(Left) Jason Statham as Levon Cade in director David Ayer’s ‘A Working Man’. An Amazon MGM Studios film. Photo Credit: Dan Smith © 2025 Amazon Content Services LLC. All Rights Reserved. (Right) Guy Ritchie on the set of ‘The Gentlemen.’ Photo: Kevin Baker/Netflix. Copyright: © 2023, Netflix Inc.
Preview:
- Jason Statham and Guy Ritchie are planning to work together again.
- They’re both attached to action thriller ‘Viva La Madness’.
- This will mark their sixth collaboration.
Action star Jason Statham and director Guy Ritchie clearly like working together. And beyond other repeat collaborators for the former, Ritchie stretches back to the start of Statham’s career with ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,’ the 1998 movie that put them both on the filmmaking map.
“A Disgrace to Criminals Everywhere.”
Release Date: Mar 5, 1999
Run Time: 1 hr 45 min
Budget: $1,350,000
According to Variety, they’re set to team up yet again, with Statham convincing Ritchie to come aboard and write/direct ‘Viva La Madness,’ based on the novel by author J.J. Connelly.
Related Article: ‘Kingsman’s Colin Firth Joins the Cast of Guy Ritchie’s Young Sherlock Holmes Series
What’s the story of ‘Viva La Madness’?
Jason Statham as Levon Cade in director David Ayer’s ‘A Working Man’. An Amazon MGM Studios film. Photo Credit: Dan Smith © 2025 Amazon Content Services LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Here’s where it gets interesting… ‘Viva La Madness’ draws from Connelly’s sequel novel to ‘Layer Cake,’ which was adapted in 2004 by Matthew Vaughn. It marked Vaughn stepping away from producing Ritchie’s movies to become a filmmaker in his own right.
According to the 2011 novel’s description, it moves the story on to international crime with trans-Atlantic drug deals, money laundering and high-tech electronic fraud, portrayed with the same uncanny believability.
The anonymous hero of ‘Layer Cake’ is pulled back into the drug game before he can escape to a sunny retirement: in an authentic but dazzling combination of London low-life, Caribbean high-life and Venezuelan drug cartels toting machine-guns in Mayfair.
Yet the movie of ‘Viva La Madness’, which Ritchie will also co-produce is being crafted as a stand-alone, not a continuation of ‘Layer Cake’ or any other work from Connelly.
And Statham has long been linked with a potential official movie sequel to ‘Layer Cake’, taking over the role once played by Daniel Craig (‘No Time to Die’).
Now, though, it appears things have moved on to this very different adaptation.
What else are Jason Statham and Guy Ritchie working on?
Actor Jake Gyllenhaal (left) and director Guy Ritchie (right) on the set of ‘The Covenant,’ a Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures film. Credit: Christopher Raphael / Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures.
Statham is typically busy with action madness: he’s shot ‘Shelter,’ about a recluse on a Scottish isle who rescues a girl only to come under attack; and ‘Mutiny,’ playing a man framed for the murder of his wealthy boss who must go on the run.
‘Shelter’ will be out in January next year, ‘Mutiny’ follows in August. And Statham is currently at work on sequel ‘The Beekeeper 2.’
As for Ritchie, he wrote the movie ‘Wife and Dog’ and is editing ‘In the Grey.’ There is also the second season of his Netflix series ‘The Gentlemen,’ due next year.
When will ‘Viva La Madness’ be on screens?
With Ritchie set to start filming early next year and Statham the only person in the cast so far, we wouldn’t expect this one much before later in 2026 or early 2027.
Jason Statham in ‘Homefront’. Photo: Open Road Films.
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