NEED TO KNOW
- Netflix has released the first trailer for the upcoming drama Steve, starring Cillian Murphy
- The Oscar winner plays a teacher who is struggling with his own mental health while trying to help “students at a last-chance reform school amidst a world that has forsaken them”
- Steve, directed by Tim Mielants, is in select theaters Sept. 19 and streaming Oct. 3 on Netflix
The first trailer for Netflix’s Steve has arrived.
Starring Oscar winner Cillian Murphy in the title role, the upcoming drama, set in the mid-’90s, “is a reimagining of Max Porter’s Sunday Times bestseller Shy,” per an official synopsis from Netflix.
“The film follows a pivotal day in the life of headteacher Steve (Murphy, 49) and his students at a last-chance reform school amidst a world that has forsaken them,” the synopsis adds. “As Steve fights to protect the school’s integrity and impending closure, we witness him grappling with his own mental health.”
The synopsis concludes, “In parallel to Steve’s struggles, we meet Shy (Jay Lycurgo), a troubled teen caught between his past and what lies ahead as he tries to reconcile his inner fragility with his impulse for self-destruction and violence.”
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The trailer opens with Steve being asked to describe himself in three words, to which he responds with a laugh, “Very, very tired.” He is then shown attempting to bond with several of his troubled students, while also turning to substances to help himself cope through it all.
“All I want for you is to just speak to us. ‘Cause you’re not alone, Shy,” he tells Lycurgo’s character,
“What about you, Steve? Let’s talk about you,” Shy tells Steve.
Subsequent scenes show Steve descending further into the trenches, surrounded by chaos from the students as he struggles to latch on to his own coping mechanisms.
“You’re not alone, Shy — that’s the whole point,” Steve says at the end of the trailer.
Directed by Tim Mielants from a script by Porter, Steve is produced by Murphy alongside Alan Moloney and Tina Pawlik, with Porter as executive producer. The movie is set to premiere next month at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Aside from Steve, Murphy, who won the Best Actor Academy Award for his lead role in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer (2023), is also set to appear in the upcoming Peaky Blinders movie.
28 Days Later director Danny Boyle also recently revealed in interviews with IGN and IndieWire that Murphy — who starred as Jim in the zombie franchise’s first film, in 2002 — will appear in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.
Directed by Nia DaCosta, 2026’s The Bone Temple will serve as a sequel to this summer’s 28 Years Later, which hit theaters June 20.
“[Cillian] is in the second one. I shouldn’t give away too much. I’ll get killed,” Boyle, 68, joked to IGN, while referencing the new trilogy crafted by himself and writer Alex Garland.
Steve is in select theaters Sept. 19 and streaming Oct. 3 on Netflix.
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