Director Guy Ritchie and Jason Statham’s untitled new movie is already done shooting. The filmmaker and actor go back a long ways. Statham made his screen debut in Ritchie’s very first feature-length effort, 1998’s Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, and would go on to work with him again on his second, Snatch, two years later. The pair earned largely positive reviews for their snappy gangster-crime flicks, allowing Ritchie to stand out alongside the many other Tarantino imitators that emerged in the late ’90s (post-Pulp Fiction), and sending Statham on his way to becoming the bonafide action star he is today.

After re-teaming on the far less successful 2005 crime-thriller Revolver (which was heavily influenced by Ritchie’s interest in Kabbalah at the time), the pair went their separate ways. Statham began to work increasingly on American genre movies over the years that followed, eventually joining franchises like The Expendables and Fast & Furious. Ritchie traveled a similar route after 2009’s RocknRolla and spent most of the 2010s directing films for Warner Bros., prior to helming Disney’s live-action Aladdin last year. Now, the duo are reuniting for a movie that brings them back to their roots.

Ritchie has taken to Twitter to confirm he and Statham are done filming their currently untitled next movie, and hopes to have a rought cut finished within the next two weeks. You can watch his video announcement in the space below.

As reported last fall, Ritchie and Statham are working on a remake of Nicolas Boukhrief’s 2004 French film Cash Truck or Le convoyeur (as it’s titled in France). The original movie told the story of Alexandre, a mysterious and troubled security guard who’s hired by an armored truck company. However, as he grows closer to his co-workers (all of them disturbed or damanged like him), it gradually becomes clear Alexandre’s been hiding his true intentions this whole time. Statham is starring as a character referred to as simply “H” in Ritchie’s remake, with Scott Eastwood, Josh Hartnett, and Holt McCallany among those filling out the main cast. The film’s setting has also been changed from the original version, taking place in Los Angeles instead.

Between this and next week’s The Gentlemen, it’s obvious Ritchie has decided to take a break from big-budget fare and return to churning out off-beat crime films full of crackling dialogue and brotherhood among deliquents instead. The Gentlemen was praised as a return to form for Ritchie when it opened in the UK earlier this month (albeit, one that demonstrates his growth as a filmmaker over the last decade), so this will surely come as a welcome development to his longtime supporters. With post-production on his and Statham’s new movie already underway and MGM handling domestic distribution, it shouldn’t be too long before the film gets both an official title and release date to go with it.

Source: Guy Ritchie

  • The Gentlemen Release Date: 2020-01-24