Black Mirror: Bandersnatch was a 2018 interactive film in the science fiction anthology series Black Mirror. It was written by series creator Charlie Brooker and directed by David Slade. The film premiered on Netflix on 28 December 2018, its release date only officially announced the day before.
In Bandersnatch, viewers make decisions for the main character, the young programmer Stefan Butler (Fionn Whitehead), who is adapting a fantasy gamebook into a video game in 1984. Other characters include Mohan Thakur (Asim Chaudhry) and Colin Ritman (Will Poulter), who work at a video game company; Stefan's father, Peter (Craig Parkinson); and Stefan's therapist, Dr. Haynes (Alice Lowe). A postmodernist work with free will as a central theme, the film was named after a real video game planned for release by Imagine Software in 1984, the game in turn named after the bandersnatch, a creature of Lewis Carroll's creation.
Brooker and executive producer Annabel Jones were approached by Netflix about making an interactive film in May 2017, during which time Netflix had several such projects for children underway. Difficulty in writing the highly non-linear script led to Netflix's creation of a bespoke program called Branch Manager; the unique nature of the content required adaptations in the platform's use of cache memory. Bandersnatch was originally to be part of Black Mirrors fifth series, but its lengthy production led to its release as a standalone film, delaying the fifth series to June 2019.
Critics praised the technical design of the film but criticised the story's characterisation. There was mixed commentary about the narrative and the extent to which viewer choices affected the story. The film received average rankings in critics' lists of Black Mirror instalments by quality, but garnered numerous awards and nominations, winning two Primetime Emmy Awards. A follow-up episode, "Plaything", set in the same universe as Bandersnatch and featuring Poulter and Chaudhry reprising their roles, was released as part of the series' seventh season in 2025.
Bandersnatch was one of Netflix's early forays into interactive works, but by 2023, Netflix had shifted away from interactive media towards video games offered by the service with Netflix citing that the technology had served its purpose. Netflix delisted several of its interactive works by 2025 with the exception of Bandersnatch and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs the Reverend. Both of these were removed from Netflix in May 2025 as part of a major interface update.
Synopsis Format Bandersnatch is an interactive film. A brief tutorial, specific to the device being streamed on, explains to the viewer how to make choices. When presented with a choice point, the user has ten seconds to make a choice or a default decision is made for them. The average viewing is 90 minutes, though the quickest path ends after 40 minutes. There are 150 minutes of unique footage divided into 250 segments, yielding over one trillion possible paths that the viewer can take. In some cases, the same scene is reachable in multiple ways but will present the viewer with different choices based on the way they reached it. In other cases, certain loops guide viewers to a specific narrative regardless of the choices they make.
Netflix reported that there are five "main" endings, with variants within each ending; some endings are intercut with credits, similar to other Black Mirror episodes. Producer Russell McLean said there are between ten and twelve endings, some of which are more concrete than others, and according to director David Slade, there are a few "golden eggs" endings that are difficult to achieve. No ending is considered "prescribed" over any other, according to series creator Charlie Brooker and executive producer Annabel Jones, particularly as they felt some endings were not truly endings in the traditional sense. In most cases, when the viewer reaches an ending, the interactive film gives the player the option to redo a last critical choice in order to explore different content, sometimes with a fast-forward through early parts of a storyline already seen. Some endings may become impossible to reach based on choices made by the viewer unless they opt to restart the film.
Plot
In Britain in July 1984, a young programmer named Stefan Butler is adapting a "choose your own adventure" book owned by his late mother, Bandersnatch by Jerome F. Davies, into a revolutionary adventure game. Stefan pitches it to the video game company Tuckersoft, which is run by Mohan Thakur and employs the famous game creator Colin Ritman. Stefan is given the choice of accepting or rejecting help from the company in developing the game. If Stefan accepts, Colin says he chose the "wrong path". The game is released months later and critically panned as "designed by committee". Stefan considers trying again, and the film returns to the day of the offer, and the viewer is given the same choice.
Rejecting the offer, Stefan begins to work on the game on his own from his bedroom, given a September deadline. As the game becomes more complex, Stefan's life is torn between his career and his role, and he eventually becomes stressed and hostile to his father, Peter. He visits Dr. R. Haynes's clinic for therapy. The viewer may have Stefan explain to Dr. Haynes about his mother's death: when he was five, Peter confiscated his stuffed rabbit toy. His mother was delayed by Stefan's refusal to leave without the rabbit and the train she took derailed, killing her. Stefan feels responsible for her death. Dr. Haynes prescribes Stefan medicine, which the viewer can choose to have Stefan take or flush down the toilet.
The viewer may have Stefan accept an invitation to Colin's flat, where he lives with his girlfriend Kitty and infant daughter Pearl. The viewer is offered to take LSD with Colin or not; however, in the latter case Colin then spikes Stefan's tea with the drug. Colin rants about secret government mind-control programs and alternate timelines. To demonstrate his theories, Colin demands Stefan choose one of them to jump off the balcony. If Stefan jumps, he dies and the game is finished by Tuckersoft to poor reviews. If Colin jumps, the whole encounter is revealed to be a dream, but Colin is absent in future scenes and remembers the event in that dream.
As the deadline to deliver the game looms, Stefan begins to feel he is being controlled by outside forces. Stefan finds his life mirroring that of Davies, about whom he learns through a book and a documentary that Colin gives him. Like Davies, he sees recurring imagery of a "branching pathway" symbol, which seemingly led to Davies beheading his own wife. As he begins to mentally break down, the viewer has multiple options to explain to Stefan who has been controlling him, including the option for Stefan to be told that he is being watched on Netflix in the 21st century. The viewer may discover a locked safe that contains either Stefan's old toy rabbit or documents about him being monitored as part of an experiment.
There are numerous possible endings. Stefan may choose to confront his therapist, after which it may be revealed that he is on a film set and that his "dad" is a fellow actor. One set of choices leads to Stefan seemingly crossing through a mirror to his five-year-old self, and then choosing whether to "die" with his mother in the train crash, causing him to suddenly die in the present. In other paths, the viewer has the option to make Stefan kill his father, and then bury or chop up the body. Burying it leads to Stefan being jailed before the release of the game. Dismembering it leads to the successful release of the game, but Stefan goes to prison shortly after, and the game is recalled and destroyed. Other scenes show Mohan, Colin, or Kitty arriving at Stefan's house, sometimes with the option to kill the characters. In some endings, the viewer is shown the critical reaction to the Bandersnatch game and the fate of Tuckersoft, which may go out of business. One ending (chop up the body) concludes in the present day with an adult Pearl, now a programmer for Netflix, attempting to adapt Bandersnatch into an interactive film. The viewer chooses for her to pour tea over her computer or destroy it, which implies she may go down the same path Davies and Stefan did.
Cast
Credits adapted from Screen Rant.
Production Bandersnatch was released on Netflix on 28 December 2018 in 28 languages. It was originally intended to be an episode of series five, its scope changing to a standalone movie due to its complexity. Bandersnatch was made after one of the series five episodes was filmed. Brooker compared the effort spent on Bandersnatch to that of four regular Black Mirror episodes. As a consequence, the fifth season of Black Mirror was delayed, its three episodes premiering on 5 June 2019.
Conception and writing The film was written by Charlie Brooker. He and Annabel Jones were approached by Netflix in May 2017 about making an interactive episode; their initial instinct was to reject the offer, particularly over concerns about the lack of seamless transitions from earlier interactive films. However, by the time of a script meeting a few weeks later to review potential ideas for the upcoming fifth series of Black Mirror, they had an idea for a plot that only worked as an interactive film. In it, a programmer would make a video game out of a choose-your-own-adventure book. Brooker had previously conceived of multiple endings for the third series episode "Playtest": a "nightmare mode" version of the episode, played when the viewer had seen the episode once before, would have ended with a much darker resolution.
Brooker initially envisaged the film as having one clear story, with a few different scenes at the end, until he had the idea of remembering earlier choices and incorporating them into later scenes. To keep the narrative focused with the numerous divergent endings, Brooker kept the story's core concept around the freedom of choice or the illusion of that freedom. Jones worked to develop believable characters that would fit with any of the film's possible endings. Discussions were had over the number of choices the viewer should make and how the film should be paced. The storylines and branches continued expanding into pre-production.
The flash-forward ending involving Pearl Ritman was expected to be the one most commonly reached. Brooker remarked that he found himself in a similar position as Pearl in trying to work himself through pages of complex decision trees while writing the script. Several of the paths lead the viewer towards the choice of having Butler kill his father, though the viewer can avoid this. However, not all endings can be reached without Butler killing his father. McLean stated that this was done to give the viewer the sense of having their own control over the narrative. Endings in which a reviewer gives a star rating to Bandersnatch were designed to encourage users to go back, though there is no way that, simultaneously, the game can get a good review and Stefan can have a happy ending.
Technical design Brooker found a steep learning curve in the technology required to write the film's script. At Netflix's suggestion, Brooker wrote the 170-page script in Twine, a tool for writing interactive fiction, also using Scrivener, Final Draft and multiple versions of Microsoft Notepad. The basic structure of the film took the most time to write, and the script underwent seven different versions. As the first Netflix interactive content for adults, Bandersnatch required more complex choices than previous interactive works, leading Netflix staff to create a bespoke tool which they named Branch Manager. It only became available to Brooker a few months into the episode's development.