confines of the more adult drama, “Dark Matter,” a new sci-fi mindbender from Apple TV+.

Today, Apple unveiled the trailer for its new sci-fi thriller series starring Joel Edgerton alongside Academy Award winner Jennifer Connelly, Alice Braga, Jimmi Simpson, Dayo Okeniyi, and Oakes Fegley. Based on the acclaimed book by New York Times bestselling author Blake Crouch, the new, nine-episode Apple Original series will premiere globally on Apple TV+ with the first two episodes on Wednesday, May 8, followed by one new episode every Wednesday through June 26, 2024.

READ MORE: The 70 Most Anticipated TV Shows & Mini-Series Of 2024

Created by Blake Crouch, who also serves as the executive producer and writer of most episodes, the series centers on a Chicago physicist (Edgerton) who is warped into an alternate version of his life, leaving him to fight to return to his life to prevent the alternate version of himself from harming his family.

Here’s the official synopsis:

Hailed as one of the best sci-fi novels of the decade, “Dark Matter” is a story about the road not taken. The series will follow Jason Dessen (played by Edgerton), a physicist, professor, and family man who — one night while walking home on the streets of Chicago — is abducted into an alternate version of his life. Wonder quickly turns into a nightmare when he tries to return to his reality amid the mind-bending landscape of lives he could have lived. In this labyrinth of realities, he embarks on a harrowing journey to return to his true family and save them from the most terrifying, unbeatable foe imaginable: himself.

Additional executive producers on the series include Matt Tolmach (“The Amazing Spider-Man”) and David Manpearl for Matt Tolmach Productions. Edgerton also serves as executive producer. “Dark Matter” is produced for Apple TV+ by Sony Pictures Television.

Directors on the series include Jakob Verbruggen, Logan George & Celine Held, Alik Sakharov, and Roxann Dawson. “Dark Matter” premieres May 8, 2024 on Apple TV. Watch the first trailer below.
Dark Matter is Apple TV+'s latest venture into the realm of sci-fi.
The new show stars Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Connelly.
The series will debut on May 8, 2024.
Apple TV+ has just unveiled the trailer for Dark Matter, a science fiction thriller series adapted from Blake Crouch's critically acclaimed novel. The limited series, spanning nine episodes, features a star-studded cast including Joel Edgerton, Jennifer Connelly, Alice Braga, Jimmi Simpson, Dayo Okeniyi, and Oakes Fegley. Scheduled for a global premiere on May 8, 2024, the show will launch its first two episodes on Apple TV+, with subsequent episodes to be released weekly every Wednesday until June 26. The series is a significant addition to Apple TV+'s growing repertoire of science fiction productions, alongside other hits like For All Mankind, Silo and Foundation.

Dark Matter introduces us to Jason Dessen (Edgerton), a college physics professor in Chicago who once had the potential for a ground-breaking research career. Opting instead for a content family life with his wife and son, Dessen's ordinary existence is upended one night following an abduction by a masked stranger. He awakens to find himself in an alternate reality where his life has changed significantly: he's unmarried, childless, and has achieved professional success.

What Is 'Dark Matter' About?
This alternate reality is rooted in the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, suggesting the existence of nearly infinite parallel worlds, each resulting from the various decisions we make. Dessen embarks on a quest to understand the physics of his new reality and seeks a way to return to his own universe and the family he loves. The series delves into themes of identity, choice, and the nature of reality, exploring the hypothesis that multiple versions of our universe exist, each containing different outcomes of our lives.

Blake Crouch, the novel's author, serves as executive producer, showrunner, and writer, alongside executive producers Matt Tolmach and David Manpearl for Matt Tolmach Productions, with Joel Edgerton also executive producing. Produced for Apple TV+ by Sony Pictures Television, the series promises a blend of emotional depth and speculative science fiction, focusing on the philosophical implications of its premise as much as on its narrative drive. The series is poised to offer viewers a thought-provoking exploration of the paths not taken and the complexities of reality and identity. With its compelling cast and innovative storytelling, Dark Matter is set to be another superb addition to Apple TV+'s immense catalog of thought-provoking sci-fi programming.

Dark Matter will make its worldwide premiere on Apple TV+ on May 8, 2024. The show will launch with its first two episodes, with subsequent episodes releasing every Wednesday until June 26.

Dark Matter 2024 TV Show Poster
Dark Matter (2024)
Drama
Sci-Fi
Thriller
A man is abducted into an alternate version of his life. Amid the mind-bending landscape of lives he could've lived, he embarks on a harrowing journey to get back to his true family and save them from a most terrifying foe: himself.

Release Date
May 8, 2024
Cast
Joel Edgerton , Jennifer Connelly , Alice Braga , Jimmi Simpson , Oakes Fegley , Dayo Okeniyi
Main Genre
Sci-Fi
Seasons
1
Creator(s)
Blake Crouch
Writers
Blake Crouch
Directors
Jakob Verbruggen