Watch: 'The OA,' Netflix's Secret Sci-Fi Series, Gets Surprise Trailer and Release Friday
Netflix picked up Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij's The OA in 2015, but mum's been the word ever since.
In an unprecedented move, Netflix has debuted a trailer for a super-secret sci-fi original series, The OA, which will be released in eight hour-long episodes this Friday.
Since Netflix picked up rights to Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij's metaphysical series in 2015, the company has kept information under wraps. Marling and Batmanglij, who worked together previously on The Sound of My Voice and The East, co-wrote and produced The OA over the past year.
Despite Netflix's cagey approach, here's what we do know: Marling stars as Prairie Johnson, a woman in her 20s who has returned home after having been missing for seven years. It's unclear why or how she disappeared, but she returns having regained her sight; she was blind when she disappeared.
The official synopsis details the series as "a powerful, mind-bending tale about identity, human connection, and the borders between life and death." So, Room meets The Lovely Bones meets Memento?
Marling had an unorthodox rise to indie success. After leaving her burgeoning career on Wall Street to pursue (by her estimation) a more meaningful life, she made a documentary in Cuba. She returned to the states in 2011 to co-write, co-produce, and star in two microbudget films that year, both of which went on to premiere at Sundance and were picked up by Fox Searchlight. Another Earth, a compelling sci-fi drama which she and director Mike Cahill produced for $100,000, grossed $1.8 million at the box office. Batmanglij's The Sound of My Voice, about a cult which claims to be from the future, was made for $135,000 and also saw theatrical success.
Marling and Batmanglij's new series is just the latest in a slew of outside-the-box original content as Netflix continues to establish itself as a home for fresh-voiced auteurs.
Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner of Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment (producers of Moonlight and 12 Years a Slave) and Michael Sugar of Anonymous Content (True Detective, The Knick) are executive producers of the series.
If you're looking for more information—however enigmatic—head over to The OA's Instagram account.