Much like the Victor Pelevin novel, Generation "П" (known in the U.S. as Homo Zapiens and in the U.K. as Babylon), the new trailer for its upcoming film adaptation hits you with a barrage of words so dense it would be impossible to penetrate on the first try.

In case you can't follow the trailer's odd snatches of talk and bursts of action, here's what you're in for: a hyper-philosophical, morbidly funny foray into the messed-up psyche of a Moscow advertising “creative” in the early '90s, hired to come up with preemptive ad campaigns for Western products that haven't hit the market yet.

The trailer faithfully begins with the now-famous opening sentence of the novel: "Once upon a time in Russia, it’s true that an untroubled youth smiled to summer, sea, and sun, and chose Pepsi." What follows is an encroachment of Coke, coke, consumerism, American influence, mania, mafia, and, for good measure, Ishtar worship. You can already tell that the director, Viktor Ginzburg, is having a lot of fun with period props (giant cell phone with a retractable antenna - check), and the uniquely justified meta-product placements (we can't venture to guess whether the Sprite folks will be happy with a character braying a Russian folk poem about it). We still wonder how the book's less visual moments will play out, however. Doesn't our hero take a chapter-length dictation from the ghost of Che Guevara at some point? Will Benicio del Toro do a cameo?

Finally, a bit of trivia you won’t find in the subtitles: Ginzburg filmed much of the movie (currently in post-production) at the home and office of Andrew Paulson, co-founder of Russia’s online media company SUP, a.k.a the thing that ate LiveJournal. Bet he worships Ishtar, too.

Generation "П" Trailer