The UNABOMBER trailer begins with tragedy, as a mail bomb kills its recipient in 1994. Then it flashes back in time, to the humble beginnings of the man who sent the bomb: Ted Kaczynski, who became known as the Unabomber. You can check out the trailer above.

When we first meet him, Kaczynski, played in 1958 by Jacob Tremblay, is a young prodigy attending Harvard University. Director Janus Metz knew Tremblay had to play the role when he saw his performance in Christian Swegal’s 2025 film Sovereign. Tremblay, who rose to fame as a child actor in films such as Room and Wonder, struck Metz as a rare talent. 

That quality made Tremblay the perfect choice for the story of Kaczynski’s childhood, as written by screenwriters Sam Chalsen and Nelson Greaves. “I was listening to NPR, and I heard this two-minute anecdote that mentioned that Ted Kaczynski had been to Harvard and that he had been involved in these unethical psychological experiments,” Greaves tells Netflix. 

The story piqued Greaves’ interest since he and Chalsen had also attended Harvard. “I brought it to Sam, and we just started digging in and running with it,” Greaves says. “This whole other story that we discovered was really incredible.”

The story of UNABOMBER quickly zeroed in on Kaczynski’s twisted relationship with celebrated psychologist Henry Murray (played in the film by Academy Award winner Russell Crowe). “There’s something special about you,” Murray tells Kaczynski in the trailer. “When the battle starts, keep up the fight.”

As young Kaczynski struggles to relate to his classmates and build his own identity, he becomes the subject of a series of Murray’s psychological experiments, with devastating results.

UNABOMBER flashes back and forth between Kaczynski’s struggle to fit in as a young man at Harvard, and the future investigation by Joanne Miller (Shailene Woodley), the FBI agent tasked with catching the Unabomber. 

Between these dual timelines, a portrait of Ted Kaczynski takes shape. “Ideas are like fire,” Crowe says in the trailer. “They burn from man to man.” 

UNABOMBER arrives on Netflix on Sept. 25, 2026.