Apple TV/ Mayday
Apple TV’s Cold War action-comedy “Mayday” dropped its first trailer this week, and it’s giving us Top Gun meets a vodka-soaked fever dream. Here’s everything we spotted, scene by scene.
Somewhere in a Soviet-era bunker of the imagination, a marketing executive at Apple TV is doing a victory lap. The trailer for “Mayday,” the upcoming buddy comedy starring Ryan Reynolds and Sir Kenneth Branagh, has landed, and it is exactly the kind of gloriously over-the-top, jet-fueled fun we didn’t know we needed in 2026.
If you’ve spent the last 48 hours doom-scrolling and stumbled across a clip of a Shakespearean knight throwing hands in a Soviet restaurant, congratulations you’ve met “Mayday.” Let’s break down what’s actually going on here, because there is a lot to unpack.
So What Is “Mayday” Actually About?
Here’s the pitch: hotshot U.S. Navy pilot Lieutenant Troy “Assassin” Kelly (Reynolds, doing his signature smirk-and-quip routine) gets sent on a top-secret mission deep into Russian territory during the height of the Cold War. Naturally, the mission goes sideways almost immediately, because that’s what missions do in movies with one-word titles that also happen to be distress calls.
Troy ends up stranded behind enemy lines, where he’s found by Nikolai Ustinov, a gruff, retired KGB agent played by Branagh, whose plot twist has a soft spot for American culture. What follows is an unlikely, occasionally violent, occasionally hilarious friendship that neither man saw coming, and neither did we, frankly.
The film is directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, the duo behind “Game Night” and “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves,” which already tells you this thing is going to have jokes with actual comedic architecture, not just Reynolds ad-libbing into a void. “Mayday” premieres globally on Apple TV on September 4, 2026.
The Trailer, Scene by Scene
The cold open: A stern voice crackles over the radio: “You are now crossing Soviet airspace.” Cue dramatic music, cue Reynolds’s face doing the thing where he knows he’s already made a terrible decision.
The “oh no” cut: We jump straight to Reynolds’s Troy tied to a bed, which is either a kidnapping or the setup to a very different kind of streaming show. Branagh’s Nikolai strolls in with the energy of a man who’s mildly inconvenienced by having a live American in his house, remarking essentially that he’s pleased his houseguest hasn’t died yet.
The buddy-cop chemistry montage: This is where the trailer earns its comedy-first billing. Reynolds and Branagh bicker their way across the Russian countryside like two guys who got stuck carpooling to a wedding neither of them wanted to attend. It’s “Midnight Run” by way of “The Hunt for Red October,” if Alec Baldwin’s submarine captain had instead developed a genuine fondness for American diners.
The action beats: Branagh yes, the same man who’s played Hamlet, Henry V, and roughly every tortured Shakespearean king in existence throws down in a full-blown restaurant brawl. According to the directors, Branagh trained obsessively for his fight choreography, showing up early to rehearse and mutter through the stunts like a man possessed. The payoff is a genuinely unexpected action sequence from an actor better known for soliloquies than roundhouse kicks.
The closet scene: Without spoiling too much, the trailer teases a moment where Troy and Nikolai end up hiding together from a Russian official mid-rendezvous, a scene the directors have called one of the most memorable to shoot, reportedly for reasons involving a script supervisor needing to step out.
The Easter Egg Nobody’s Talking About Yet: The Aviation Nerd Approval Stamp
Here’s a detail that got buried under all the Reynolds one-liners: producer David Ellison, who also happens to be a licensed pilot, was reportedly obsessive about the flight accuracy in the film, right down to making sure the aircraft’s “hard deck” the invisible safety altitude pilots use during maneuvers was portrayed correctly. So somewhere in this jokes-per-minute fever dream, there’s an actual technically accurate SR-71 Blackbird sequence hiding in plain sight. Top Gun fans, take note.
Why This Trailer Is Working
It’s not just star power, though obviously casting Deadpool and a knighted Shakespearean actor as unlikely Cold War besties is a marketing department’s dream. It’s the tonal whiplash: one second it’s a tense spy thriller, the next it’s two grown men squabbling like an old married couple while dodging Soviet gunfire. That’s a hard needle to thread, and early trailer reactions suggest Daley and Goldstein have pulled it off.
There’s also something delightfully retro about the whole premise. The directors themselves have described the film as an ode to 1980s buddy movies that have a specific blend of danger, heart, and men who communicate primarily through insults. In an era where a lot of comedies feel algorithm-generated, “Mayday” is banking on old-fashioned chemistry between two actors who clearly relish making each other look ridiculous on screen.
When and Where to Watch
Mark your calendars: “Mayday” premieres on Apple TV on September 4, 2026. The film also features Marcin Dorocinski, Maria Bakalova, and David Morse rounding out the supporting cast, so there’s more going on here than just two guys yelling at each other in a forest though, let’s be honest, that’s still going to be the highlight reel. Will “Mayday” be the buddy comedy that finally gets us all excited about Cold War buddy comedies again? Drop your predictions in the comments and let us know which line from the trailer is already living in your head rent-free.
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