Mike Myers is making a return to comedy in a new, six-episode Netflix show called The Pentaverate, after years of rare movie appearances. If the trailer that premiered on Wednesday is anything to go by, it’ll be the type of project where Myers makes up almost half the cast — he’s playing eight different characters, according to Deadline.
The show, which will start streaming on May 5th, also stars comedians like Ken Jeong, Keegan-Michael Key, and Jennifer Saunders. It centers on a shadowy, and possibly world-controlling, secret society called the Pentaverate. According to the voice-over in the trailer, which you can watch below, it was started by five people who were labeled as heretics after discovering that the Black Plague was caused by fleas and rats (which explains all the plague doctor masks).
The concept for the show comes from a joke in another movie staring Myers, So I Married an Axe Murderer. You can watch that scene below (don’t worry, there are no axe murders in it — just Colonel Sanders slander).
It’s been quite a while since we’ve seen a Mike Myers-helmed comedy project — this is the first big thing we’ve seen written by him since 2008’s The Love Guru, which Myers wrote and played multiple characters in. He’s acted in a few movies since then, like Inglourious Basterds and 2018’s Bohemian Rhapsody and Terminal but those projects aren’t quite the same as, say, the Austin Powers movies Myers is known for.
Netflix has been on a streak making general-interest comedy content with big names, like Space Force with Steve Carell, Red Notice (starting The Rock, Ritu Arya, and Ryan Reynolds), and last week’s big premiere The Adam Project (starring Mark Ruffalo, Jennifer Garner, and Ryan Reynolds).
It does feel a little bit like that time in 2014 when Netflix ordered four Adam Sandler movies, then swore that they were so popular it just had to order four more. I’m not trying to shade this Myers project before it comes out (please don’t hurt me Myers Stans, I loved The Spy Who Shagged Me and Shrek), but it does feel like Netflix is following a similar playbook of getting comedy stars from the 90s and early 2000s to make content following the style of their old hits. Hey, it has to do something to keep people watching while it raises prices and considers making people pay to share passwords.
Disclosure: The Verge is currently producing a series with Netflix.
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