Netflix released the first official trailer for showrunner Mattson Tomlin's animated series Terminator Zero earlier today. Based on James Cameron’s Terminator universe, the show stars Timothy Olyphant in the titular voice role and explores the fight for humanity's survival against the AI system Skynet. Netflix's official logline reads thus: “Caught between the future and this past is a soldier (voiced by Sonoya Mizuno) sent back in time to change the fate of humanity. She arrives in 1997 to protect a scientist named Malcolm Lee (André Holland) who works to launch a new AI system (Rosario Dawson) designed to compete with Skynet’s impending attack on humanity. As Malcolm navigates the moral complexities of his creation, he is hunted by an unrelenting assassin from the future which forever alters the fate of his three children." The plot juggles multiple timelines: "2022: A future war has raged for decades between the few human survivors and an endless army of machines. 1997: The AI known as Skynet gained self-awareness and began its war against humanity.”
Earlier, showrunner Tomlin described its titular character as a relentless killing machine, as in Cameron's 1984 film, Terminator, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The show also stars Ann Dowd as The Prophet, who guides the resistance.
Japanese animator Masashi Kudo is the director of the show. Production IG, the studio behind the Ghost in the Shell and FLCL franchises, is the animation company associated with the series.
Terminator Zero is slated to release on August 29 on Netflix.
