Maniac on Netflix: Everything We Know

Maniac. Photo: Michele K. Short / Netflix

Netflix has a new dark, mind-bending miniseries on the way.

Maniac is an upcoming, star-studded Netflix series. Set in a world somewhat like our world, in a time quite similar to our time, it tells the stories of two strangers drawn to the late stages of a mysterious pharmaceutical trial, each for their own reasons.

Annie is disaffected and aimless, fixated on broken relationships with her mother and her sister; Owen, the fifth son of wealthy New York industrialists, has struggled his whole life with a disputed diagnosis of schizophrenia.

Neither of their lives have turned out quite right, and the promise of a new, radical kind of pharmaceutical treatment draws them and ten other strangers to the facilities of Neberdine Pharmaceutical and Biotech for a three-day drug trial that will, they’re assured, with no complications or side-effects whatsoever, solve all of their problems, permanently.

Things do not go as planned.

Emma Stone in Maniac. Image: Michele K. Short / Netflix

The Backstory

Based on a Norwegian show of the same name, Cary Fukunaga directs the new limited series. Fukunaga has directed many successful movies, but he became a household name for directing Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in the first season of True Detective. Fukunaga won an Emmy for his work on the series.

Novelist and short story writer Patrick Somerville wrote all 10 episodes of the new series.

Jonah Hill, Emma Stone, and Fukunaga are all serving as executive producers on the series.

The original series is a dark comedy starring comedian Espen Lervaag as a man in a mental hospital who has an exciting life of adventure and romance-in his head. He may be crazy or he may just be having a good time.

All episodes of the original 2015 series are currently streaming on Netflix.