Jackpot: Get a first look at the John Cena and Awkwafina film that Paul Feig calls “the Jackie Chan movie I always wished I could make”

Awkwafina is a lottery winner who gets more than she bargained for when she becomes a target in the upcoming action comedy.

Entertainment Weekly is taking a look at the upcoming summer movies in their latest issue. One film that the publication is previewing comes from Spy and Bridesmaids director, Paul Feig. His latest action comedy is titled Jackpot, which stars John Cena, Awkwafina and Simu Liu. Jackpot will be hitting Prime Video on August 15 and EW has the first look photos from the film.

The synopsis according to Entertainment Weekly reads,
“The film follows new Los Angeles transplant Katie (Awkwafina), who accidentally finds herself with a winning lottery ticket that makes her a target in the Grand Lottery, a new contest in an economically challenged California that allows others to seize the ticket (and its prize) if they kill the winner by sundown.

When Katie joins forces with Noel (John Cena), an amateur jackpot protector, they try to survive the day, facing off against random adversaries and Louis Lewis (Simu Liu), a rival jackpot protector who wants the commission from Katie’s win for himself.”

Feig has dipped his toe in the action genre with The Heat and Spy while still being integrated with his home in comedy. However, the director expresses how much he looked forward to working on this film. He tells EW, “This is the Jackie Chan movie I always wished I could make. What I love about Jackie Chan movies is that he’s a real, everyman caught in a situation he doesn’t want to be in. He’s the master of panicked fighting versus ‘I’m cool, and I’m going to take you on.’ It’s not Bruce Lee. It’s the ‘Get away from me, get away from me’ type of action. I don’t like mayhem and action for action’s sake. It always has to advance the plot, be character-driven, and find the humor in people who aren’t normally in these situations getting in these situations — and how they get themselves out of it.”

The director of such comedies as The Office and Freaks and Geeks also emphasized that the action comes from a fun place, but it’s still taken seriously. He expounded, “It is very fun and ridiculous, but you’re still worried for them because the stakes are real. But you’re never going, like, ‘That’s upsetting.’ I want to keep an elegance about it all and make it fun, but at the same time, I don’t like action comedies where the villain is silly, and everybody is silly. The stakes have to be real. There has to be real danger. It has to be very believable characters, and then you put them in an extreme situation.”

About the Author

E.J. is a News Editor at JoBlo, as well as a Video Editor, Writer, and Narrator for some of the movie retrospectives on our JoBlo Originals YouTube channel, including Reel Action, Revisited and some of the Top 10 lists. He is a graduate of the film program at Missouri Western State University with concentrations in performance, writing, editing and directing.