Independent Film Company has released a new alternative trailer for Idiots, giving Dave Franco and O’Shea Jackson Jr. another opportunity to demonstrate why absolutely nobody should have trusted their characters with a supposedly straightforward job.
The dark road comedy follows two thoroughly unqualified drivers who are hired to transport a wealthy and deeply troublesome teenager to a rehabilitation facility.
In theory, the assignment should be simple.
Pick up the kid.
Drive him to rehab.
Get paid.
Unfortunately, almost every part of that plan immediately begins falling apart.
Dave Franco and O’Shea Jackson Jr. play the two men given responsibility for the journey, while Mason Thames stars as the teenager capable of transforming a routine transport job into an increasingly dangerous series of disasters.
The new “Professionals” trailer leans directly into the joke at the centre of the film.
These men may technically have been hired to perform a professional service, but their decision-making skills suggest that the word “professional” is being used very generously.
As their passenger repeatedly derails the journey, the trio find themselves dragged into drugs, criminals, violence, car trouble and a collection of increasingly bizarre encounters.
What begins as a road trip gradually becomes something closer to a criminal odyssey populated by people who may somehow be even less responsible than the men driving the car.
Mason Thames continues moving further away from the heroic roles that introduced him to many audiences, embracing the chaos of a wealthy teenager who appears capable of turning every situation into another problem.
Franco and Jackson Jr., meanwhile, provide the film with its central buddy-comedy dynamic.
Their characters may not be particularly competent, but surviving the journey forces the two men into a partnership that gradually becomes something more meaningful than the terrible job that brought them together.
Macon Blair wrote and directed the film, returning to the mixture of dark humour, violence and eccentric characters that has defined much of his previous work.
The impressive supporting cast includes Kiernan Shipka, Nicholas Braun and Peter Dinklage, while Blair himself also appears in the film.
Blair has described the ensemble as one of the film’s major attractions, combining broad slapstick, chase-movie chaos and darker material with an unexpectedly hopeful story about friendship.
Before becoming Idiots, the film premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival under its original title, The Shitheads. Independent Film Company subsequently acquired the US distribution rights and retitled the movie ahead of its theatrical release.
The new marketing campaign appears perfectly comfortable embracing the stupidity promised by that new title.
Rather than presenting Franco and Jackson Jr. as unlikely action heroes, the “Professionals” trailer makes their incompetence part of the attraction.
Every sensible decision seems to lead directly towards an even worse one.
Every attempt to regain control creates another problem.
And the teenager they are supposed to be supervising may be considerably more dangerous than either of them expected.
Sometimes the wrong people get the right job.
Sometimes the wrong people get the wrong job.
Idiots appears to be firmly in the second category.
Idiots arrives in US cinemas on August 28, 2026.
Watch the new “Professionals” alternative trailer below.
