Article content
Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh teaming up for a buddy action comedy likely wasn’t something movie fans had on their 2026 bingo cards.
Sign In or Create an Account
or View more offersArticle content
And yet the Canadian box office star and the iconic British thespian are at the centre of a new Apple TV+ film called Mayday.
Article contentWe apologize, but this video has failed to load.Try refreshing your browser, or
tap here to see other videos from our team.Article content
Premièring Sept. 4 on the streamer, Mayday is set at the height of the American/Soviet Union Cold War. It’s an action-packed adventure comedy that follows Troy “Assassin” Kelly (Reynolds), a U.S. Navy Top Gun pilot who crashes in Soviet territory, and is rescued by ex-KGB agent Nikolai Ustinov (Branagh).
Article content
Story continues below
This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.
Article content
“I have a vision board, and stuff on the vision board happens,” said Reynolds joking about the genesis of the unusual pairing for the film that’s co-directed and co-written by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley (the guys behind Game Night and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves).
Article content
Reynolds went on to say that the idea of working with Branagh backed up his belief of what makes an entertaining onscreen comedy pairing.
Article content
“Buddy comedies. I love them,” said Reynolds. “There’s a real art to them. I’m talking all the way back to Laurel and Hardy, and Bud Abbott and Lou Costello doing what they do. I really just feel like they work best when they’re unexpected, and this was unexpected.”
Article content
Unexpected is one thing, but an Odd Couple type pairing isn’t necessarily going to guarantee a win.
Article content
“These kinds of movies live and die on chemistry,” said Reynolds. “What’s scary about that is it’s not really something you can invent. It’s either there or it’s not.
Article content
“I think of it as sort of kelp underwater, kind of moving together in this really wonderful way. Nobody is trying to win a scene. You’re trying to grow a scene. In good buddy comedies you’re really trying to help each other — pass the ball to the other person and watch him knock it out of the park or put it through the back of the goal.”
Article content
Story continues below
This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.
Article content
Branagh, who has won three BAFTAs and an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Belfast, says no one was more surprised than he to receive the script for Mayday, which he said he found “really surprisingly funny.”
Article content
“I also knew from Ryan’s filmography that when he takes on these kinds of things, which, as he says so, depend on the chemistry of the two people, that he’s incredibly generous,” said Branagh. “I felt like, well, we have a chance here, because he shares the screen with people. He acts with people, not against people. I genuinely have admired what he’s done so much across a whole range of things.”
Article content
In the film, Reynolds’ Assassin — there’s a joke later in the film about his decidedly not Top Gun cool need-for-speed nickname — gets chosen to co-pilot a top-secret reconnaissance plane over the Soviet Union. The plane is shot down by Soviet fighter jets, and Assassin is forced to eject. After landing hard in enemy territory he wakes up in a rustic cabin where the first thing he sees is a movie poster for Tom Cruise’s iconic 1986 film Top Gun.
Article content
Top Gun, it turns out, is the template for Nikolai’s view of America.