In A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE, the day starts like any other — but then everything changes. When a single unattributed missile is launched at the United States, a race begins to determine who is responsible, and how to respond. 

That’s the nerve-wracking premise of A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE, a new thriller directed by Academy Award winner Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty) and written by Noah Oppenheim (Zero Day). Boasting an impressive ensemble cast including Idris Elba and Rebecca Ferguson, the film is a minute-by-minute account of what the highest levels of government would do in the face of a nuclear attack on America. 

Fresh off the movie’s world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, you can watch the first footage in the tense teaser above. Bigelow, in her own words, explains what drove her to make this visceral story after Best Picture winner The Hurt Locker and the Oscar-nominated Zero Dark Thirty. 

Bigelow says about the film:

“I grew up in an era when hiding under your school desk was considered the go-to protocol for surviving an atomic bomb. It seems absurd now — and it was — but at the time, the threat felt so immediate that such measures were taken seriously.

Today, the danger has only escalated. Multiple nations possess enough nuclear weapons to end civilization within minutes. And yet, there’s a kind of collective numbness — a quiet normalization of the unthinkable.

How can we call this “defense” when the inevitable outcome is total destruction?

I wanted to make a film that confronts this paradox — to explore the madness of a world that lives under the constant shadow of annihilation, yet rarely speaks of it.”

A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE also stars Gabriel Basso, Jared Harris, Tracy Letts, Anthony Ramos, Jonah Hauer-King, Moses Ingram, Greta Lee, Jason Clarke, Malachi Beasley, Brian Tee, Brittany O’Grady, Gbenga Akinnagbe, Willa Fitzgerald, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Kyle Allen, and Kaitlyn Dever. 

A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE opens in select theaters Oct. 3 in the UK, globally Oct. 10, and on Netflix Oct. 24.