'MobLand's Marketing Speedrun Continues with the First Trailer
Guy Ritchie was initially known in the U.S. for being the second husband of Madonna Louise Ciccone, whom he married after they met and fell in love on the set of one of his biggest misfires, Swept Away. Sure, in the U.K., the man was recognized as a wunderkind, having made the crime comedy classic Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels before he turned 30, followed by the international smash hit, Snatch, which made Colin Farrell's career. However, nearly two decades after Madonna divorced him, Ritchie has become one of Hollywood's most reliable hitmakers. His 2009 Sherlock Holmes film may not have been as faithful or inspired as passionate of a fanbase as Steven Moffat's Sherlock, but one is getting a prequel spinoff with Ralph and Joseph Fiennes' nephew as Young Sherlock, and it's not Moffat. Now, Paramount+ is pulling a hail mary with his newest show, MobLand, hoping to have one current hit when parent company Paramount's merger with Skydance closes.
Paramount+ isn't wrong to pin their hopes on Ritchie's series, which features a cast of actors who mainly do big budget films and arrives with a slick, fun trailer set to The Rolling Stones (natch). Ritchie has been the creative force behind a string of box office smashes in the last decade, including the 2019 live-action remake of Aladdin. (It doesn't matter what you think of it, money talks, and Ritchie's film was the biggest box office haul of the man's career, with $1 billion worldwide, becoming one of the highest-grossing films in the last year before the pandemic changed Hollywood.)
Since then, Ritchie has started dividing his time between making streaming series and films, to the same high success rate. His The Gentlemen spinoff was one of Netflix's biggest hits of 2024, no small feat considering how many originals the streaming service debuts a year. Paramount+ is basically banking on Ritchie's name and the cast to bring in the eyeballs, especially with the current compressed marketing timeline it's chosen to go with for the series to qualify for the 2025 Emmys.
