Here's a First Look at HBO's 'Fahrenheit 451'

On Friday, HBO released the first teaser trailer for its upcoming Fahrenheit 451 remake, and the thing is fire—as in, it's mostly just footage of books burning.

The teaser, unfortunately, doesn't feature either of the film's stars, Shape of Water's Michael Shannon and Creed's Michael B. Jordan, though some recent Fahrenheit 451 press photos of the duo heroically torching up literature give a nice taste of what's to come.

This is far from the first adaptation of Ray Bradbury's classic sci-fi novel about "firemen" who burn illegal literature in a dystopian, totalitarian regime. The story has been retold on stage and screen, most famously in a 1966 film by Francois Truffaut, and even on the radio, but HBO is planning a fresh, modernized take on Bradbury's original vision.

Fahrenheit 451's director and co-writer, Ramin Bahrani, told the Hollywood Reporter in a recent interview that, although the plot of the new film strays from its source material, it stays "true to the themes" of the original book.

"Bradbury's novel was set in the future where he was predicting having screens on the wall that you could interact with," Bahrani told the Reporter. "Social media and supercomputers like my phone are real now… There was no reason to put [Fahrenheit 451] in the future; it's just [set in] a strange tomorrow."

In the new adaptation, Jordan plays Montag—a fireman who begins to question his job and his loyalty to the government. Shannon stars alongside him as Montag's mentor and fire captain, Beatty. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the film also features Sofia Boutella as "an informant caught between the competing interests" of Jordan and Shannon's characters.

HBO has not revealed a release date for Fahrenheit 451, but the upcoming film is expected to drop sometime this spring. In the meantime, watch a sophomore year syllabus'-worth of literature go up in flames in the teaser above.