Why Dan Trachtenberg Is a Perfect Choice to Direct a Netflix 'Black Mirror' Episode

Charlie Brooker’s amazing show Black Mirror, the anthology sci-fi series about the horrors of living in the modern world, had a short but brilliant life on British TV. It proved such a hit with fans stateside that Netflix recently revived the show for a new 12-episode season. On Friday, Deadline reported that 10 Cloverfield Lane director Dan Trachtenberg has signed up to direct an episode.

The show has always attracted top names, including a starring role for Jon Hamm in a Christmas episode late year. The streaming giant has recruited a ton of great new talent for the revival — and with Trachtenberg signed on, the list keeps growing.

Trachtenberg joins filmmaker [Joe Wright] (Atonement, Hanna)(https://www.inverse.com/article/11338-joe-wright-is-directing-an-episode-of-black-mirror) for directing duties on Brooker’s new season.

Wright’s episode will reportedly feature actresses Bryce Dallas Howard and Alice Eve, so expect some announcement about who Trachtenberg will recruit for the episodes very soon. Maybe he could dip back into the original series’ cast, who became high profile actors in their own right like Toby Kebbell (Warcraft), Hayley Atwell (Marvel’s Agent Carter), and Domhnall Gleeson (The Force Awakens).

The Trachtenberg addition makes perfect sense for both Brooker and Netflix. The filmmaker made the easy transition from podcast host to short film director, and he’s responsible for some of the best viral short films in the past few years. Remember, this is the dude that took a semi-micro-budget and made a totally kickass Portal short.

When he made the jump to his big-screen debut with 10 Cloverfield Lane, he was able to pull off the difficult task of making a glorified Twilight Zone episode within J.J. Abrams’ new Cloverfield universe. It was a pressure cooker chamber piece with a sci-fi slant but was squarely based on the ridiculously great character performances by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Gallagher Jr., and John Goodman.

This is all to say that Trachtenberg is the right guy for the job since Black Mirror is the modern equivalent of The Twilight Zone, and 10 Cloverfield Lane was probably the best faux Twilight Zone episode in a long time. He can get a lot out of a little, both on screen and financially: 10 Cloverfield Lane has been a quiet hit, racking up over $100 million at the box office on a relatively small a $15 million budget.

Black Mirror will premiere sometime later this year on Netflix.