Jacob Tremblay Transforms Into a Young Ted Kaczynski in Netflix’s UNABOMBER — New Trailer Traces the Making and Capture of America’s Infamous Domestic Terrorist
Jacob Tremblay takes on one of the darkest roles of his career in Netflix’s upcoming UNABOMBER, portraying Ted Kaczynski during the formative years that preceded his transformation from a teenage Harvard prodigy into the domestic terrorist behind a deadly bombing campaign.
The newly released trailer moves between two periods of Kaczynski’s life: his difficult years as a young student at Harvard and the massive FBI investigation that eventually closed in on him decades later.
Rather than focusing exclusively on the crimes for which Kaczynski became notorious, director Janus Metz’s film examines an earlier chapter of his life, including the controversial psychological experiments he underwent while studying at Harvard.
Russell Crowe plays psychologist Professor Henry Murray, while Shailene Woodley stars as FBI agent Joanne Miller, who leads the hunt for Kaczynski in the film.
Netflix describes the drama as inspired by true events and says it explores the consequences of ambition, alienation and isolation.
The Trailer Begins With a Bombing Before Going Back to 1958
The UNABOMBER trailer initially places viewers inside the violence that would make Kaczynski infamous.
It opens with a mail bomb killing its recipient in 1994 before moving backward several decades to 1958.
There, viewers meet a dramatically younger Kaczynski.
Played by Tremblay, he is only 16 when he arrives at Harvard University, an exceptionally gifted mathematics student entering an environment where he struggles to fit in.
That contrast appears central to Metz’s approach.
Audiences already know what Kaczynski eventually becomes. The film instead looks at the years before the name “Unabomber” became synonymous with one of America’s most notorious domestic terrorism cases.
Metz has explained that the movie essentially operates across two timelines: one following the development of the future Unabomber and another following the effort to capture him.
Tremblay Approached Kaczynski as a Person Rather Than a Caricature
Tremblay rose to prominence as a child actor through films including Room and Wonder, but the role of Kaczynski places him in considerably darker territory.
Metz said he became convinced Tremblay was right for the part after seeing him in Christian Swegal’s 2025 film Sovereign.
The director saw a combination of vulnerability and intelligence in the actor that matched his vision of Kaczynski during his Harvard years.
Tremblay, meanwhile, has said he didn’t know much about Kaczynski’s childhood before joining the project.
He was particularly surprised to discover that Kaczynski had entered Harvard at just 16 and had been considered a mathematical prodigy.
The actor also deliberately avoided treating Kaczynski as a caricature.
Instead, Tremblay wanted his portrayal of the young student to feel recognizably human. He drew partly from his own experiences of entering a professional world at a young age and frequently being surrounded by people considerably older than himself.
That approach does not excuse or minimize Kaczynski’s later violence. Rather, it gives the film a way to examine how the isolated young academic depicted in its earlier timeline relates to the terrorist pursued by investigators years later.
Russell Crowe Plays Harvard Psychologist Henry Murray
One of the most significant relationships in the movie is between Kaczynski and Harvard psychologist Henry Murray, played by Russell Crowe.
During his time at Harvard, Kaczynski participated in controversial psychological experiments associated with Murray.
Those experiments form a major part of the film’s depiction of his university years.
According to Netflix’s synopsis, Kaczynski’s troubled past later resurfaces during the investigation into the Unabomber, bringing the consequences of his experiences, ambitions and increasing isolation into the larger story.
The trailer shows Murray recognizing something unusual in his young student while Kaczynski struggles socially and attempts to establish his identity.
The psychological experiments subsequently become increasingly important.
Netflix says the young Kaczynski is subjected to a series of experiments with devastating consequences.
The Harvard Years Were What Fascinated the Filmmakers
Screenwriters Sam Chalsen and Nelson Greaves became interested in the project after Greaves heard a short NPR anecdote mentioning both Kaczynski’s time at Harvard and his participation in psychological experiments there.
That detail immediately caught their attention.
Both writers had attended Harvard themselves, and they began researching a part of Kaczynski’s history that Greaves felt was much less widely known than his later crimes.
Metz was similarly drawn to this period.
Although the enormous FBI investigation interested him, he has said it was Kaczynski’s experience as a young mathematics student at Harvard that particularly fascinated him.
For Metz, that story offered a route into what he described as a dark chapter of American history.
As a result, UNABOMBER isn’t structured purely as a conventional manhunt thriller.
The pursuit of Kaczynski remains crucial, but the movie repeatedly returns to the young man he was before the bombing campaign began.
Shailene Woodley Leads the Hunt as FBI Agent Joanne Miller
The other side of the film belongs to Shailene Woodley.
She plays Joanne Miller, the FBI agent tasked in the movie with pursuing the Unabomber.
The investigation unfolds decades after the Harvard storyline, allowing the movie to move back and forth between Kaczynski’s earlier experiences and the consequences of his later actions.
Woodley has pointed to an intriguing parallel between Miller and Kaczynski as they are portrayed in the film.
Both possess an intense confidence in their instincts and refuse to abandon what they believe, even though their motivations and objectives could hardly be more different.
That gives the later timeline a psychological component beyond the procedural mechanics of the investigation.
The film isn’t only following investigators searching for a suspect.
It is placing two extraordinarily determined figures on opposite sides of a pursuit.
The Real Manhunt Lasted 17 Years
Behind the drama is one of the longest and most notorious investigations in FBI history.
Kaczynski’s bombing campaign began in 1978 and continued for years, targeting people associated with universities, airlines and technology.
His attacks ultimately killed three people and injured 23 others.
Kaczynski remained unidentified for years as investigators attempted to determine who was building and sending the devices.
The search stretched across 17 years before he was arrested in 1996 at the remote Montana cabin where he had been living.
Metz has said the extraordinary scale of that investigation initially fascinated him, describing the hunt as the FBI’s longest and most expensive operation to that point.
That real-world history gives the film’s second timeline its destination even before the story begins.
The suspense does not come from whether Kaczynski will ultimately be caught.
It comes from watching how investigators finally get there while the earlier timeline attempts to illuminate the person they are pursuing.
The Film Doesn’t Present Itself as a Simple Origin Story
Any dramatization of a notorious terrorist’s early life carries an obvious challenge.
Exploring the experiences that preceded violence can easily be mistaken for attempting to provide a single explanation for it.
Netflix and Metz have instead framed UNABOMBER around Kaczynski’s growing disenfranchisement, his increasing isolation and his eventual decision to embrace violence as a form of revenge.
The psychological experiments at Harvard are therefore presented as one part of a larger portrait rather than as a simple justification for what followed.
The two-timeline structure reinforces that distinction.
While the younger Kaczynski struggles with alienation, the later storyline never allows viewers to forget where his choices eventually lead.
The bombings and their victims remain the consequence waiting on the other side of the earlier story.
Annabelle Wallis Joins Crowe in the Harvard Storyline
The supporting cast adds several familiar names.
Annabelle Wallis plays Christiana Morgan, Professor Murray’s academic partner and co-director of the Harvard Psychological Clinic.
Alexander Ludwig, Steven Ogg and Marc Menchaca also appear in the film.
Netflix currently lists the principal cast as:
- Jacob Tremblay as young Ted Kaczynski
- Russell Crowe as Henry Murray
- Shailene Woodley as Joanne Miller
- Annabelle Wallis as Christiana Morgan
- Alexander Ludwig
- Steven Ogg
- Marc Menchaca
The ensemble gives the film recognizable performers on both sides of its timeline, from Kaczynski’s Harvard experiences to the investigation that eventually tracks him down.
Janus Metz Directs From a Script by Sam Chalsen and Nelson Greaves
UNABOMBER is directed by Danish filmmaker Janus Metz, whose previous credits include Borg vs McEnroe and All the Old Knives.
Sam Chalsen and Nelson Greaves wrote the screenplay.
Sophie Cassidy produces through 2.0 Entertainment in association with MRC, while Donald J. Lee, Chalsen and Greaves serve as executive producers.
Netflix first announced the project in June 2025 under the title UNABOM, already confirming Tremblay, Crowe, Woodley and Wallis as its principal stars.
The finished film is now titled UNABOMBER.
Netflix classifies it as a psychological, suspenseful drama and thriller inspired by real events. It has a runtime of approximately 1 hour and 38 minutes.
The Trailer Builds Its Story Around Ideas, Isolation and Violence
The first trailer makes clear that Metz isn’t approaching the material purely as a crime procedural.
Its images repeatedly contrast Kaczynski’s intellectual ability with his growing inability to connect with the people and institutions surrounding him.
Harvard is presented as both an extraordinary opportunity for the teenage prodigy and an environment in which his isolation becomes increasingly pronounced.
The experiments conducted under Murray add another disturbing layer.
Decades later, those scenes are juxtaposed with the FBI investigation as Miller attempts to identify and stop the person responsible for the bombing campaign.
The result is less a straightforward progression from childhood to crime than two stories moving toward one another.
One asks how Kaczynski became the Unabomber.
The other asks how investigators finally found him.
Kaczynski Died in Federal Custody in 2023
The real Ted Kaczynski spent decades in federal custody after his arrest.
He pleaded guilty in 1998 and received multiple life sentences without the possibility of parole.
Kaczynski died in federal custody in June 2023 at the age of 81.
His death came decades after the end of the investigation that had made his identity internationally known.
The new film therefore arrives more than 30 years after his 1996 arrest, revisiting both the manhunt familiar to many viewers and the Harvard chapter that the filmmakers believe is far less widely understood.
Jacob Tremblay’s Transformation Is at the Center of Netflix’s New Thriller
For audiences who primarily remember Tremblay from Room or Wonder, UNABOMBER represents a striking transformation.
The actor is no longer the child performer audiences first encountered a decade ago.
Here, he is portraying a real figure whose intelligence, isolation and eventual embrace of violence remain deeply disturbing parts of American criminal history.
But Metz’s film appears determined to make that transformation only half of the story.
As the young Kaczynski becomes increasingly alienated, the later timeline moves steadily closer to the end of the FBI’s enormous investigation.
The audience knows those timelines will eventually collide.
The unsettling question the movie wants to explore is what happened in between.
UNABOMBER arrives globally on Netflix on September 25, 2026.