Jude Law goes full action hero with his own Jason Statham-style thriller

Jude Law is clearly on a bit of a prestige bender lately—chasing down neo-Nazis for the FBI, playing debt-riddled nightclub bosses, even having a go at Vladimir Putin. So, it’s curious that the project his own production company picked to toss in the limelight at this year’s Karlovy Vary Film Festival is miles away from any of that high-brow misery.

Law and Ben Jackson’s Riff Raff Entertainment, which Law set up back in 2017, took the stage at the festival’s keynote with their most ambitious shout yet: an untitled movie about a getaway driver. That’s it—the premise is honestly as streamlined as they come. Apparently, Law got the itch while filming his recent crime flicks. As Riff Raff’s Ben Jackson put it, he and Jude just started riffing on the idea, born out of the car chases they’d been putting on film. ‘He wants to get from A to B to C,’ Jackson explained, making no apologies for the logic being more action than algebra.

A Move Away from Oscars and Headlong Into Grit

Riff Raff, for those not tracking, has mostly been about ‘proper’ cinema—serious dramas, character studies, the sort of thing that tries its luck at a BAFTA before it falls into a streaming algorithm. So this is a big gear shift. Head of film and TV Katie Sinclair pitched it as "the biggest step up in scale yet" for a team previously allergic to anything that looked like pure genre fare. Apparently, even Law "hasn’t really done action like that before," as Sinclair put it. She’s framing the project as a real challenge not just for Jude's range, but for Riff Raff’s own reputation for slightly posh taste. Still, she’s keen to stress it won’t just be explosions and tyre screeches—for all the getaway thrills, it’ll still be about the characters, not just spectacle for the sake of it.

The Brains Behind the Script

If you’re worrying about the script landing in dodgy hands, relax. Zach Baylin is writing this one—he’s the same chap who co-wrote Law’s 2024 film The Order (which wandered deep into 1980s crime territory). Baylin co-created the Netflix series Black Rabbit with Kate Susman too, another recent Law project, where Jude got to act alongside Jason Bateman in a nightlife noir. Riff Raff freely admits the inspiration for this new getaway-driver gig came straight from the high-speed pursuits they filmed for The Order; Jude apparently had so much fun he wanted to build a whole film around it.

How Much Is Actually Locked In?

• No title—still under wraps.
• No director attached yet.
• No confirmed cast, barring Law himself.
• Zach Baylin on script duty.
• Expectations are this will be Riff Raff’s biggest, priciest project so far.

So, yes, you can make the obvious comparison—this has a whiff of The Transporter and Drive lingering about it. Though, if you believe Riff Raff, there’s apparently more meat on the bones. Sinclair calls it a proper stretch—and Baylin’s involvement adds a bit of credibility. Baylin’s also been Oscar-nominated for King Richard, wrote Creed III and Gran Turismo, and is cooking up a UFO thriller with Joseph Kosinski, so the man knows his way around a high-tension genre script.

There’s a lot under wraps, but put simply: Law is the engine here, having helped dream it up, and this is meant to be the grown-up, character-driven version of a getaway movie, not just blokes grunting over petrol.

Still on the Slate: Riff Raff's Expanding Universe

If you’re interested in where else Riff Raff’s going: this Baylin collaboration is hardly their only trick. They’ve now got around 50 projects on the boil at different stages—including another TV series with Baylin. For a label started because Law wanted to control his own choices, that’s blooming into quite the little mini-studio. The getaway gig, though, looks like the one that’ll show if they can do pure, stylish genre on their own—and still keep things smart.

By the way: The Order, for context

Since The Order is the reference point for all this, here’s the nutshell: Set in 1983, it follows an Idaho FBI agent (played by Law) as he investigates a string of bank robberies, counterfeit rings and armoured car heists rattling the Pacific Northwest. It’s not your standard mob job, though—the whole mess turns out to be the work of a radical group led by the enigmatic Bob Mathews.