Bo Burnham Filmed A Musical Comedy Special During The Pandemic, And It's Coming To Netflix Soon

Bo Burnham, the promising young man who recently co-starred in Promising Young Woman, is returning to his comedy roots.

Today, Burnham revealed that he has filmed a new musical comedy special over the last year during the pandemic, which is fittingly called Inside. He says the special is "almost finished," and it's coming to Netflix soon. Check out a brief teaser video below.

Cinephiles will recognize Burnham for his role as Carey Mulligan's character's boyfriend in Promising Young Woman, as well as the writer and director of the critically acclaimed indie feature film Eighth Grade and one of Kumail Nanjiani's comedian friends in The Big Sick. But Burnham got his start as a YouTube comic, and he has released four albums and two stand-up specials over the course of his career so far. Both of those specials were made by Netflix, and he's kept a good relationship with the streamer since Bo Burnham: Make Happy was released in 2016. (In addition to directing his own comedy specials, he also directed Chris Rock's 2018 Netflix special, Tamborine.)

Burnham strikes a strong balance between a stereotypical, leave-it-all-on-the-stage "theater kid" vibe (he has a really lovely voice!) and a modern, self-aware comic personality who is super savvy and knows how to subvert expectations and play with form. We've already seen comedians produce content during the pandemic – Dave Chappelle was holding some in-person shows around the time he got his show back, for example – but I'm very curious to see what Burnham does with an entirely show that seems to directly address the pandemic era. I'm also intrigued by his claim that he filmed the entire show alone without a crew: if that's true, who was operating the camera in the teaser video he published on Twitter? In any case, I'd love to see someone put a distinctive new twist on the format of a typical stand-up special, since most of them unfortunately look very samey. If the teaser is any indication, the audio may not be quite as polished as audiences have come to expect from a standard Netflix special, but perhaps that fidelity will be traded for a deeper sense of authenticity and intimacy, since the show was filmed inside his home.

There is no specific release date in place yet for Bo Burnham: Inside, but it will arrive on Netflix sometime in 2021.