Ryan Reynolds just found his most unexpected screen partner yet, and no, it’s not another actor trying to match his rapid-fire delivery. It’s Kenneth Branagh, the Shakespearean-trained director and actor behind Oppenheimer and his own Hercule Poirot films, playing a gruff former KGB agent with an oddly specific soft spot for American culture. Apple TV+ dropped the first trailer for MAYDAY on July 14, and it’s already generating the kind of buzz that comes from pairing two actors who, on paper, have no business sharing a frame together.
MAYDAY hits Apple TV+ on September 4, 2026, arriving as a complete film rather than an episodic release, so there’s no waiting around for weekly drops once it’s out.
What MAYDAY Is About
The setup drops us into the height of the Cold War. Ryan Reynolds plays Lieutenant Troy “Assassin” Kelly, a confident US Navy pilot handed a top-secret mission deep inside Russian territory. The operation collapses almost immediately, and Troy crash-lands behind enemy lines with basically nothing going for him.
That’s where Nikolai Ustinov comes in. Branagh’s character is a hardened ex-KGB operative who finds Troy and, instead of turning him in, nurses him back to health. The catch is that Nikolai has this bizarre fascination with American culture, which turns what should be a tense hostage situation into something much stranger and funnier.
The film comes from writer-director duo John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, the team behind Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves and Game Night. They’ve described the project as their ode to the buddy films of the 1980s, framing it as a story about patriotism that eventually becomes a story about basic humanity.
The Trailer’s Tonal Switch-Up
What makes the trailer genuinely interesting is how it opens. The directors have said they wanted the first act to feel almost like a horror setup, comparing it to Misery, the Stephen King story about a captor-patient dynamic gone wrong. You start watching thinking Troy is in real danger, then the trailer pivots hard into physical comedy and action once the alliance between the two men starts forming.
It’s a smart bait-and-switch for a trailer, honestly. It sets up tension first so the comedy that follows actually lands instead of feeling like it was announced from the opening frame.
Ryan Reynolds Playing Ryan Reynolds (Again)
Here’s where I have to be honest about something a lot of viewers are already pointing out online, and I noticed it myself the moment the trailer started: Ryan Reynolds does not really disappear into roles anymore. Whether he’s in Deadpool, Free Guy, Red Notice, or now MAYDAY, there’s a recognizable rhythm to his delivery, the same quippy self-awareness, the same “I know this is ridiculous and so do you” wink to the camera. Troy Kelly, at least based on this trailer, doesn’t feel drastically different from the persona he’s been running with for close to a decade now.
That’s not necessarily a dealbreaker. Reynolds built a career on being reliably funny in a specific way, and audiences clearly keep showing up for it. But it does mean MAYDAY’s freshness is likely going to come almost entirely from Branagh’s side of the pairing rather than from Reynolds doing anything we haven’t seen him do before. Branagh stepping into physical comedy and action, reportedly performing much of it himself, is the actual novelty here. Reynolds is the constant, Branagh is the variable, and that imbalance might end up defining how the whole film is received critically.
It’s worth watching for when the full film drops whether Troy gets any real character beats that break from the established Reynolds formula, or whether the film leans into that familiarity on purpose since it’s paired against someone so far outside his usual lane.
Supporting Cast and Production
The supporting lineup includes Maria Bakalova, Marcin Dorociński, David Morse, Alex Ozerov-Meyer, Donald Sales, Patrick Kerton, and Wendy Crewson. Behind the scenes, David Ellison of Skydance Media produced alongside Dana Goldberg and Don Granger, with Reynolds’ own Maximum Effort banner also attached through producers Ashley Fox and Johnny Pariseau. Reynolds serves as both lead and producer here, marking his second Apple TV+ collaboration after 2022’s Spirited with Will Ferrell.
MAYDAY is presented as an original fictional story, not based on real Cold War events, so there’s no historical accuracy angle to worry about going in.
Should You Watch It?
Going purely off the trailer, MAYDAY looks like a solid genre exercise rather than anything groundbreaking. If you enjoyed Red Notice or The Hitman’s Bodyguard, this is clearly aiming at that same crowd who wants big action beats mixed with constant one-liners. The real selling point isn’t the plot, which is fairly familiar buddy-movie territory, it’s watching Branagh do something completely outside his comfort zone opposite an actor who rarely strays from his own.
Mark September 4 down if Cold War action-comedy with mismatched leads sounds like your speed.
