While Dwayne Johnson struggles with a career tailspin, his fellow WWE alum John Cena is charting his own path in the film business. Cena never attained the heights of stardom that Johnson did, but he has appeared in more blockbusters than you’d think. Together, they’re cast members in the record-breaking Fast & Furious franchise, although on opposing sides of the storyline. Cena has also appeared in the acclaimed Transformers film Bumblebee, the DC movie The Suicide Squad and its spin-off series Peacemaker, and more recently, in the sleeper hit animation/live-action hybrid, Coyote vs. Acme. This week, Cena is set to headline arguably his biggest film — an Apple TV franchise play that’s forgoing a theatrical release in favor of a direct-to-streaming debut.
The movie comes in the wake of the success of Barbie, which grossed approximately $1.4 billion worldwide and inspired studios to invest in other toy properties. However, the audience simply wasn’t there for this year’s Masters of the Universe, which grossed around $120 million worldwide against a reported budget of $175 million in theaters, but redeemed itself on Prime Video. Apple has had rough experiences with theatrical releases, except for F1. Releasing Cena’s upcoming movie directly on Apple TV seems like a pointed move to counter the negative buzz that came with box-office bombs such as Argylle and Napoleon. Incidentally, Cena had roles in both Barbie and Argylle as well.
Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz Which Action Hero Would Be Your Perfect Partner? Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt
Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn’t work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back.
🎖️Rambo
🍸James Bond
🏺Indiana Jones
🔧John McClane
🎭Ethan Hunt
01
You’re dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner? The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you.
02
You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel? How you get there is half the mission.
03
You’re pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do? This is when you find out what someone is really made of.
04
The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest? Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are.
05
How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission? Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability.
06
Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them? The approach to the enemy defines the partnership.
07
Things go badly wrong and you’re captured. What do you trust your partner to do? Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters.
08
What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn’t replace? A great partner fills the gap you didn’t know you had.
09
Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with? No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together.
10
It’s the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now? The last question is the most honest one.
Your Partner Has Been Assigned Your Perfect Partner Is…
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.
Rambo
Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.
James Bond
Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.
Indiana Jones
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.
John McClane
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.
Ethan Hunt
Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.
Here’s When You Can Watch Apple TV’s Next Major Tentpole
But we’re talking about Matchbox: The Movie, which also features Jessica Biel, Arturo Castro, Sam Richardson, and Teyonah Parris. The film was directed by Sam Hargrave, who previously made two well-received tentpoles for Netflix — Extraction and Extraction 2. On Matchbox, he reunites with two cast members from that franchise — Golshifteh Farahani and Randeep Hooda. Hargrave displayed a flair for ingeniously choreographed action sequences in the Extraction films, and Matchbox gives him a larger canvas to paint on. The movie also features Danai Gurira, Corey Stoll, and Bill Camp, and will be released on Apple TV on October 9, when it’ll likely unseat the holdover hit Mayday from the number-one spot. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
Release Date
October 9, 2026
Runtime
127 minutes
Writers
David Coggeshall
Producers
Dana Goldberg, David Ellison, Don Granger, Jules Daly, Robbie Brenner, Ynon Kreiz
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