I'm just not sure there's ever been a television story more custom-tailored for me than "a chess prodigy is so good at chess that she loses her freaking mind and it's styled like a surreal prestige thriller". Sound good to you, too? Good. Then feast your eyes on the official trailer for Netflix's limited series The Queen's Gambit.
Based on the novel by Walter Tevis (whose The Hustler series of books have also yielded sharp screen works on gifts versus obsessions), Anya Taylor-Joy stars as our lead chess prodigy who shatters through the glass walls of the male-dominated competitive chess circuit, while sliding further and further into self-destructive tendencies and mental breakdowns. Scott Frank (Logan) writes and directs the seven-episode limited series, and judging by the trippy, sharp visuals we see in this trailer, he's got quite the barn-burner on his hand — and Taylor-Joy might force the Television Academy into a checkmate.
Check out the trailer, poster, and official synopsis for The Queen's Gambit below. The limited series comes to Netflix October 23. For more on Taylor-Joy, here's the intel on her potential starring role in Furiosa.
Based on the novel by Walter Tevis, the Netflix limited series drama THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT is a coming-of-age story that explores the true cost of genius. Abandoned and entrusted to a Kentucky orphanage in the late 1950s, Beth Harmon (Anya Taylor-Joy) discovers an astonishing talent for chess while developing an addiction to tranquilizers provided by the state as a sedative for the children. Haunted by her personal demons and fueled by a cocktail of narcotics and obsession, Beth transforms into an impressively skilled and glamorous outcast while determined to conquer the traditional boundaries established in the male-dominated world of competitive chess. The series is directed and written by two-time Academy Award nominee Scott Frank and executive produced by Frank, William Horberg and Allan Scott, who also co-created the series. THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT stars Anya Taylor-Joy, Marielle Heller, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Moses Ingram, Harry Melling and Bill Camp.