Steven Soderbergh has a thing for laundry metaphors. First, he made The Laundromat, a political thriller about the Panama Papers — you know, those documents that exposed how rich people laundered their money in offshore bank accounts to evade taxes and do other fraudulent activities. Now, he’s opting for a different wash cycle. His upcoming self-distributed series, Command Z, is set in a future where a small team must drink a psychedelic laundry detergent and hook their brains up to a washing machine wormhole — while playing the theme song from Mahogany — to secure world peace, or something close to it. More specifically, these steps will ensure the users can reach into the consciousnesses of key figures in the past, influence their decisions, and make the future better. “This is historic, literally,†mission commander Michael Cera tells Roy Wood Jr. and Chloe Radcliffe in the show’s trailer, posted to Soderbergh’s blog, Extension 765. “You will be dipping into the past to make some critical fixes there that will in turn make the future, our present, right now, more livable, fair, and decent for everyone. We’re going back to the moment that I’ve determined was America’s last inflection point: to 2023.†Targets include Succession’s Zoë Winters and Liev Schreiber.
“This very morning, our fearful leader explained that in three days (July 17, for those who don’t want to do the math) we will be ‘dropping’ a series of some sort called Command Z,†a likely fictional Fabrizia del Dongo, co-president, Department of Impact, and person in charge of the IT department at Extension 765, said in a press release. “If I seem hedgy, it’s because A) None of us have seen it; and B) it’s apparently about ninety minutes long, but there are eight episodes of varying length, so is it an actual series or just a movie cut up into pieces?†Whatever it is, Command Z arrives on Extension 765 on July 17, redos pending.