John Cena is officially back in his action hero era for his upcoming film, Jackpot!
Amazon MGM released the first trailer for the comedy on Tuesday, July 2, which takes place in 2030 Los Angeles and follows Katie Kim (Awkwafina), an L.A. transplant who mistakenly finds herself with a winning ticket to the newly-established “Grand Lottery,” in which anyone who kills the winner before sundown can legally claim their multibillion dollar jackpot. Cena portrays Noel Cassidy, an amateur lottery protection agent who will do everything in his power to keep Katie alive in exchange for a piece of her prize.
The film is directed by Paul Feig, with a script written by Rob Yescombe. Ayden Mayeri, Donald Elise Watkins, Sam Asghari, Murray Hill and Simu Liu also star in the action-comedy, which hits Prime Video on August 15.
Cena, who is a retired pro wrestler, is clearly channeling his roots for Jackpot!. The trailer features the actor going to desperate lengths to protect his client including elaborate costumes, getaway cars and hand to hand combat.
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“I trust you. But that might be because you look like a bulldog a witch cast a spell on and turned into a human. You ever get that?” Awkwafina asks in the trailer, to which Cena hesitates before replying, “Yes.”
While speaking to Entertainment Weekly in May, Feig, 61, described the film as the Jackie Chan movie he always “wished’ he could make.
“What I love about Jackie Chan movies is that he’s a real, everyman caught in a situation he doesn’t want to be in. He’s the master of panicked fighting versus ‘I’m cool, and I’m going to take you on,’” he told the outlet. “It’s not Bruce Lee. It’s the ‘Get away from me, get away from me’ type of action. I don’t like mayhem and action for action’s sake. It always has to advance the plot, be character-driven, and find the humor in people who aren’t normally in these situations getting in these situations — and how they get themselves out of it.”
Cena, Feig said, added a complexity to the role that kept the character of Noel from becoming too stereotypical.
“John brings such a grounded, lovely presence to what could have been a very macho, ’80s action-star thing,” he explained. “The role was written to be slightly nerdy, and the first time I talked to him, he said, ‘Now, don’t think you got to try to make me cool or anything.’ So he’s this very sweet, nerdy, giant guy whose only goal in life is to protect his clients.”
As for Awkwafina, Feig said that Katie is meant to be the perspective of the audience. “When you’re watching this movie, you’re in her shoes of suddenly being caught in this situation where literally the entire world wants to kill you,” he quipped.
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One thing Feig implemented to help the film rise above the rest was prohibiting the use of guns in the Grand Lottery. Feig noted that he has “no interest” in “shooting” movies with lots of “gunplay,” instead focusing on “really primal survival” over being “toxically aggressive.”
“It is very fun and ridiculous, but you’re still worried for them because the stakes are real,” he continued. “But you’re never going, like, ‘That’s upsetting.’ I want to keep an elegance about it all and make it fun, but at the same time, I don’t like action comedies where the villain is silly, and everybody is silly. The stakes have to be real. There has to be real danger. It has to be very believable characters, and then you put them in an extreme situation.”
Jackpot! hits Prime Video on August 15.
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