Doomlands Trailer: We Don't Need Another Hero, But Danny Doom Is Here Anyway

Are you ready to Rockatansky? The new adult animated series "Doomlands" is set to drop on The Roku Channel later this week, and there's a trailer available for a peek at what's to come in one of the streaming service's many pickups from the shutdown of Quibi in 2020. 

Josh O'Keefe is behind this post-apocalyptic show, which follows the laborers at the mobile bar Oasis as it coasts along a ruined landscape of "sand, blood, and steel." Terse renegade Danny Doom (voiced by Mark Little) takes the main focus; he's the kind of guy who values trauma as a character-building tool, while his survival partner, a doe-eyed and possibly naive blonde bartender named Lhandi (Kayla Lorette), believes that people are basically good. The show is set in a world that developer Josh Bowen describes as a cross "between 'Mad Max' and 'Cheers,'" which is one hell of a pitch. Rolling through an arid wasteland on "the best bar on treads" and sipping on ice cold bottles of Doom Shine ("The best refreshments the Wastes can offer," its commercial spokesman promises), the duo weather savage scavengers and workplaces woes on their way to a historic death on Fury Road — or onto the next desert city, whatever works. 

Check out the trailer below.

Doomlands Trailer

The obvious visual callback here is the "Mad Max" franchise and glorious Ozploitation action movies. The trailer showcases an array of potential deathtrap landscapes for the Oasis rig to traverse, from the exotic sand dunes to the blue-tinted lunar lands where "yucky, yucky people" reside as one character warns. Those wanting blood in their animated features will get it by the bucketful, it appears. One trailer glimpse has a backpacked donkey impaled through the chest by a utility pole, begging for the sweet release of a mercy kill. "Gremlins" fans might further appreciate Danny Doom's potential death by tiny green winged goblins. There sit "Adventure Time" levels of worldbuilding creativity with the collection of grotesque or adorable creatures and altered earthlings trying to make it in an altered world, guaranteeing some laughs for a pandemic-weary audience.

Originally a university film project, "Doomlands" is penned by director O'Keefe– who serves as showrunner alongside Lee Porter, along with Roger Bainbridge, Brandon Hackett, Kayla Lorette and Mark Little. It was developed by Josh Bowen, who started with a crowdfunded pilot, before it was produced by Look Mom! Productions.

"Doomlands" arrives at Roku on January 28, 2022.