HBO's Benedict Cumberbatch-led take on Brexit gets both a trailer and a heaping pile of backlash

Because 2018 continues to be a mad libs soup of WTF, HBO recently released a trailer for its upcoming Brexit movie with Benedict Cumberbatch starring as the controversial Leave campaign leader, Dominic Cummings.

It's two minutes of "lol wut?" and people are taking the premium cable channel to task for it on Twitter.

Understandably, most of the ire is coming from the folks who are actually still caught up in the clusterfuck of an as-yet-unfinished Brexit. The trailer dropped at a particularly bad time, with debates over negotiation deals between UK and EU reaching a fever pitch over the past week as British prime minister Theresa May faced a no-confidence vote and the possibility of a second referendum started to seem more plausible.

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The offense comes down to a few sentiments: too soon, this is irresponsible as hell, and please stop glorifying a man whose classism ushered along potential economic collapse in the UK.

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In particular one journalist, who published a Guardian article questioning the legal ramifications of Cummings' tactics, voiced her disgust at turning the ongoing political turmoil into entertainment. Carole Cadwalladr aptly compared the situation to how Americans would feel if, let's say, the BBC released a movie today about Donald Trump's many misdeeds, both suspected and proven.

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The trailer truly does come across as The Wolf of Wall Street: Brexit edition. Sure, we're supposed to see Cummings as Not A Good Dude. But both the casting of an internationally renowned figure like Cumberbatch and the portrayal of Cummings as some sort of political genius undercuts the very serious harm the actual man's work orchestrated.

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The casting also inevitably draws some comparisons to Cumberbatch's character on Sherlock, who's painted as an outcast hero despite a flawed and often offensive demeanor.

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Others are cautioning dissenters to hold their outrage until after they've actually seen the movie.

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In the press release, HBO (which made the film in partnership with BBC Studios' Channel 4) stated that Brexit would revolve around "revealing the personalities, strategies and feuds of the Leave and Remain campaigns. The tactics employed by Vote Leave during the data-driven campaign swayed a historically silent voting bloc that would ultimately decide the outcome of the referendum, as well as affecting future elections around the world.”

So who knows -- maybe Brexit will be a timely commentary on an enormous issue with ongoing ramifications, far and wide. But, I mean, at least The Big Short waited a good seven years after the 2008 housing market crash to do that.

I guess we'll find out when Brexit is released on Jan. 9.