HBO Max announced today that it’s making a new series based on the popular relaxation app, Calm. The 30-minute, 10-episode series, A World of Calm, will feature the same story time narration style that the app is known for, plus “mesmeric imagery,” HBO says. HBO is working on its new show in collaboration with Nutopia, the team behind Nat Geo’s series One Strange Rock and Disney+’s The World According to Jeff Goldblum.
Some of the actors already slated to narrate the episodes might sound familiar to you, including Mahershala Ali, Idris Elba, Oscar Isaac, Nicole Kidman, Zoë Kravitz, Lucy Liu, Cillian Murphy, and Keanu Reeves.
Yes, Keanu Reeves. Let us take a moment.
Now if you haven’t used Calm before, here’s a quick overview: It’s an app geared toward more seasoned meditators, with guided sessions, breathing visualisation exercises, a large selection of ambient music, and, of course, sleep stories that are narrated by recognisable voices, like Game of Thrones actor Jerome Flynn. Honestly, Keanu Reeves should have already been part of this, but it’s OK — better late than never.
To get a taste of what to expect from the TV show, download the app, use the free trial, then imagine what it would be like to hear Keanu Reeves reading you to sleep. You’re getting relaxed and sleepy just thinking about it, aren’t you? Me too. Keanu Reeves could narrate all the gory details of his John Wick movies and my anxiety and stress levels would go down enough to make me sleep through the night like a baby. He could whisper about demons, cybernetic implants, or going back in time to do a history project, and he’d still put me to sleep faster than a double dose of over-the-counter melatonin.
I find Reeves’s voice very soothing. His soft-spoken, ending monologue in The Matrix still give me tingles, in the good ASMR kind of way. I often fall asleep to soft-spoken or whispered ASMR every night because [gestures widely] the state of the world at this moment. This HBO Max show couldn’t come at a better time. Unfortunately, HBO has not announced an official release date yet, but I hope for all of our sakes that it debuts soon. The world needs Keanu.