While Guy Ritchie has plenty of shows on the air in 2026, one recent streaming standout feels like a Rocky movie directed by the legendary British gangster filmmaker. Although Guy Ritchie undoubtedly rose in the shadow of Quentin Tarantino, it would be unfair to say that the British director was a carbon copy of his American counterpart. Admittedly, both directors had a penchant for bloody black comedy, amoral criminal protagonists, stylized dialogue, and disordered storytelling influenced by the French New Wave.

However, while Tarantino’s movies dove progressively deeper into his obsessions with 20th-century history, Golden Age Hollywood, and Americana, Guy Ritchie’s movies are a far more diverse bunch. From a live-action Disney remake to R-rated war movies, Ritchie has run the gamut over the years. His latest small-screen hit, Prime Video’s Sherlock Holmes prequel Young Sherlock, is only the most recent reinvention of the Cockney gangster icon’s screen output.

Even though Ritchie made his name with violent, lairy gangster comedies like Snatch and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, he has since gone on to offer viewers period adventure shows like Young Sherlock while still finding time to produce gangster thrillers for streaming, like the shows The Gentlemen and MobLand. One thing that Ritchie has never given viewers is a boxing drama in the vein of the Rocky movies, even though his Sherlock Holmes movies and Snatch both feature prominent, extensive bare-knuckle fight sequences. If he did, it would look a lot like Paramount+’s Fightland.

Fightland Is What Would Happen If Guy Ritchie Made A Boxing Movie

Executive-produced by 50 Cent, fresh off the success of the acclaimed Power franchise, Fightland focuses on Howard Charles’ Maduka “Duke” Kilroy, a disgraced boxer. After a stint in prison that he thinks was set up by the Marshall crime family, Kilroy returns to London with a plan to get revenge on the mob dynasty. Without giving away any of the show’s many twists, suffice to say, Duke’s story isn’t as simple as it seems.

What initially seems like a straightforward revenge saga soon becomes a dizzying maze of conflicting interests as it becomes clear that Duke and the Marshall family are far from the only players in this criminal underworld. Blending the violent action of Reacher with the amoral antics of a Ritchie show, Fightland delights in misleading the viewer as Duke’s story grows more morally ambiguous and thorny with each passing episode.

While the Rocky franchise was always content to give viewers a well-meaning, almost comically kind-hearted hero to root for, Fightland feels much more like a Ritchie story thanks to its grittier tone and more questionable antihero. Duke is no one’s Rocky, but it is still tough not to root for the flawed boxer as he punches, schemes, and climbs his way back to the top of London’s criminal underworld.

How Fightland Compares To Guy Ritchie’s Streaming Shows

Credit: Starz

The recent South Korean boxing drama Bloodhounds has a superficially similar story of two boxers infiltrating the criminal underbelly of their city to take down a mob boss, but Fightland has the one thing that Netflix hit is missing. Like Ritchie’s hit 2025 series MobLand, Fightland never really tells viewers who to root for, and ensures that every major character is implicated in something morally grey at the very least.

While Netflix’s The Gentlemen has a lighter tone, although its story is no less violent, MobLand has a brutal, edgy feel that ensures no character feels truly virtuous. Fightland manages to replicate this admirably with its knotty, complex story of backstabbing criminals, and this ensures the show feels more like Guy Ritchie remaking Rocky as a crime thriller than just another inspirational sporting drama set in the world of boxing.

Release Date

July 31, 2026

Showrunner

Raphael Jackson Jr., Damione Macedon

Directors

Otto Bathurst, Tessa Hoffe, Colm McCarthy, Sebastian Thiel

Writers

Daniel Fajemisin-Duncan, Raphael Jackson Jr., Damione Macedon, Marlon Smith, Jessica Sinyard, Elliot Warren

Cast

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  Howard Charles

  Maduka ‘Duke’ Kilroy

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  Nicholas Pinnock

  Kingsley Marshall