20th Century debuted the second official trailer for Ridley Scott's The Dog Stars on June 8, 2026, giving audiences a clearer look at a late-summer survival thriller built around a mysterious radio transmission.
The new footage centers on Jacob Elordi's Hig, a civilian pilot who pilots a Cessna across a pandemic-ravaged Colorado, drawn toward an intermittent broadcast that promises escape. The trailer juxtaposes shots of long, empty highways and a battered small plane with brief exchanges that push the film's premise: a voice questions what Hig hopes to find, and another answer—stated as a fragile hope—promises something better than the wasteland around them. Josh Brolin appears as a tough ex‑marine, Margaret Qualley figures prominently among the sparse survivors, and the cast also includes Guy Pearce, Benedict Wong and Allison Janney.
The weight of the trailer is its balance of salvage and promise. Director Ridley Scott and screenwriter Mark L. Smith frame the signal as both beacon and bait: closeups linger on supplies, a parked Cessna and a hand reaching for a fuel can, underscoring that the possibility of a haven immediately attracts desperate people. Producers listed on the project include Michael Pruss, Cliff Roberts, Ridley Scott and Smith himself; the screenplay credit belongs to Smith.
Context: The Dog Stars adapts Peter Heller's novel and is set after a catastrophic pandemic emptied cities and forced survivors into tight, territorial communities. The trailer follows the book's core conceit—a small group of survivors following the origin of a radio transmission that might point to a functioning community—but refocuses it visually around flight and movement, using Hig's Cessna as the film's restless vantage point.
The trailer also supplies the film's friction. While the broadcast hints at rescue or renewal, Scott’s visuals make clear that any signal of hope carries immediate cost: the transmission draws hordes of wastelanders and scavengers who converge on Hig's plane and stockpiled provisions. Scenes that might read as the promise of sanctuary are cut with images of queues, broken fences and armed faces, suggesting the broadcast functions as a magnet that endangers the very people it might save.
Practical detail for viewers: 20th Century Studios will release The Dog Stars in theaters nationwide starting August 28, 2026. The marketing push centers on the mystery of the broadcast and the question of how individuals and small groups will choose to respond when hope and scarcity collide. Expect a parade of character-driven set pieces that use the landscape—empty towns, wide skies, improvised forts—to test allegiances and the ethics of survival.
What to watch for when the film opens: whether the signal proves to be salvation, a trap, or something more ambiguous. The trailer stages that unresolved question as the film’s core dilemma, trading simple answers for a calculus of risk—follow the voice and risk attracting the desperate, or stay isolated and risk losing any chance at community. Ridley Scott's track record suggests he will lean into moral complexity rather than tidy resolution; the decisive element will be how the film frames the transmission's cost against the human need it awakens.
The Dog Stars is selling itself on that contradiction. The June 8 trailer makes the radio transmission the engine of the plot and the engine of conflict: it offers hope, and it brings danger—sometimes in the same breath. Audiences arriving in theaters on August 28 will get the full answer to the film’s central question and whether Scott ultimately treats the signal as redemption, bait, or a mirror held up to survival itself.
