Are you strapped in? Jason Statham and Guy Ritchie have been long-time collaborators. Together they have made some of their most notable early films together, including Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. The pair have already teamed back up for the upcoming crime drama Wrath of Man, formerly known as Cash Truck, and now we’ll be getting two new Ritchie-Statham movies thanks to a second project titled Five Eyes.
The action-thriller will center on Jason Statham’s MI6 agent character, Orson Fortune, who is recruited by the titular global intelligence alliance to track and stall the sale of deadly weapons, per Miramax. Five Eyes features the writers behind Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen, Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies, with Ritchie also contributing to revisions.
Ivan Atkinson, who will also produce, and Marn Davies wrote Wrath of Man together, which will star Jason Statham, Scott Eastwood, Josh Hartnett and Alex Ferns. Wrath of Man follows Statham as H, a mysterious man working for a cash truck company and is expected to hit theaters in January 2021.
Five Eyes is planning to start up production in Europe this October, with international distribution sales for the film already in the works at this fall’s Toronto International Film Festival. The movie is described as a globe-trotting mission that will ask Statham’s character to use all his “charm, ingenuity and stealth” to track down and infiltrate a billionaire broker named Greg Simmonds. Another character in the mix is a tech expert named Sarah Fidel. Both Simmonds and Fidel have yet to be cast.
Guy Ritchie fans can certainly rejoice of the news with these two exciting Statham films in the mix at Hollywood. The writer-director is coming off a massive year. He led Disney’s live-action Aladdin to over $1 billion at the box office last summer, and that flick is now expected to receive a sequel. He also made The Gentlemen, which came out earlier this year and made $115 million worldwide against a budget of $22 million.
Jason Statham abruptly left a project with Kevin Hart titled The Man From Toronto back in March, reportedly due to creative differences. He allegedly wanted the film about Hart’s screw-up character being mistaken for a deadly assassin to be rated R. Woody Harrelson has already replaced Statham in the movie coming in September 2021.
“Five Eyes” is an actual intelligence alliance that comprises the U.S, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK. Time will tell whether the film will be primed to visit these destinations in the current global climate. The Batman shut down its production earlier today after a member of the cast/crew (one report claimed it was Robert Pattinson) tested positive for COVID-19.
We’re certainly excited for this new era of Ritchie-Statham movies. We’ll keep you updated here on CinemaBlend as more updates come our way.
