Command Z: How To Watch Steven Soderbergh's Secretly Filmed Sci-Fi Series

A new project from filmmaker Steven Soderbergh is almost always a reason to get excited, and the prolific director sometimes displays a penchant for experimenting with different formats and modes of release in addition to his mainstream film and television work. There was "Mosaic," which existed as an interactive smartphone app before it was reincarnated as an HBO miniseries, and now Soderbergh has a surprise new web series hitting screens concurrently with the miniseries "Full Circle" now streaming on Max.

It's called "Command Z," and it appears to be a quirky take on "Quantum Leap." It stars Michael Cera as a disembodied floating digital head who assembles a team of time travelers from the future to go "back" to 2023 to correct some of the events of our present that created some sort of future unpleasantness.

The show, which also stars Liev Schreiber and Roy Wood Jr., will be available to watch on July 17, and you can watch the trailer for it at Soderbergh's own website, Extension 765. That's also where, according to an email sent out to the director's mailing list, the series will be available to watch.

That email also makes a reference to "Command Z" having been made "in secret," so if you're surprised that this is the first you're hearing of a new Steven Soderbergh project, that would be why. There's this tidbit regarding the format and length of the series as well: "There are eight episodes of varying length, so is it an actual series or just a movie cut up into pieces?"

The answer to that question might just be up to the viewer to decide.

While releasing "Command Z" through his website may seem like an unusual choice, it's actually not the first time Soderbergh has done so. Back in 2019, at the very bottom of the annual Extension 765 year-end media review, Soderblog readers were treated to a short film entitled "Your Life as a Spy." Only about three minutes long and divided into three parts, with no actors and only a simple voice-over against iPhone shots of hotel rooms, airport lobbies, and the like, this was a much more modest undertaking than "Command Z" appears to be. But for Soderbergh fans, it does serve as an interesting precedent to the upcoming new series.