UNABOMBER
Jacob Tremblay portrays a young Ted Kaczynski in Netflix’s UNABOMBER, which explores his troubling years at Harvard Official Netflix Website

Netflix has released the first trailer for UNABOMBER, offering a disturbing look at Ted Kaczynski's years as a young Harvard prodigy before he became the notorious domestic terrorist behind a deadly bombing campaign that spanned nearly two decades.

The film, arriving on Netflix on 25 September 2026, places Kaczynski's experiences with controversial psychological experiments at the centre of a story that moves between his formative years and the FBI investigation to identify him.

UNABOMBER Trailer Revisits Harvard Experiments

The UNABOMBER trailer opens with tragedy as a mail bomb kills its recipient in 1994 before the story jumps back decades to Kaczynski's arrival at Harvard University in 1958.

Jacob Tremblay portrays the young Kaczynski as an academically gifted student struggling to connect with his classmates and establish his identity in an unfamiliar environment.

His difficulties become intertwined with psychologist Henry Murray, played by Academy Award winner Russell Crowe. The film depicts Kaczynski taking part in a series of psychological experiments conducted by Murray, an episode from his Harvard years that becomes a major focus of the plot.

In the trailer, Murray tells Kaczynski, 'There's something special about you', before later urging him: 'When the battle starts, keep up the fight.'

The film explores the experiments as part of Kaczynski's early life without presenting them as a definitive explanation for the crimes he would later commit.

UNABOMBER Plot Connects Harvard With FBI Manhunt

Rather than telling Kaczynski's story chronologically, the UNABOMBER plot moves between two periods of his life.

One follows the young Kaczynski at Harvard and his increasingly troubling experiences under Murray. The other centres on the investigation into the Unabomber years later, after a string of bombings had left authorities searching for the person responsible.

Shailene Woodley plays Joanne Miller, an FBI agent tasked in the film with pursuing the Unabomber.

The shifting timelines gradually connect the brilliant student seen entering Harvard with the man responsible for the later bombing campaign.

'Ideas are like fire,' Crowe's Murray says in the trailer. 'They burn from man to man.'

Kaczynski's Harvard Years as Central to UNABOMBER

Screenwriters Sam Chalsen and Nelson Greaves found the basis for the film after becoming interested in a lesser-known chapter of Kaczynski's history.

Greaves told Netflix that he heard an NPR segment mentioning that Kaczynski had attended Harvard and participated in psychological experiments there.

The subject had a personal connection for the writers because both had also attended Harvard.

'I brought it to Sam, and we just started digging in and running with it,' Greaves said. 'This whole other story that we discovered was really incredible.'

Their research ultimately led the film towards Kaczynski's relationship with Murray and the psychological experiments depicted in the trailer.

Jacob Tremblay Plays Young Ted Kaczynski

Director Janus Metz selected Tremblay after seeing the actor's performance in Christian Swegal's 2025 film Sovereign.

Tremblay first became widely known as a child actor through films including Room and Wonder. In UNABOMBER, he takes on the period when Kaczynski was a young student navigating Harvard.

Russell Crowe stars opposite him as Murray, while Woodley leads the investigation storyline.

UNABOMBER Release Date Confirmed by Netflix

Netflix has set the UNABOMBER release date for 25 September 2026.

The film brings together Tremblay, Crowe and Woodley in a dual-timeline account that examines Kaczynski's Harvard years alongside the later hunt for the Unabomber, placing his experiences as a young student at the heart of the story.

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