Guy Ritchie's The Gentlemen Is Becoming A Netflix TV Series, Theo James To Star
Netflix is officially entering the Guy Ritchie business.
Over two years after the "Snatch," "Sherlock Holmes," and "Aladdin" filmmaker first released his long-overdue foray back to caper flicks with "The Gentlemen" (/Film's Hoai-Tran Bui reviewed the film here, calling it "a film about Ritchie flexing his muscles and standing on his lawn to yell at the new kids for daring to tread on it"), the divisive director is taking the gangster dramedy and turning it into a streaming series for the biggest platform of them all. The news comes courtesy of Variety, which confirms previous reports that Netflix had been "in talks" to pick up the series. Today, it's been revealed that the streaming giant has now given this spin-off the green light and ordered it to series.
While fans of the irreverent crime film have waited with bated breath to see if any of the film's original stars would return — a star-studded cast that includes Matthew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnam, Jeremy Strong, Michelle Dockery, Colin Farrell, Henry Golding, and Eddie Marsan — we now know that the new lead for this series will have a connection to one of those original characters, at least. Variety also indicates that actor Theo James has joined the Netflix series as the main protagonist Eddie Halstead, who is the son of McConaughey's American drug lord Mickey Pearson and described as someone "who inherits his father's estate only to discover it is part of Pearson's empire."
Netflix moves forward with The Gentlemen
After writing and directing "The Gentlemen" to commendable box office success, Guy Ritchie will return as a writer (he co-wrote the pilot alongside Matthew Read), director of the first two episodes, and executive producer on the Netflix series that will continue the story of the film. It'll be a happy reunion of sorts behind the scenes, as Bill Block, Ivan Atkinson, and Marn Davies will all return to the series as executive producers after serving as producers on the 2019 film (Marn and Davies also received "story by" credits on the screenplay).
As for the Netflix series, newcomer Theo James is known for starring in HBO's "The Time Traveler's Wife," season 2 of "The White Lotus" as Cameron Sullivan, and also roles in the "Underworld" and "Divergent" movies, the latter of which he played the character of Tobias "Four" Eaton. His casting as the main protagonist of the story doesn't preclude even more direct connections or possibly even cameo appearances from others in the original cast, of course, though it remains to be seen whether Ritchie will be able to (or even feel inclined to) lure such big-name actors to Netflix. At the very least, his casting as the son of McConaughey's original character would seem to answer the question of whether this series would be a direct continuation, a loosely connection spin-off, or some other story set in the same world as "The Gentlemen."
Stay tuned to /Film for more updates as they come in.