Having dabbled in YA fantasy (The School For Good And Evil) and Wham!-based Christmas movies (Last Christmas) in recent years, director Paul Feig is getting back into his Spy and The Heat action-comedy groove with high concept Prime Video movie Jackpot! A sort of The Purge-meets-Euromillions-rollover caper set in very-near-future Los Angeles, this one sees Awkwafina's struggling actor Katie reluctantly teaming up with John Cena's amateur lotto heavy Noel when she unwittingly hits the jackpot (hey, that's the title!), only to learn that California state rules allow anybody to kill the lottery winner before sundown without consequence. If it sounds a bit zany, then it looks even zanier. Check out the wackadoodle trailer below;
See? Crackers! We don't know if it's the 'Holding Out For A Hero' needledrop, John Cena's whip cracking skills, or the Peacemaker star and Awkwafina's classic opposite-sides-of-the-tracks mismatched buddy bants that's doing it for us, but from the looks of this trailer at least, Jackpot! definitely has the potential to be a bit of a stealth summer banger from Feig. And whilst we do still think the film's original title, Grand Death Lotto, should've stuck, the presence of Simu Liu as Noel's cash-hungry rival Louis Lewis and the promise of an inexplicable Machine Gun Kelly cameo along the way do at least go some way towards making up for the missed opportunity with the name.
Directed by Feig — who's currently hard at work on A Simple Favour 2 — from a script by Rob Yescombe (Outside The Wire), this one's ensemble also sees Ayden Mayeri, Donald Elise Watkins, Sam Asghari and Murray Hill among the rabble duking it out for Katie's millions. We'll find out whether Feig and co are onto a winner with Jackpot!, or if the Ghostbusters filmmaker has drawn a bogus ticket, when the movie lands on Prime Video UK & Ireland on 15 August.