Spring came early to your streaming queue this year. A wave of new shows and films drops this month, and a surprising number of them are set right here in California, from the Hollywood Hills to downtown Fullerton.
First up is “Outcome,” hitting Apple TV on April 10. Jonah Hill wrote, directed, and stars in this dark comedy about a crisis lawyer tasked with saving the career of Hollywood mega star Reef Hawk, played by Keanu Reeves. The premise: Hawk gets blackmailed over a video that could torch everything, so he launches an apology tour. Matt Bomer and Cameron Diaz play his friends. The supporting cast reads like a party you’d actually want to attend: Susan Lucci, Martin Scorsese, Drew Barrymore, Laverne Cox, Roy Wood Jr., Atsuko Okatsuka, and David Spade. Not a bad room.
Hill is doing a lot here. Writing, directing, and acting in your own film is ambitious under any circumstances, and the Hollywood-mocking-Hollywood genre is well-worn territory at this point. Still, the cast is hard to argue with, and Reeves playing a panicked A-lister feels like inspired casting.
Five days later, on April 15, Apple TV drops “Margo’s Got Money Troubles,” based on the 2024 novel of the same name. Elle Fanning plays Margo, a 19-year-old aspiring writer and single mom living in Fullerton who turns to OnlyFans to keep the lights on. Michelle Pfeiffer plays her mom, a former Hooters waitress. Nick Offerman plays her dad, a former pro wrestler. Nicole Kidman shows up as an old wrestling buddy of Offerman’s character.
Fullerton as a TV setting. Genuinely great.
The show filmed on location in Los Angeles, downtown Fullerton, and on the Fullerton College campus. Over $50,000 of proceeds reportedly goes toward a scholarship fund tied to the production, which is a nice detail for a show literally about financial survival. The casting here is the real story: Pfeiffer and Kidman sharing screen time, with Offerman doing whatever a former pro wrestler character requires of Nick Offerman. That’s a show.
On April 16, Prime Video releases “Jerry West: The Logo,” a documentary about the All-Star Los Angeles Lakers player and executive whose silhouette became the NBA’s official logo. The Lakers connection makes this an L.A. story through and through. West’s career as both a player and front-office figure spans decades of California basketball history, and for anyone who followed the franchise even loosely, this one should land.
Then comes “Funny AF” on April 20, on Netflix. Kevin Hart hosts this reality competition searching for what the show calls “the next stand-up superstar.” Auditions take place in New York and Chicago too, but the finale is set to happen in Los Angeles at the Netflix is a Joke Festival. Guest judges include Kumail Nanjiani, Chelsea Handler, and Keegan-Michael Key. The winner, chosen by audience votes from a finalist pool, earns their own Netflix stand-up special. Hart producing and hosting a comedy competition show feels like an obvious idea, which doesn’t mean it won’t work.
The California angle across all four projects is worth pausing on. “Outcome” satirizes the very industry that makes L.A. run. “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” takes the camera to Fullerton, a city that doesn’t exactly get a lot of prestige TV attention. The Jerry West documentary is rooted in Forum-era Lakers lore, the kind of history that still means something to anyone who grew up watching games in Inglewood. And “Funny AF” uses Los Angeles as its finish line, which is still how the entertainment world tends to think about comedy: you make it when you make it to L.A.
LAist has a fuller rundown of the spring streaming slate, including additional shows rounding out April and into May.
If you’re trying to plan your viewing, “Outcome” is probably the highest-profile bet of the month, just on the strength of the names attached. But “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” is the one I’m most curious about. A show that actually films in Fullerton, takes its source material seriously, and puts Pfeiffer and Kidman in the same orbit? That’s the kind of project that either becomes quietly beloved or completely ignored. Spring is a good time to find out which.