Movies Forest Whitaker, Theo James race through an apocalypse in Netflix's How It Ends trailer By Nick Romano Nick Romano Nick is an entertainment journalist based in New York, NY. If you like pugs and the occasional blurry photo of an action figure, follow him on Twitter @NickARomano. EW's editorial guidelines Published on June 22, 2018 11:58AM EDT This is the America of Netflix’s How It Ends. A mysterious apocalyptic event throws the country into chaos. Power outages roll across states, flocks of birds are losing their navigation senses, natural disasters threaten the land, and violence and misinformation spread like plagues. At the center of it all, as shown in the first trailer, are Black Panther‘s Forest Whitaker and Divergent‘s Theo James. How It Ends is a film more than eight years in the making. The script from Brooks McLaren landed on the 2010 Black List and director David M. Rosenthal (The Perfect Guy, A Single Shot) boarded the project in 2015. By 2017, Netflix bought the rights and here we are, less than a month before the film premieres on the streaming platform this July 13. The story unfolds as a large seismic event hits the coast of California, plunging the U.S. into chaos. Some believe the purpose of this “singular incident” is to “erase rational behavior.” A man named Will (James) is visiting his estranged in-laws at the time and now finds himself separated from his pregnant wife, Sam (The Vampire Diaries‘ Kat Graham), who’s on the other side of the country. Will must now work with his army veteran father-in-law (Whitaker), who still blames him for taking his daughter away, to travel through the chaos and get her. Netflix How It Ends is just one of Whitaker’s upcoming projects. Following stints on Empire and in the Star Wars universe with Rogue One and Rebels, the Oscar winner will be seen in City of Lies with Johnny Depp and Finding Steve McQueen. He also appeared as South African activist Archbishop Desmond Tutu in The Forgiven earlier this year. James will be seen in Zoe, the sci-fi film starring Ewan McGregor and Léa Seydoux that drops on Amazon next month. Watch Netflix’s How It Ends trailer above.