Stephen Colbert gets a ton of celebrities to act out a pilot written by actual children

It’s upfronts week, which means the TV universe is in upheaval. Cancellations! New shows! Surprise network switches! Stephen Colbert, whose Late Show is the sort of late-night institution typically immune to these forces, used the opportunity to flex some of his own creative muscles while appealing to the in-demand “little kid” market. Last year, he got together a dream team of talent—that is, a room full of children—to come up with “Teenage War,” a potboiler starring John Malkovich.

He got the squad back together this year for a prolonged brainstorming session, most of which was spurred along by an old soul named Joshua, who speaks at length about The Beatles and suggests, as stars for this hypothetical program, Brooke Shields and Jeff Daniels. It’s fun watching Colbert bounce off the innate creativity of a bunch of kids for awhile, but it’s all lead-up to the mock-trailer for the mock-show, in which Shields is joined by Jason Segal (playing Jeff Daniels) as well as Whoopi Goldberg, Hugh Laurie, Kathryn Hahn, David Tennant, John Oliver, Michael Shannon, and Willem Dafoe. Strangest Things: A Golden Mystery will presumably be brought to Amazon Prime in early 2019 following a massive fan campaign.