We finally know what Josh Hutcherson has been doing since The Hunger Games: getting really good at video games. Hutcherson has teamed up with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg for a new Hulu sci-fi comedy series called Future Man, which dropped its first trailer Thursday morning after a behind-the-scenes teaser involving opossums and futuristic guns bewildered folks at San Diego Comic-Con in July. With a better look, Future Man somehow looks like a combination of Back to the Future, The Last Starfighter, and The World’s End.
Future Man follows a sad-sack janitor named Josh (Hutcherson), who finds himself recruited by soldiers from the future after he becomes the first person to successfully beat a certain video game. (Thankfully, the show actually cops to ripping off The Last Starfighter from the jump: ”It’s the exact same plot as the movie,” Hutcherson’s character notes, eyes rolling.) The mission from his time-traveling companions: Stop a pioneering doctor (Keith David) from finding the cure for herpes, because that would apparently bring an end to humanity. (One more reminder that this is a series from Rogen and Goldberg.) Josh, reluctant to straight-up kill someone, opts to travel back in time instead—to either convince the doctor to abandon his research or to stop him from getting herpes in the first place, even if it means stealing his girl.
Rogen and Goldberg have already cut their TV-making teeth with AMC’s Preacher, an entertaining niche show that combines the duo’s penchant for irreverent, occasionally surreal humor with unrepentant gore and stylish fight sequences. Future Man appears to be made in a similar though probably less gory mold, and while it’s definitely not going to be the kind of prestige breakthrough Hulu had with The Handmaid’s Tale, it still looks like a good time. Future Man drops on November 14.
