The Leftovers Teaser Trailer Steals A Baby

By Brent McKnight | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

Because the Left Behind adaptations with Kirk Cameron weren’t mainstream enough, someone is remaking it with Nicolas Cage. But that’s not all of the Rapture-themed entertainment we’re going to get this year. Damon Lindelof and HBO have teamed up to bring us The Leftovers, and the premium cable channel has released the first full teaser for the show, which will premiere this summer.

Based on Tom Perrotta’s novel of the same name, The Leftovers takes place after the Rapture, which in the Christian tradition is when all of the good, kind, and Godly people of Earth get sucked up to Heaven and all of the rest of us are left here to wallow in our own filth and fend for ourselves. The event played a large role in 2013 films This is the End and Rapture-palooza. For the sake of concise storytelling, The Leftovers focuses on Mapleton, a small town trying to cope with the disaster and move forward. Kevin Garvey, played by Justin Theroux, plays the new mayor. Wouldn’t you know it, right when you take office you have to deal with the Rapture.

Clocking in at 45 seconds, this teaser doesn’t reveal much in the way of plot or details, but it should be enough to intrigue you. Though it starts off sounding like a PSA, most of the run time is spent driving home just how big a number two percent of the global population actually is. That’s roughly 140 million folks who just up and vanish, and while that may not sound like too much proportionally, but that’s certainly enough of a dent to cause one hell of a ruckus.

Three years after the “Sudden Departure,” there are cults, false prophets, and all manner of chaos. You catch a glimpse of this with all of those people dressed in head to toe white and walking in a straight line—never trust anyone who wears clothes that crisp and clean, there’s bound to be something off about them—who sound like they are a group called “The Guilty Remnant” in the novel. If nothing else, it is going to be interesting to see the scope and scale of the aftermath. While that is a significant number, it doesn’t seem like it is quite enough to create worldwide post-apocalyptic chaos. It’ll change things for sure, but from the look of this video, the larger social structures are all still in place, though just a little different and twisted.

The Leftovers debuts on Sunday, June 15, which means it will eventually be teamed up with the sex-fueled vampires of True Blood, which seems like an interesting pairing. The show also stars Liv Tyler, Amy Brenneman, Christopher Eccleston, and Ann Dowd, and Peter Berg (Battleship) will direct.

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