You might not have realised it yet, but 2024 is rapidly shaping up to be the ‘year of the motorcycle action movie’. There's a new Mad Max movie imminent as well as a big-budget 1960s biker gang flick starring Britain’s own Tom Hardy and Jodie (Killing Eve) Comer, a new Deadpool featuring - according to teasers - a bike-riding Ryan Reynolds and a few others.
And, with the next instalment of Mission: Impossible due 2025, which will almost certainly again feature star Tom Cruise on bikes, it could be argued that motorcycle and movie fans have never had it so good on the big screen.
The new Mad Max flick is called ‘Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga’, and is a prequel to the previous outing, 2015’s ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ (which starred Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron). It's the fifth film in creator George Miller’s apocalyptic series and is due out in UK cinemas on 24 May.
This time starring Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris (Thor) Hemsworth, the former plays a younger iteration of Theron's war rig driver ‘Imperator Furiosa’ with Hemsworth reported to be playing a bike-riding character, credited in some quarters as ‘Warlord Dementus’. Furiosa is also reported to be more ‘bike-heavy’ than Fury Road but with the usual carnage and stunts almost guaranteed.
The following month sees the delayed UK release of The Bikeriders which is already showing Stateside and has been acclaimed by some as the best ‘biker’ movie ever.
Starring Austin (Elvis) Butler and Brits Tom Hardy (who’s a genuine biker in real life) and Jodie Comer, it’s a gritty drama about a fictional 1960s Chicago biker gang and was inspired by an eponymous 1968 photobook. Already acclaimed for its authenticity (most of the cast do their own riding), The Bikeriders hits UK cinemas on 21 June.
In July, the next instalment of the superhero action comedy series Deadpool is set to premiere which this time, according to teasers, features bikes. Deadpool 3 again stars a real-life bike nut (Ryan Reynolds) playing the titular character, who this time is teamed up with Marvel’s Wolverine, played by Hugh Jackman. According to advance trailers and leaked posters, the film will see the pair in at least one action sequence both aboard what looks like a Triumph Scrambler. It’s scheduled to be released in the UK on 26 July.
And if all of that seems a little far off (or even far out) there are at least three more, admittedly perhaps less well-known, action movies that are either about to or have just been released, that also feature bikes.
The Kitchen is a more low-budget, British, futuristic, sci-fi thriller starring Kane Robinson (better known as rapper Kano). It was released in selected UK cinemas on 12 January before receiving its streaming debut by Netflix on 19 January 2024. So far, so humdrum, maybe. But what might prick up your ears more is that Kane’s character, ‘IZI’, is a bike rider whose wheels of choice are a specially-customised Royal Enfield Shotgun 650 specially built in collaboration with the in-house Custom Team at Royal Enfield’s UK Technology Centre at Bruntingthorpe, Leics. Who said Enfield 650s were all retros?
Jackdaw is another UK-shot thriller which stars Jenna (Dr Who sidekick) Coleman, is based around Teeside and follows the story of Jack Dawson (played by Oliver Jackson-Cohen) a former motocross champion and army veteran. It goes on UK release on 26 January.
Finally (for now at least), let’s not overlook the imminent, star-packed spy action comedy ‘Argylle’ which, along with A-listers Henry Cavill, Sam Rockwell, Samuel L Jackson, Bryan Cranston and pop star Dua Lipa also features no less than an MV Agusta Dragster. The latest from celebrated Brit director Matthew Vaughn (layer Cake, Kick-Ass, Kingsmen) will be released on February 2.
If all that little lot isn’t enough to drag you to the flicks to enjoy some outlandish bikes, you can always wait until next year for the latest instalment of Mission: Impossible, namely Dead Reckoning Part 2 which, after 2023’s Part 1, which featured what’s been described as the most extreme movie motorcycle stunt in history, when Tom Cruise rode a Yamaha motocrosser off a Norwegian mountain. That, plus Tom’s known love of bikes and the franchise’s long history of bike stunts, makes more motorcycles in the latest ‘Mission’, a nailed-on certainty.
