The cultural whodunit moment continues with Netflix’s Thursday Murder Club teaser. The streamer was already leading the atmospheric mystery charge after acquiring Rian Johnson’s Knives Out series, but we can never have too many all-star ensemble detective stories. And this one features an ensemble of actual detectives: Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, and Celia Imrie band together to solve crime in the film, which premieres August 28.
Based on the Richard Osman novel of the same name, Thursday Murder Club follows a group of retirement home pals—ex-spy Elizabeth (Mirren), ex-union activist Ron (Brosnan), ex-psychiatrist Ibrahim (Kingsley) and ex-nurse Joyce (Imrie)—who enjoy solving cold cases for fun. But “[when] an unexplained death occurs on their own doorstep, their casual sleuthing takes a thrilling turn as they find themselves with a real whodunit on their hands,” as the synopsis teases.
In the Thursday Murder Club teaser, the “irrepressible retirees” are a little too enthused about crime: “Now we’ve got a real case to solve, isn’t it wonderful?” Imrie exclaims. “Obviously, R.I.P. and all that.” In addition to the Oscar-winning, Olivier-awarded, action-hero main cast, the film also stars Naomi Ackie, Daniel Mays, Henry Lloyd-Hughes, Tom Ellis, Jonathan Pryce, David Tennant, Paul Freeman, Geoff Bell, Richard E. Grant, and Ingrid Oliver. “This is the finest cast I’ve worked with since Potter,” director Christopher Columbus (Home Alone, Harry Potter And The Sorcerer’s Stone) boasted to Netflix’s Tudum. “They’re just so incredibly well-prepared, and it’s because they do everything. They do theater, they do television, they do film, and they’ve developed those sorts of muscles.”
Of the story, he added, “There’s a wonderful mystery at its core, so mystery fans will be very happy. But thematically it’s interesting that we’ve got four elderly people who are living in a retirement community and who are fascinated by death and murder. They are facing their own demise, yet at the same time they are obsessed with studying cold cases. I fell in love thematically with that. It’s comedic, but it’s also very emotional.”
