True crime is one of Netflix’s biggest niches, and the streamer has continued to satisfy fans of the genre with its latest trailer drop. Ted Kaczynski, otherwise known as the Unabomber, is the next infamous figure to get a dramatization, this time from Andor director Janus Metz Pedersen. However, the way this movie will approach his story looks to be pretty interesting, and not just because a grown-up Jacob Tremblay is set to star.
Some versions of the story, such as 2021’s Ted K, were a straightforward retelling of Kaczynski’s time on the lam. Unabomber will go deep into his upbringing and especially a controversial time of his life that many have speculated contributed to significant mental distress. Whether that’s accurate, however, might be up to the viewer to decide.
Unabomber Tracks The Legendary Bomber’s Story Across Different Timelines
What makes Unabomber look so unique compared to other adaptations of Kaczynski’s life is the alternating timelines. Unabomber will track Kaczynski’s time as a Harvard University student while also following his time on the run during his infamous bombings.
Kaczynski (Tremblay) is a sheltered 17-year-old child prodigy, attending Harvard on a mathematics scholarship. During his second year at the prestigious university, he is invited to participate in a study by psychologist Henry Murray (Russell Crowe) and his associate, psychoanalyst Christiana Morgan (Annabelle Wallis). The study, while seeming like a simple philosophical debate at first, quickly devolves into something more sinister. 200 hours later, he was never quite the same.
This past experimentation is discovered decades later when Kaczynski is on the run for 16 bomb detonations across 17 years in the United States. Now the FBI, led by agent Joanne Miller (Shailene Woodley), must finally find him.
The New Unabomber Movie Raises New Interesting Questions
Henry Murray and Christiana Morgan in office in UnabomberImage via Netflix
The most compelling part of this approach to Kaczynski’s life story is its focus on his time at Harvard. It raises a major question about what exactly happened during the experiments, a period of the story that is still shrouded in relative mystery. That said, some things can be pieced together.
Murray was an extremely controversial psychologist whose time at Harvard was marred by unethical experiments and even allegations of MKUltra funding, and The Washington Post claims the possibility that the experiment Kaczynski participated in had ties to it, though that remains uncertain. The man himself had conflicting feelings about the experimentation, as he was reported not to believe it affected him that much while also harboring deep distrust of mind control techniques. This is not surprising, given his manifesto was full of contradictions.
Whether this new Unabomber movie will approach these ideas in an interesting or exploitative way remains to be seen. Yet, the fact that they do so at all could possibly encourage a new wave of interest in looking into the Unabomber case with fresh eyes, as Kaczynski’s story is truly a fascinatingly sad one.
Unabomber releases on Netflix on September 25th.
Release Date
September 25, 2026
Director
Janus Metz
Writers
Nelson Greaves, Sam Chalsen
Producers
Sophie Cassidy
Cast
Jacob Tremblay
Ted Kaczynski
Shailene Woodley
Joanne Miller
Annabelle Wallis
Christiana Morgan