After The Beekeeper and A Working Man, David Ayer is again in the Jason Statham business with John Doe, filming this September. In 2024, Jason Statham killed a bad guy with a jar of honey, and cinema was never quite the same again. After The Beekeeper emerged that year, Statham and director collaborated again on ... John Doe | Jason Statham and David Ayer working on another action film this September
After The Beekeeper and A Working Man, David Ayer is again in the Jason Statham business with John Doe, filming this September.
In 2024, Jason Statham killed a bad guy with a jar of honey, and cinema was never quite the same again. After The Beekeeper emerged that year, Statham and director collaborated again on A Working Man – another vocation-based action thriller, this time written by Sylvester Stallone. It wasn’t really up to The Beekeeper's level of brilliance, though it did feature some quite fascinating costume designs.
Happily, Ayer and Statham are set to work together again. While The Beekeeper 2 is set to be made by a different director – Timo Tjahajanto will call the shorts on that one – Ayer will instead direct Statham in an original action thriller project called John Doe.
Deadline has a synopsis for the piece, which is another one of those protagonist-has-no-recollection-of-past-events types of films. The outlet reports that Statham will play “a man with no memory, no past, and no name — and only one face he can’t forget: Eliza.”
The synopsis continues:
“As fragments of his identity return, he discovers he was trained for a mission still in motion and is being hunted by the very people who sent him. With enemies closing in, John must choose between finishing what he started… or protecting the one thing that makes him feel human: love.”
A hint of romance for the Statham to tackle. That should flex his acting muscles somewhat.
After the box office disappointment of The Suicide Squad a decade ago, Ayer has mostly kept himself busy with moderately-budgeted action thrillers; his latest opus will be Heart Of The Beast, starring Brad Pitt, JK Simmons and an unnamed dog, which is due out this year.
John Doe is set to begin filming in September, with Ayer directing from a script by Zak Penn, a screenwriter who got his start with the original draft for 1993’s Last Action Hero. It was later rewritten quite heavily by other screenwriters – including Shane Black, whose work Penn was originally parodying. Penn later wrote such things as X-Men: The Last Stand, Ready Player One and Free Guy.
John Doe is another film seeking backers at next month’s Cannes Film Festival. We’ll bring you more on this latest Statham opus as it comes in.
