Published May 31, 2026, 4:00 AM EDT
Rohan Naahar is a News Writer for Collider. From Francois Ozon to David Fincher, he’ll watch anything once. He has covered everything from Marvel to the Oscars, and Marvel at the Oscars. He also writes obsessively about the box office, charting the many hits and misses that are released weekly, and how their commercial performance shapes public perception. In his time at Collider, he has also helped drive diversity by writing stories about the multiple Indian film industries, with a goal of introducing audiences to a whole new world of cinema.
Gerard Butler has a handful of franchises he’s shepherding, but the one that seems to have ended before it could even begin is Plane. Yes, they were going to make a sequel to that 2023 action sleeper hit, but according to Butler’s co-star Mike Colter, it’s no longer taking off. These things happen all the time, and you wouldn’t think twice about Plane 2 being canceled at all with this limited information. But if you were to read just one more sentence about it, you’d learn that the movie was canceled under rather unusual circumstances. Colter implied that the project was good to go and mere weeks from entering production, but Butler bailed on it at the last minute. The movie wasn’t even going to be called Plane 2; they were thinking of calling it Ship, because of the change in setting.
In an interview with The Direct last year, Colter didn’t sugarcoat his perspective when he explained what went down. “Gerard decided he didn’t want to go forward with it,” the Luke Cage actor said bluntly. He continued, “Last minute, Gerard decided he didn’t want to go forward with it and there wasn’t a lot of discussion about it. He just… two weeks out, he pulled out, and we were sort of left trying to figure out what to do. And eventually, that dissolved.” Butler reportedly wasn’t supposed to star in the project, but was attached as a producer. He has appeared in a handful of sequels in the last couple of years — Greenland 2: Migration, and Den of Thieves 2: Pantera — and he’s now working on the live-action How to Train Your Dragon 2.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Butler also has the fourth installment of his Has Fallen franchise. But Plane, as things stand, seems to be a one and done affair. The movie did quite well, grossing more than $74 million worldwide against a reported budget of $25 million. That’s certainly more than Den of Thieves 2 and Greenland 2 earned globally. *Plane *also received better reviews than both those movies and is now sitting at a “Certified Fresh” 79% critics’ score and a “Verified Hot” 94% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. The aggregator website’s consensus reads, “Plane charts a standard action-adventure course with its cruising altitude just a few miles above Direct-to-Video — but with Gerard Butler in the cockpit, thriller enthusiasts will still find this a fun flight.” The movie is headed to Prime Video on June 1. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
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Jean-François Richet
J.P. Davis, Charles Cumming
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