Every report on Dogfight leads with the reunion, and the reunion is real: Guy Ritchie will write and direct a revenge thriller for Netflix with Jason Statham in the lead, their seventh film together. The more telling detail sits a few lines lower, in the credits. Statham is also one of the film’s producers, and Punch Palace, the company he set up himself, is one of the three banners behind it. The actor Ritchie once cast as a streetwise hustler now shares ownership of the partnership.

That is a quiet change of status, and it runs through Statham’s whole late career. For most of two decades he was a dependable action lead in other people’s machinery, from the Luc Besson-written Transporter films to the Fast & Furious and Expendables ensembles. With Ritchie, the films that first made him a name, he is no longer the discovery. He is the one bringing projects to the table.

From a market stall to a producer credit

Statham was modelling for French Connection when he was introduced to Ritchie, who was looking for someone to play a con artist and cast him after hearing he had worked as a market stall salesman. According to his Wikipedia biography, he was paid £5,000 for Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and £15,000 for Snatch (2000). Those two crime comedies made both men.

The third film broke the rhythm. Revolver (2005) was a critical and commercial failure, and the partnership did not return until Wrath of Man in 2021, which Netflix’s own Tudum counts as their fourth collaboration. It was a different register entirely: a remake of the French thriller Le Convoyeur, with Statham as H, a man who joins an armored truck company to find the people who killed his son. Collider puts its worldwide gross at around $104 million against a reported $40 million budget. Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre followed in 2023, a spy comedy with Statham as Orson Fortune.

Read against the whole body of work, Wrath of Man traded the caper’s wink for the cold grammar of vengeance. Dogfight, which Netflix describes as “a stylish revenge actioner set in the London criminal underworld,” places itself squarely in that line.

Viva La Madness, the film Statham carried

The producer credit on Dogfight did not appear from nowhere. Statham bought the rights to J.J. Connolly’s novel Viva La Madness, the author’s sequel to Layer Cake, in 2013. A television version was planned in 2015; by 2025 it had become a feature again and went to the American Film Market for sales. Deadline reports that the film was developed by Statham for Punch Palace, with Ritchie co-writing the script with Connolly.

Ritchie has been candid about how long it took. “Jason and I have been trying to make that for about 10 years or more, so it was a catharsis making it,” he told Collider, as quoted by ComingSoon. Filming wrapped in April and the film is in the edit, with Black Bear distributing in North America and Amazon MGM Studios in most international territories. It is their sixth collaboration, and it still has no confirmed release date.

The ensemble circulating alongside today’s news (Vinnie Jones, Jason Isaacs, Babs Olusanmokun, Camila Mendes, Ben Foster, Jonny Lee Miller and newcomer Raúl Alejandro) belongs to Viva La Madness. No co-stars have been announced for Dogfight.

What we know about Dogfight

The facts so far are spare. Ritchie writes, directs and produces. Statham stars and produces alongside Ivan Atkinson and John Friedberg. The production companies are Black Bear, Toff Guy Films and Statham’s Punch Palace, all three also involved in Viva La Madness. Production is slated to begin in early 2027, with filming in the UK. As The Hollywood Reporter notes, plot details remain under wraps, and no release date has been announced.

In both of the films Statham and Ritchie have lined up next, the actor’s own company is part of the machinery, and both are crime stories shot in Britain, after an armored-truck thriller set in Los Angeles and a spy comedy. A hired gun rarely gets to choose his territory. Statham now does.

Viva La Madness, the project Statham spent more than a decade pushing, has finished shooting and still has no release date. Dogfight has a streamer before a single scene has been shot.

Tags: Netflix, Guy Ritchie, Jason Statham, action movies, Dogfight