If you like your modern genre mashups a little prickly and off-center, Bob Odenkirk teaming with Ben Wheatley again-ish (and circling the same action-minded orbit as Derek Kolstad) feels like the kind of left-field alignment that can get interesting fast. Magnolia Pictures has debuted the trailer for “Normal,” a “kinetic neo-Western” that puts Odenkirk in the boots of an unassuming substitute sheriff with a troubled past, stationed in a small town that’s supposedly quiet—until it very much isn’t.
Wheatley, best known for films like “Free Fire” and “High-Rise,” directs from a script by Kolstad, with Marc Provissiero producing alongside Odenkirk and Kolstad (in partnership with QWGmire). The film is also positioned as the latest action-leaning collaboration between Odenkirk and Kolstad, whose “John Wick” imprint on contemporary, stunt-forward studio filmmaking is hard to miss, even when the story itself veers into more dust-and-blood territory.
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An official logline from Magnolia Pictures:
For Sheriff Ulysses (Bob Odenkirk), his provisional posting to the quaint Midwestern American town of Normal was meant to be a welcome respite from both his marital woes and recent moral injuries in the line of duty. But when a botched bank robbery interrupts the municipality’s tranquil pace, a sordid secret is inadvertently exposed, and Ulysses learns that the town is anything but its namesake. Suddenly, everyone is trying to shoot the sheriff, even his own deputies, and our put-upon policeman must rely on his affable mettle and some motley crooks if he is to survive the night. (And that’s all before the Yakuza show up).
Henry Winkler and Lena Headey also co-star. “Normal” opens in theaters nationwide on April 17, 2026. That new trailer can be viewed below.
