‘Mayday’ First Trailer Teases Apple TV+’s Action-Packed Cold War Comedy (Release Date: September 4, 2026)
The first trailer for “Mayday” landed today, and it’s already doing exactly what a good trailer should do: making people stop scrolling. Apple TV’s new Cold War buddy comedy pairs Ryan Reynolds with Kenneth Branagh in a combo nobody was asking for and everybody now wants, and there’s a lot packed into just a couple minutes of footage.
Apple first announced “Mayday” back in 2023, and the wait has been long enough that fans had mostly stopped checking for updates. Directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, the team behind “Game Night” and “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves,” shot the film in Montreal under the working title “Blackbird,” and it’s taken more than two years to reach a release date. Now it’s clear why they took their time. This trailer needed to land exactly right, walking a tightrope between war drama and full-blown comedy without tipping too far either way. Given that Skydance chief David Ellison, a licensed pilot himself, produced the film and reportedly obsessed over every flight detail, comparisons to “Top Gun: Maverick” were probably inevitable.
“Mayday” clearly isn’t trying to be that movie, though. It’s something scrappier and stranger, and that’s part of the appeal. Apple’s official rollout confirmed the film locks in its worldwide premiere on Apple TV this September.
What Happens in the “Mayday” Trailer
Reynolds plays Lieutenant Troy “Assassin” Kelly, a Navy pilot whose reconnaissance run over Soviet airspace in 1987 goes sideways almost immediately. His plane goes down, he’s stranded behind enemy lines, and the trailer wastes no time getting him hurt. He wakes up tied to a bed with a badly wounded leg, being cared for by Nikolai Ustinov, played by Branagh. Their first exchange sets the tone for the whole film.
Nikolai casually mentions he performed field surgery without proper anesthesia, information Troy is apparently only receiving after the fact. From there, the trailer swings hard into action mode. There’s a brawl in a restaurant, a fight breaking out mid-flight on a commercial plane, and a handful of quick cuts suggesting this rescue mission gets a lot more complicated before it’s over. Deadline’s early write-up zeroed in on that same fish-out-of-water setup, framing Reynolds’ hotshot pilot as completely at Branagh’s mercy the moment he wakes up.
Easter Eggs and Behind-the-Scenes Details Worth Knowing
The most interesting reveal here isn’t even in the footage, it’s from the directors themselves. Daley told The Hollywood Reporter that the early scenes were deliberately built to feel like the start of a horror movie, comparing the setup to “Misery,” before the story flips into something else entirely.
That tonal rug-pull is baked into the trailer on purpose, not an accident of editing. Also worth clocking: Branagh did as much of his own action work as he could, a genuine change of pace for an actor better known for Shakespeare adaptations and playing Hercule Poirot. Keep an eye on Nikolai’s fondness for American culture throughout the trailer, too, since that detail is doing more comedic heavy lifting than it first appears.
How Fans Are Reacting to the Mayday Trailer
Given the trailer only just dropped, reaction is still rolling in, but the early chatter is focused almost entirely on the Reynolds-Branagh pairing itself. It’s an odd-couple combination that shouldn’t work on paper, a wisecracking action star opposite a classically trained Shakespearean actor, and that contrast is exactly what’s got people talking. Expect the conversation to only get louder as more clips and interviews roll out ahead of the September release.
What the Mayday Trailer Means for the Movie
Based on what’s shown, “Mayday” looks like it’s leaning hard into that 1980s buddy-action formula: two mismatched guys forced together, low-key hating each other at first, then becoming genuinely close by the end. Goldstein and Daley have described the film as their own tribute to that era of filmmaking. The bigger question is tone control. A horror-adjacent open, a hard swing into comedy, and action set pieces stacked on top is a lot of gears to shift inside 111 minutes. If the trailer’s pacing is any indication, though, the pair behind “Game Night” know how to land tonal whiplash without the movie collapsing under its own cleverness.
Mayday Trailer FAQ
Q: What is Mayday about?
A: It follows Navy pilot Troy Kelly, played by Reynolds, after he’s shot down over Soviet territory in 1987 and rescued by a former KGB officer played by Branagh.
Q: When does Mayday come out?
A: Mayday premieres globally on Apple TV on September 4, 2026.
Q: Who directed Mayday?
A: Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, the duo behind “Game Night” and “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves,” wrote and directed the film.
Q: Who else is in the cast?
A: Maria Bakalova, Marcin Dorocinski and David Morse round out the supporting cast, per the film’s IMDb page.
“Mayday” isn’t trying to hide what it is: a weird, warm, occasionally violent throwback to the buddy movies that shaped a whole generation of action-comedy. The trailer alone makes a strong case that Reynolds and Branagh have real chemistry, which is honestly the hardest thing to fake in this genre. September 4 is the real test, but for now, this is one of the more purely fun trailers to drop in a while.
