‘A House of Dynamite’ teaser: Kathryn Bigelow returns with nuclear thriller ahead of Netflix release

Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite has dropped its first teaser trailer following a world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, where it earned a 13-minute ovation and mostly positive reviews. The film marks Bigelow’s first feature since Detroit (2017) and arrives on Netflix October 24, following a limited U.S. theatrical release beginning October 10.

The tense preview is narrated by Carl Sagan’s famed description of Earth as a “pale blue dot … a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” Intercut with military briefings and political chaos, the teaser depicts a nation in crisis as alarms escalate to Defcon 1 after the launch of an unidentified nuclear missile.

The thriller stars Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Jared Harris, Tracy Letts, Anthony Ramos, Moses Ingram, Jonah Hauer-King, Greta Lee, Jason Clarke, and Gabriel Basso. The script is written by Noah Oppenheim. According to the official logline, the story centers on the race to determine who fired the missile and how the United States should respond.

At Venice, Bigelow described her motivation for returning to the subject of global conflict, noting the nuclear threat feels as urgent as ever. “Multiple nations possess enough nuclear weapons to end civilisation within minutes. And yet, there’s a kind of collective numbness — a normalisation of the unthinkable,” she said. “I wanted to make a film that confronts this paradox.”

The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty director has long been associated with films that probe the psychology and politics of warfare. With A House of Dynamite, she revisits familiar territory while framing it through the lens of escalating nuclear peril.