Netflix FINALLY confirms Black Mirror: Bandersnatch surprise episode will be released this Friday

The prospect of a standalone film or choose your own adventure mystery has been leaked, teased and hinted at for months now.

Now, one day before Friday 28th December, the streaming service has finally released a trailer.

Watch below, and check out our in-depth trailer breakdown here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM0xWpBYlNM

After over eight months of complete silence, Black Mirror's official Twitter account sparked back into life on Thursday 27th December.

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The profile posted a single, cryptic word: "Relax."

https://twitter.com/blackmirror/status/1078214062549417990

If that was meant to be taken as a warning to fans to chill out with their online theorising, it didn't work. Just look at the replies to those six simple characters.

Exactly one hour later, the trailer dropped, along with the tweet, "Don't do it". The tweets appear to echo the lyrics of the Frankie Goes to Hollywood hit Relax which plays in the trailer.

That track was released in 1984, which also points to the show's 80s setting.

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Set in the 1980s, Bandersnatch — which is being billed as a Black Mirror "event" — is set to follow Stefan (Dunkirk actor Fionn Whitehead), a young programmer who hopes to create a computer game inspired by an adventure novel given to him as a child.

Line of Duty's Craig Parkinson, Horrible Histories' Alice Lowe, Bafta Rising Star Will Poulter and Asim Chaudhry (AKA People Just Do Nothing's Chabuddy G) are all set to appear in the cast of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, which is directed by David Slade.

"When it's a concept piece, a bit of madness is what you need," one character says tellingly during the trailer. Seems creators Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones have been preparing for this moment for a very long time...

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch trailer breakdown – will Charlie Brooker's latest episode be a Netflix game changer?

The rumours around a Black Mirror standalone episode really began to build after Netflix quietly added a page to its streaming library for something called Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, with an episode synopsis saying, "Be right back".

The screenshot featured images from previous Black Mirror episodes, and the name Bandersnatch tied in with previous rumours and set sightings from earlier in the year. For a full breakdown click here.

Netflix had remained entirely silent on the rumours however, making no mention of any new Black Mirror episode before the end of the year.

Meanwhile, an apparently leaked Black Mirror episode image also surfaced suggesting the Black Mirror episode could star Bafta Rising Star Will Poulter, Dunkirk actor Fionn Whitehead and People Just Do Nothing's Asim Chaudhry (AKA Chabuddy G).

Further details include the fact that the show's stated running time is 312 minutes (over five hours), suggesting that this could indeed be the 'choose your own adventure' style episode that has long been teased.

In short: make sure you have a couple hours to kill this Friday. Black Mirror creators Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones could be about to show us all a vision of the future of TV...