Judgment Day is almost upon us. In just a few weeks, Netflix's Terminator Zero anime series will debut and Skynet will become self-aware, leading to an all-out war between humanity and machines.
With Terminator Zero set to debut on August 29, Netflix has finally shared the official trailer for the highly anticipated series. It offers us our most in-depth look yet at the upcoming anime series from Production I.Gand Skydance Productions.
The trailer begins with a horrifying depiction of Judgment Day as the nuclear bombs begin to fall. We're quickly introduced to Malcolm Lee, a genius computer programmer and father of three who is haunted by prophetic nightmares of an apocalyptic future. Looking for a way to prevent Skynet's nuclear devastation, Malcom creates his own advanced AI, Kokoro. Endowed with the same power as Skynet, Kokoro must calculate if human beings are worth saving or if they are the plague that Skynet believes them to be.
From there, the trailer delves into action-packed chaos as we see Timothy Olymphant's Terminator hunt down Malcolm and his family. We also see Sonoya Mizuno's character, Eiko, a resistance fighter sent back in time to stop Malcolm from launching Kokoru, also taking on the Terminator.
The trailer does a good job of summarizing what the series is all about, but just in case, here's Netflix's official synopsis for Terminator Zero:
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.
Caught between the future and this past is a soldier sent back in time to change the fate of humanity. She arrives in 1997 to protect a scientist named Malcolm Lee who works to launch a new AI system designed to compete with Skynet’s impending attack on humanity. As Malcolm navigates the moral complexities of his creation, he’s hunted by an unrelenting assassin from the future, which forever alters the fate of his three children.
Terminator Zero is created and executive produced by Mattson Tomlin (The Batman II). It's directed by Masahi Kudo at animation studios Production I.G (Ghost in the Shell, Kaiju No. 8) with collaboration from Skydance Television. The series is set to premiere on Netflix on August 29, 2024; however, fans attending Anime NYC later this month will have the chance to catch an early premiere at the special panel.