After revisiting the upper crust of London with his The Gentlemen spinoff series earlier this year, Guy Ritchie is already planning a return to British aristocracy. Variety exclusively revealed that the director is prepping his next film, titled Wife and Dog, which is expected to begin filming in October. Black Bear, the banner that collaborated with Ritchie on his latest film The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare and Sydney Sweeney‘s recent horror hit Immaculate, will launch sales for the film at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival.
Little is known about the film, other than that it will mark Ritchie’s return to a similar setting full of back-stabbing and colorful characters to that of the aforementioned Netflix series and his 2019 film of the same name. Given his penchant for action-comedy and gangster flicks, it’ll likely have all the hallmarks of his sleek style of filmmaking. The cast list, similarly, is being kept under lock and key, though Variety notes that a bevy of big stars are circling the project. In addition to directing, Ritchie also penned the screenplay and produced alongside his mainstay production partner Ivan Atkinson and Black Bear’s John Friedberg, who also helped on Ungentlemanly Warfare.
With Wife and Dog, Ritchie keeps busy amid an increasingly cramped 2024 schedule. Aside from releasing Ungentlemanly Warfare and The Gentlemen to strong reviews earlier this year, he’s also working on the star-studded Fountain of Youth, which began shooting in Bangkok in February and features John Krasinski and Natalie Portman as its leads. First on the docket, however, is In the Grey, which reunites the director with Jake Gyllenhaal, Henry Cavill, and Eiza González for a heist action movie set to release on January 17 next year. Much more work could be on the horizon for Ritchie if all goes well, as Lionsgate has expressed their hopes for the film to spawn a franchise.
Wife and Dog is far from Black Bear’s only project going up for sale at Cannes starting this week. David Michôd‘s boxing biopic starring Sydney Sweeney as legendary fighter Christy Martin will also be seeking a buyer, alongside the Olivia Wilde-led I Want Your Sex from Gregg Araki and Mahershala Ali and Tom Hardy‘s 77 Blackout from Cary Joji Fukunaga. Beyond Black Bear’s reach, however, arguably the biggest project that will draw the eyes of distributors will be Francis Ford Coppola‘s long-gestating passion project Megalopolis featuring an A-list ensemble led by Adam Driver. This looks to be a very packed market in 2024 with directors from Ritchie to David Cronenberg and Panos Cosmatos packaging some of the most anticipated films of the next couple of years.
Stay tuned here at Collider for more on Wife and Dog as it comes out. In the meantime, all episodes of Ritchie’s British aristocracy-set series The Gentlemen are available to watch on Netflix.
Eddie Horniman, Duke of Halstead, inherits large estate from father, unaware it fronts Pearson’s drug empire. With no crime experience, he must take over the operation or lose the estate.
