Beyond COVID-19

OMG, OMG, OMG. COVID-23 is a thing…at the movies at “the movies.”

For serious, can you imagine a world in which COVID-19 mutates for four long years (not four more years…) to become COVID-23, a beyond-novel coronavirus that has thrust the world into the extremest of lockdowns? Well, now ya don’t have to, for Michael Bay has produced just the ticket for our self-isolatin’ asses: the upcoming pandemic thriller, Songbird. Starring KJ Apa (The CW’s Riverdale, The Hate U Give) and Disney Channel breakout Sofia Carson, as Nico and Sara, lovers kept asunder by the strictest guidelines and restrictions (he’s immune, she is not allowed to get physically close to him; I s’ppose we have to watch the movie to make sense of that one), this is the first feature film to be made during COVID-19 in L.A. and the first one about the pandemic itself.

The movie’s trailer certainly taps into all the uncertainty and confusion and fear that we all felt last March and has since permeated through the zeitgeist, though, and ups the ante by depicting a Los Angeles that has descended into a sort of controlled chaos, a new reality in which smartphones can now do temperature scans and call authorities on people and in which infected Americans are ripped from their homes and forced into quarantine camps o.k.a. Q-Zones. Oppression and corruption are the flavors of the day, and now that she might have tested positive, these two lovebirds are about to have a taste.

Amid all this all-too-real dystopian landscape (remember this was shot during COVID), of course, Nico, a fearless courier, must desperately race across the barren L.A. streets to get to Sara, fingers crossed with the one thing that could save her from imprisonment…or worse.

Bradley Whitford and Demi Moore co-star, as a wealthy couple that may or may not be able (or want) to help Nico in his quest; San Andreas’ Alexandra Daddario, as a singer enmeshed in a messy affair; Richard Jewell’s Paul Walter Hauser, as a disabled veteran whose only meaningful connection to the world is a drone named Max; Craig Robinson, as Nico’s boss; and Peter Stormare (TV’s Prison Break), as the corrupt head of the city’s “sanitation” department, which seizes and transports the infected to the Q-Zones.

Songbird doesn’t have a release plan yet – but you just know that Bay & Co. are gonna announce one sooner than the Trump regime will decide to face facts, show some respect for the situation, and, I dunno, lead, so do stay tuned, and vote on Nov. 3, so that Songbird won’t become our 2024 real reality, OK.