Benedict Cumberbatch Shows the Terrifying Side of Social Media in the Trailer for Brexit
In the last few years, real-world politics have made it difficult for satire and melodrama to keep up. So it was only a matter of time before we started getting based-on-actual-events movies and miniseries about all the rage- and despair-inducing events of 2016, and it looks like we're starting with the Brexit vote.
HBO has dropped the first trailer for Brexit, starring Benedict Cumberbatch with a disturbingly realistic receding hairline. Cumberbatch plays the analyst behind the "Vote Leave" campaign that made aggressive use of social media, anti-immigrant racism, and outright lies about funding the National Health Service. While most Americans are pretty unfamiliar with the specifics about the run-up to that election, there are some frightening similarities to stories we've been hearing a lot in the last year or so in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
A movie about data analysis can be pretty dry, but the trailer makes some promises for fast-pace and rapid-fire editing that hopefully Brexit can live up to. It's also a grim reminder that we may not be far off from a miniseries about Donald Trump's election night. Good luck, everybody.
