They Cloned Tyrone’s onto something wild in its first trailer

Director Juel Taylor’s debut feature looks like a modern day blaxploitation comedy with some burn questions on its mind

In Netflix’s upcoming sci-fi comedy feature The Cloned Tyronefrom director Juel Taylor, everybody with even the slightest bit of common sense knows that Black people have plenty of reasons not to trust the government or the police stalking their neighborhoods. Some of those reasons, like police brutality and harassment, are obvious. But the real threat everyone’s facing in They Cloned Tyrone’s first trailer is a bit more hidden and insidious because it’s the sort of thing few people would be inclined to believe.

They Cloned Tyrone tells the story of Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris), Slick (Jamie Foxx), and Fontaine (John Boyega), three unlikely friends who are brought together by their shared discovery of a massive, secret governmental surveillance plan to monitor the lives of Black people before disappearing them and replacing them with clones. It’s hard to tell from They Cloned Tyrone’s trailer just what the end goal of snatching folks up is, or how three conspiracy theorists are supposed to take down that sort of operation on their own. But it does seem like They Cloned Tyrone’s going to have one hell of a good time reminding people what the concept of staying woke actually means when ithits Netflix on December 30th.