Guy Ritchie is having an amazing year. 2023 has been laden with good news for our favorite auteur of British gangster movies. He’s released Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre and The Covenant in theaters, and later in the year, we plan to see a TV series based on his movie of the same name: The Gentlemen. But that’s not all. All you Henry Cavill fans out there will have already heard rumors about The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, which has officially entered production. Though it’s not expected out until next year, it’s one more project to add to the stack of success piling up in Guy Ritchie’s office.
Ritchie is known for his creative take on blending cultural comedy with refined yet brutal violence. At the beginning of his career, we were blessed with movies like Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, and Snatch. But in the middle period of his films, we got movies that were still distinctively British but notably less iconic. It wasn’t until 2019’s The Gentlemen that audiences got something on the same level as Snatch. 2023 may be Guy Ritchie’s new time to shine as he picks himself up with quick, repeated successes.
What Is Happening in 2023?
Guy Ritchie’s latest films have not been spectacular at the box office. Both were overshadowed by The Super Mario Bros. Movie. But both received significant public attention, and Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant garnered excellent ratings from critics. Both represented Guy Ritchie’s innate talent for combining humor and violence, but the latter brought with it a message valuable to the real world.
The Covenant was primarily about the American withdrawal from the war in Afghanistan, pointing audiences specifically toward the fate of Afghan translators who worked for the American military. When the US pulled out, many translators and other native allies were left behind, and although Hollywood is afraid of the War in Afghanistan, Guy Ritchie isn’t.
But these are just the movies getting him back in the spotlight. In truth, he’s doing a lot of work behind the camera and the pen. His comedy Netflix series The Gentlemen, based on his movie of the same name, is meant to be coming out sometime this year. The series will star Theo James, Vinnie Jones, and Giancarlo Esposito. And while we’re all excited to see the series based on that 2019 film, Ritchie is in a bit of trouble surrounding his latest gangster project.
In March earlier this year, writer, actor, and frequent collaborator with Guy Ritchie, Mickey De Hara, claimed that his director broke their contract and plagiarized some of his work. Ritchie asked De Hara to write a sequel to RockNRolla based on his life experiences.
When De Hara returned with a script written about a gangster who owned a prolific marijuana business, Ritchie told him that the project was no longer in development. Then, two years later, The Gentlemen comes out, wherein Matthew McConaughey’s character owns a series of underground pot farms.
According to the lawsuit filed by De Hara, The Gentlemen copied his cast of characters, their style of characterization, and unique parts of the plot. De Hara points out specifically that the protagonist who runs a marijuana empire and an aristocrat with a drug-addled child were his idea. So, while Guy Ritchie is working on The Gentlemen series, he has a lawsuit for the movie hanging over his head.
What Else Is Guy Ritchie Doing?
Despite the hardship, Guy Ritchie has some projects in the pipeline that we’re all excited about. For fans of the 2019 live-action Aladdin movie, Ritchie is still lined up to direct a sequel. On IMDb, he’s still listed as the director, and the movie is still marked as if it were coming out in 2025.
But updates from actors and Guy Ritchie himself make it a shaky possibility. The movie had an incredible reaction from audiences, and Ritchie says he would like to do a sequel. But aside from kicking some ideas around, there isn’t much progress being made.
Something else exciting on Guy Ritchie’s to-do list is The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. The title alone sounds like something familiar from the auteur. Since Henry Cavill was kicked out of DC and left The Witcher, fans have been scrambling to find him in something else.
When word popped up of this new project from Guy Ritchie, all of those fans from Man of Steel came running over to see what all the fuss was about. The film is about a small group of Allied recruits fighting Nazis behind enemy lines in WWII.
It’s essentially Guy Ritchie’s version of Inglorious Basterds, which sounds like a pretty good movie. It even shares one actor: Til Schweiger, who played Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz. It will surely be a fun film and premise that can’t fail with the crowd. It’s not scheduled to come out until 2024. But the project looks to be steamrolling right ahead with a comparable cast list and the screenplay having already been written.
But whatever the case, it’s just another thing in production that Guy Ritchie has on his already ample plate.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
