STAR On Disney+, which is set to launch in the UK tomorrow, has announced two more shows which will join the line-up from March – Kat Dennings Hulu Series ‘Dollface‘ and short-lived FOX sci-fi drama ‘NeXt‘.
‘Dollface’ follows Jules (Kat Dennings), a young woman with a very vivid imagination who, after being dumped by her longtime boyfriend, must rekindle the female friendships that she let fall by the wayside while she focused on romance. And even though one girls’ night out might not solve all of their issues, Jules tries to find a balance that includes making her friends feel valued.
The series also stars Brenda Song (‘Station 19’, ‘Pure Genius’) as Madison Maxwell, a PR expert and Jules’ best friend from college who she recently reconnects with; Shay Mitchell (‘Pretty Little Liars’, ‘You’) as Stella Cole, Jules’ other best friend from college who she recently reconnects with; And Esther Povitsky (‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’, ‘Alone Together’) as Izzy Levine, one of Jules’ co-workers at Woöm who becomes friends with her. Dennings exec produces alongside creator/writer Jordan Weiss (‘Harley Quinn’) and showrunner Ira Ungerleider (‘Angie Tribeca’, ‘Friends’).
From creator and executive producer Manny Coto (’24: Legacy’) and executive producers and directors John Requa and Glenn Ficarra (‘This Is Us’), ‘neXt‘ is a propulsive, fact-based thriller about the emergence of a deadly, rogue artificial intelligence, a series that asks us to look closely not only at our relationship to technology, but to one another.
Silicon Valley pioneer Paul LeBlanc (Emmy Award nominee John Slattery, ‘Mad Men’, ‘Veep’) built a fortune and legacy on the world-changing innovations he dreamed up, while ignoring and alienating the people around him, including his own daughter, Abby (Elizabeth Cappucino, ‘Jessica Jones’, ‘Deception’), and his short-sighted younger brother, Ted (Jason Butler Harner, ‘Ozark’, ‘Ray Donovan’), who now runs Paul’s company. After discovering that one of his own creations – a powerful A.I. called neXt – might spell doom for humankind, Paul tried to shutter the project, only to be kicked out of the company by his own brother, leaving him with nothing but mounting dread about the fate of the world. When a series of unsettling tech mishaps points to a potential worldwide crisis, LeBlanc joins forces with Special Agent Shea Salazar (Fernanda Andrade, ‘The First’, ‘Here and Now’).
Now, LeBlanc and Salazar are the only ones standing in the way of a potential global catastrophe, fighting an emergent superintelligence that, instead of launching missiles, will deploy the immense knowledge it has gleaned from the data all around us to recruit allies, turn people against each other and eliminate obstacles to its own survival and growth.
The drama was cancelled after one season, although I’m told it is a fairly self-contained story, so works as a limited series.
‘Dollface‘ is set to premiere Friday, 5th March 2021, with ‘NeXt‘ premiering Friday, 12th March 2021, both via STAR on Disney+ UK.