It was already announced earlier this year that Phil Lord and Chris Miller would be taking their talents to Apple TV+ to create a murder mystery comedy show titled The Afterparty. That was already exciting enough. Now they’ve added a stacked cast that includes Tiffany Haddish, Dave Franco and Ilana Glazer, and anticipation is only growing.
The series will take a Rashomon-like approach to the murder mystery genre, focusing on the events of a murder at a high school reunion afterparty. Over the course of eight episodes, each of the characters at the centre of the story will tell their version of events to Haddish’s Detective Danner and her partner, Detective Culp, played by John Early.
Ben Schwartz, Ike Barinholtz, Zoë Chao, and Sam Richardson are also a part of the cast, with everyone playing a high school alumni with a quirk. For example, Franco’s character was previously a dork during his adolescence, but is now a famous pop star, while Richardson’s character is an escape room designer who still pines for an old high school sweetheart.
This was already shaping up to be really fun, and the show only looks more exciting with that impressive cast. It’s no surprise a bunch of names would be excited to work with Lord and Miller on the kind of fun premise The Afterparty promises. Everyone involved can probably thank Knives Out too, whose box office and critical success surely proved to Apple there was a market for a quirky murder mystery.
Although the show is still a ways away from premiering, it’s shaping up to potentially be the series that may define Apple TV+. Netflix needed early hits like House Of Cards and Orange Is The New Black to establish itself, and The Afterparty sounds like the kind of thing that will draw new subscribers and get social media discussion going.
Apple could also take advantage of the great premise and release episodes weekly rather than all at once, in order to get people involved in the mystery and hope that good word of mouth leads to new subscribers over the eight weeks.
Either way, it’s a pretty safe bet that The Afterparty might be the show that gets people really talking about Apple TV+. Even though they’ve had big stars involved in projects like The Morning Show and the WWII film Greyhound, the streaming platform hasn’t felt essential. Perhaps The Afterparty changes that.
#Peace.Love.TheAfterparty
