Paramount Movies unveiled today a trailer for Wifelike, an upcoming sci-fi thriller starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers (Vikings). Set in the near future, the story centers around a time when society normalized android-like artificial humans who are programmed to behave like people who have passed away. The movie is set to have a simultaneous theater and digital premiere next month.

It's no surprise that the trailer for Wifelike plays out much like an episode of Black Mirror, with the premise of merging technology and the breach of cultural barriers. You just know there’s something evil lurking in the background, though. In this case, the artificial wives that are shown instantly raise a lot of red flags, to the point that even people who buy them feel uncertain about their purchase. It only seems to get worse as a rebel revolution mounts up in order to disturb the new status quo and reveal what secrets lie behind the creation of artificial humans.

In addition, the trailer reveals that Wifelike costar Elena Kampouris (Jupiter’s Legacy) took on a heck of a challenge with this role: The artificial human that poses as Rhys Meyer’s character’s late wife acts pretty much like a robot, and yet Kampouris’ performance had to find moments in which her humanity shows through – which hopefully gets easier to do as the story progresses and the character starts to have access to memories she shouldn’t have. Either way, it looks like a fun watch.

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Image via Paramount

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Wifelike is written and directed by James Bird, who previously helmed Luke Hemsworth-led We Are Boats and 2019’s The Circuit. Bird made his feature film debut with Eat Spirit Eat, a whimsical and acclaimed comedy that leaned on meta-humor to tell a story about making movies.

The sci-fi thriller also stars Doron Bell (Snowpiercer), Agam Darshi (The Flash), Sara Sampaio (Crisis), Alix Villaret (Doll Face), Fletcher Donovan (A Million Little Things), CJ Perry (Cosmic Sin), and Stephen Lobo (Nancy Drew).

Wifelike premieres in select theaters, on digital, and on-demand on August 12. You can watch the trailer below:

Check out the official synopsis here:

A grieving detective in the near-future (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) hunts down criminals who trade artificial humans on the black market. In the fight to end AI exploitation, an underground resistance attempts to infiltrate him by sabotaging the programming of the artificial human assigned as his companion (Elena Kampouris) to behave like his late wife. She begins to question her reality as memories of a past life begin to surface in a world where nothing is as it seems.