When it comes to British gangster movies — and series — there really is nobody with a hit rate quite like Guy Ritchie. Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels. Snatch. The Gentlemen. The Gentlemen again. Frankly, what Ritchie doesn't know about knuckledusters, fixers, wide-boys, and mob bosses isn't worth knowing. Now, after a couple of recent diversions into war movies with The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare and The Covenant, Deadline are reporting that Ritchie is tooling up for a return to criminal underworld territory with Paramount+ gangster drama series The Associate — and he's bringing out the big guns to get it made.
According to Deadline, the Brit auteur is looking to reteam with his RocknRolla star Tom Hardy and enlist the services of newly acquainted Thursday Murder Club co-stars Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren to bring his latest mob project to fruition. So far, we know that the show — a one-hour drama — is set to revolve around the personal and professional dealings of two generations of gangsters, and the fixer they turn to when things go awry. In the report linked above, we've also learned that Hardy is set to play the handsome-yet-dangerous fixer in the equation, Harry, whilst Brosnan and Mirren will take on the roles of the central crime family's patriarch and matriarch. And given Brosnan's recent high-profile turn as Doctor Fate in Black Adam and Mirren's recent appearances as criminal cockney matriarch Queenie in the Fast franchise, it's not hard to see the casting logic here.
There's no word just yet on when we can expect to see The Associate hit our screens, but with Mirren and Brosnan having just wrapped on The Thursday Murder Club and Tom Hardy just about to release his final Venom movie, we'd hope this one may enter production sooner rather than later. That is, of course, if Ritchie's Hercules movie (yes, we also have to keep reminding ourselves that's a thing!) — or The Gentlemen Season 2 — doesn't get here first. What can we say, Guy's a busy geezer with many, many, er, associates!