Trailer for Judd Apatow’s Showbiz Satire ‘The Bubble’

Karen Gillan, Pedro Pascal, David Duchovny, and more play actors holed up in a quarantine hotel while shooting a giant blockbuster.

Iris Apatow, Pedro Pascal, and Leslie Mann screaming

Given that it spread quickly around social media and beyond, you’ll probably have seen the trailer for Netflix’s ‘Cliff Beasts 6’, which landed on Wednesday much to general amusement and some small confusion.

It was, as most people quickly twigged, a meta first look at Judd Apatow’s new movie, ‘The Bubble’, which takes as its basic concept the idea of a group of actors and filmmakers trying to make the best of it in a quarantine hotel while shooting the aforementioned dino-laden blockbuster.

Loosely based on what they’d heard from the cast of ‘Jurassic World: Dominion’ and other movie crews who had had to quarantine while making a movie, Apatow and ‘South Park’ veteran Pam Brady whipped up the story of the cast of ‘Cliff Beasts 6’, who must contend not just with greenscreen work, clashing egos, crazy film executives and long hours, but also being cooped up – albeit in luxurious style – while the production continues.

Naturally, tempers begin to fray, illness (though apparently it’s the “good virus” influenza) spreads and people are either plotting an escape or hooking up like rabbits.

The cast for the movie includes Karen Gillan, Pedro Pascal, David Duchovny, Leslie Man, Iris Apatow, Keegan-Michael Key, Maria Bakalova, Fred Armisen, Rob Delaney, Peter Serafinowicz and Kate McKinnon.

From the look and tone of the trailer, the feel here is a little like TV’s ‘The White Lotus’ crossed with classic Hollywood takedown ‘The Player’ – a bunch of privileged (or desperate) people come into contact with the staff at the hotel, and the latter soon comes to hate the former.

There’s the fact that the studio behind the fake movie is struggling and really needs this latest ‘Cliff Beasts’ to be a hit, while many of the cast seem to be over it and ready to check out – literally trying to escape from a world that has become all about masks, nasal swab tests, zones for cast and crew and, in the words of Harry Trevaldwyn’s crew member Gunther, replacing physical touch with “making sweet eyes at each other” (he’s also part of a gag where he starts to resemble Benedict Cumberbatch through some deepfake technology – or in the movie’s case, some drugged up actors).

It's a different milieu for Apatow, who has usually made movies about people trying cope with life changes or aging through more down-to-earth life experiences, but he’s spent enough time on film sets to know of what he speaks, and he’s certainly got the comedy touch.

Satires like this exist already, though (we already discussed ‘The Player’ as a classic example, and you have the likes of ‘America’s Sweethearts’, so ‘The Bubble’ will need to go some to find new things to say beyond “movie-making is madness” and “actors are demanding”. Still, the pandemic angle has promise for comedy fodder, and there’s a solid cast involved who clearly threw themselves into the roles.

Oh, and in addition to the trailer, there’s also a featurette about ‘Cliff Beasts’ to clue you into the “history” of this “franchise” and the “making” of the current “movie”.