When Dave and John Chernin were kids, their next-door neighbor threw a rager. “I remember me and Dave sitting by a window with the lights off just looking into the backyard at this raging high school house party next door thinking that is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen,” John tells Tudum. Two decades later, the writer-director brothers are throwing their own party — and you’re invited. 

Incoming is the story of one night in the life of a group of high school freshmen, the party they crash, and the chaos that ensues. The Chernins love high school comedies — they cite such wide-ranging influences as Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Can’t Hardly Wait, and Superbad — and were eager to put their own stamp on the genre. “We always wanted to write a high school movie,” Dave says. “So for 15-plus years we’ve been kicking around the idea of a high school movie, and there were just little moments that we always had written in notepads.” 

Eventually, they found the structure that would connect these little notepad moments. “We landed on the title of Incoming and realized, ‘Oh, this is four freshmen having this weird early-life identity crisis,’ ” Dave continues. “That kind of became the engine for the story.”

You can see the trailer for the new comedy above, and catch a glimpse at a few of the Chernins’ notepad moments. “Someone had a funny idea of a drunk person mistaking another car for their Uber,” John Chernin says. At the end of the trailer, TikTok star Loren Gray does just that — and demands her newfound chauffeurs bring her straight to Taco Bell. Everything goes smoothly from there, we’re sure.

Read on for more information about Incoming, and keep an eye out for party updates.

Spyglass Media Group/Artists Road//Courtesy of Netflix

What is Incoming about?

Four freshmen are faced with the greatest challenge of their young lives: their first high school party. 

The Chernins, who previously wrote for It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and created The Mick, settled on Incoming as their debut feature film for a very simple reason. “We weren’t getting any younger,” John says, laughing. “With every passing day, we were getting further away from our own time in high school. So we figured, let’s just write that one and see what happens.”

The pair also felt a sense of civic responsibility to the teenagers of America. “This is the type of movie that hadn’t come along in a while,” Dave says. “There always felt like there was one of these per generation. It was just something silly that prized laughter above all else that I think we really wanted to see, more than anything.”

Spyglass Media Group/Artists Road/Netflix

Spyglass Media Group/Artists Road/Netflix

Spyglass Media Group/Artists Road/Netflix

Who’s in the cast of Incoming?

The cast of Incoming includes:

• Mason Thames (The Black Phone, For All Mankind)
• Ramon Reed (13: The Musical, Just Roll with It)
• Raphael Alejandro (Once Upon a Time, Bunk’d)
• Isabella Ferreira (Orange Is the New Black, Gray Matter)
• Bardia Seiri (Grey’s Anatomy, Life in Pieces)
• Loren Gray (Glow Up with Loren Gray, Outsiders)
• Ali Gallo (Unhuman, The Sex Lives of College Girls)
• Scott MacArthur (The Mick, The Righteous Gemstones)
• Thomas Barbusca (The Mick, Luckiest Girl Alive)
• Kim Hawthorne (Greenleaf, How to Get Away with Murder)
• Victoria Moroles (Teen Wolf, Liv and Maddie) 
• Kayvan Shai (FBI, Yallah Habibi)
• Kaitlin Olson (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Hacks)
• Bobby Cannavale (The Irishman, Third Watch)

“Mason was someone we had just heard about,” John Chernin says aboutThames, who plays the lead role of Benj. “We had heard, like, ‘You have to see this kid in The Black Phone. He’s so great.’ And then he was just such a sweet kid and so badly wanted to be a part of this movie that he was like, ‘I will come in and I will read for anyone.’ ”

Alongside Thames, the main cast of Incoming is a set of fresh comedy faces, including Ramon Reed, Raphael Alejandro, Isabella Ferreira, and Bardia Seiri. One slightly more familiar face is Loren Gray, the singer-songwriter and queen of TikTok who plays the school’s above-it-all cool girl. “The first time we met Loren, we were just like, ‘Oh man, she’s really funny,’ ” John says. “She’s got a really fun sense of humor.”

Spyglass Media Group/Artists Road/Netflix

And fans of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia will spot another beloved performer: Kaitlin Olson, who plays Benj’s mother in the film. “We begged her to do it,” Dave says. “The thing about Kaitlin is she always gives you more than is on the page. So that was a relatively straight character, I think, in the script. But she is such a force of nature when she gets out there on set that she finds comedy all over the place that wasn’t on the page.”

“We beg Kaitlin to do any role in anything we ever do,” John makes sure to add. Who wouldn’t?

Spyglass Media Group/Artists Road/Netflix

When will Incoming be on Netflix?

Incoming crashes onto Netflix on Aug. 23.

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