An argument can be made that people don’t really have any vested interest in watching movies or TV shows set in and around the Coronavirus pandemic, given the level that it’s impacted our lives over the last twelve months. Michael Bay’s Songbird was widely panned and quickly vanished without a trace after being released straight to VOD, while HBO Max’s crime caper Locked Down has already been completely forgotten about.
However, Judd Apatow’s latest effort, The Bubble, sounds as though it could deliver a fresh and interesting spin on the star-studded ensemble comedy based on the premise and the talent involved. Plot details remain scarce, but there’ve been rumors that the project is loosely inspired by the filming of Jurassic World: Dominion, where the cast and crew were holed up together for months in a hotel due to the rigorous COVID-19 protocols.
The blockbuster dinosaur sequel is a Universal production, which is coincidentally where most of Apatow’s output in recent years has called home, but The Bubble is set up at Netflix. That could indicate that the script touched more than a few nerves, with the story following a group of actors quarantined in a hotel together while shooting a big budget franchise movie.
Apatow has assembled a typically impressive cast for the pic, with Pedro Pascal joining Karen Gillan, David Duchovny, Keegan-Michael Key, Fred Armisen and Borat 2‘s breakout star Maria Bakalova, not to mention the filmmaker’s family members and regular collaborators Leslie Mann and Iris Apatow. Shooting is set to start imminently, and The Bubble sounds as though it could be one of the rare titles with a pandemic setting that actually manages to get people laughing when it arrives on Netflix.