If the fictional trailer is banned, what’s this?

The Studio trailer

(Image credit: Apple TV+)

Part of the many promises of the streaming era was that as self-determining platforms, big streamers wouldn’t necessarily have to cave to the sorts of TV rating pressures that used to plague big shows. This was long HBO’s advantage, after all, and made it famous for its use of nudity and profanity – and where zombies are concerned, it’s done some pretty bold work on The Last of Us.

While that journey towards anything-goes material hasn’t necessarily manifested for every other platform, Apple TV+ just showed that it’s pretty willing to cross some surprising lines in a hilarious new trailer for the upcoming comedy The Studio. It features nothing less than a zombie spreading his cheeks and violently defecating on Josh Hutcherson.

I thought about quite a few ways of writing that sentence, unsurprisingly – because I wouldn’t have guessed Apple TV+ would have the gumption to go there, but go there it did. The context? A fictional movie being promoted by the studio that Seth Rogen’s character has stepped in to run in the series.

It’s called Duhpocalypse, and is clearly designed to seem as stupid and low-effort as possible, but will provide the fertile ground for a whole heap of gags. In the trailer, we zoom out to a boardroom where the fake movie’s star, Johnny Knoxville, is attempting to remain intellectual about what he sees as a very important film.

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The rest of the room, meanwhile, is focussed on the problem of how to encourage movie theatres to actually play such an outrageous trailer, including the all-important diarrhoea that Rogen insists cannot be cut from the teaser. It’s a hilariously tongue-in-cheek version of what these rooms are actually like to negotiate in. Plus, it’s cannily filmed in a shakycam first-person view that really looks very immersive.

That all adds up to a feeling of real anticipation on my end – right from its first teaser, it’s looked like frenetic, funny stuff, with a cast list that beggars belief. So, you can bet your bottom dollar that I’ll be tuning in when it starts on 26 March. I’m in the camp that believes Apple TV+ is the best streaming service on the market, after all, so I’m hardly going to ignore such a big addition.