Henry Cavill and Kevin Hart Team Up as Spy Rivals in a Lamaze Class for McG’s New Netflix Action Comedy

Netflix has made a habit of stacking its action comedy slate with bankable names and high-concept premises that travel well across global markets. From heist thrillers to buddy comedies, the streamer has consistently bet on pairing larger-than-life performers with outrageous situations designed to hook casual subscribers and genre fans in equal measure.

Both stars at the centre of this new project have deep individual histories with the platform. Cavill starred in one of Netflix’s most talked-about fantasy series in ‘The Witcher’ and continued his relationship with the streamer through the ‘Enola Holmes’ films. Hart, meanwhile, has built a prolific Netflix partnership across titles including the heist thriller ‘Lift’, the buddy comedy ‘Me Time’, the action-comedy ‘The Man From Toronto’, and the family drama ‘Fatherhood’.

Now the two are officially joining forces. Henry Cavill has been cast in an untitled high-concept action comedy at Netflix alongside Kevin Hart, with McG directing, as first reported exclusively by The Wrap. The pairing sounds unconventional on paper, but the creative machinery assembled around it signals that Netflix is treating this as something closer to a genuine event film than a mid-tier comedy release.

Based on a short story by Sean Lewis, the film follows two rival spies who cross paths in a Lamaze class, with their wives becoming fast friends. Their double lives subsequently collide in unexpectedly hilarious and dangerous ways, forcing the two men to reluctantly become confidantes and partners on the road to fatherhood. It is exactly the kind of premise that mines comedy from the gap between elite espionage and the thoroughly unglamorous reality of expecting a child.

The script was written by Adam and Aaron Nee alongside ‘Banshee’ and ‘Warrior’ creator Jonathan Tropper, with the project produced by Shawn Levy’s 21 Laps and Ryan Reynolds’ Maximum Effort banner. Hart is also producing via his Hartbeat shingle, alongside Luke Kelly-Clyne and Bryan Smiley. That production lineup, combining the forces behind ‘Free Guy’ and ‘Deadpool and Wolverine’ with Hart’s own company, sets an unmistakably commercial ceiling for what the film is aiming at.

For McG, this marks his sixth film for Netflix, with his most recent project for the streamer being the 2024 YA sci-fi adaptation ‘Uglies’. Returning to the platform with a project of this scale and cast suggests a genuine vote of confidence from both sides.

Cavill is next set to appear in ‘Enola Holmes 3’ on July 1, before heading into the ‘Highlander’ reboot and Rawson Marshall Thurber’s ‘Voltron’ for Amazon MGM. Hart has ‘Jumanji: Open World’ arriving in theaters on December 25 alongside ‘Ride Along 3′ in development, and his Netflix comedy ’72 Hours’ landing on the streamer on July 24.

With schedules this loaded, this spy comedy has every ingredient to be a massive crowd-pleaser, so the real debate now is whether you think Cavill’s stoic action-hero energy and Hart’s relentless comedic chaos will actually click when the cameras roll.