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Netflix traces its next action franchise back to Scythia, the Crusades, and Napoleon’s army.
The second trailer for “The Old Guard” doesn’t just sell the fight choreography — it lays out a timeline. Ahead of its July 10, 2020 premiere, Netflix’s promotional rollout for the Charlize Theron vehicle chronicles centuries of covert history behind a team of immortal mercenaries who’ve been quietly steering human conflict since long before anyone thought to film it. Director Gina Prince-Bythewood adapts the graphic novel by Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernandez, with Rucka himself writing the screenplay.
- Prince-Bythewood becomes the first Black woman to direct a major comic-book film adaptation.
- Nile Freeman (KiKi Layne), a U.S. Marine who survives a fatal throat wound in South Sudan, is the first new immortal discovered since 1812.
- Theron tore a ligament off the bone during production while performing her own stunts.
A Team Assembled Across Centuries
Andromache of Scythia — Andy, played by Theron — anchors the group, and the character’s backstory alone spans thousands of years. She still favors a double-bladed labrys battle axe over modern hardware, even though she carries firearms when the job calls for it. The rest of her unit reads like a syllabus: Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky (Luca Marinelli) met and fell for each other during the Crusades, while Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts) fought under Napoleon before he ever joined the team.
That’s the hook of the marketing push — these aren’t superheroes with an origin story crammed into one flashback. They’re soldiers who’ve fought in real historical conflicts across different eras, which is exactly the kind of texture the combat training footage Netflix released leans into, showing how centuries of muscle memory translate into the film’s fight choreography.
The First New Immortal Since 1812
The plot turns on Nile Freeman surviving a wound that should have killed her in South Sudan. Andy tracks her down specifically because new immortals are historically rare — Nile is the first one to surface in over two hundred years — and Andy needs to explain a condition nobody in the modern world has a name for.
“I’ve been here for centuries, waiting for someone like you.”
That line, delivered by Andy in the trailer, sets up the central relationship of the film: a warrior who’s outlived every war she’s fought suddenly training the one recruit who might outlive her.
Exposed in the Digital Age
The team’s real problem isn’t a battlefield — it’s a camera. After being recruited under false pretenses by former CIA operative Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the group is led into an ambush that captures their regenerative abilities on record. That footage lands with pharmaceutical executive Steven Merrick (Harry Melling), who wants to capture the team, decode their genetics, and turn immortality into a product line. For a unit that has stayed hidden since before firearms existed, getting caught on video is the one thing centuries of experience never prepared them for.
Building the Film
Production moved across Morocco, the United Kingdom, and Shepperton Studios to give the film’s various time periods and modern-day sequences distinct locations. Theron’s commitment to doing her own stunt work reportedly cost her a torn ligament during filming — the kind of detail that lines up with how physically grueling the trailer’s fight sequences look. The film lands as part of a packed slate for the platform, joining the rest of Netflix’s July 2020 lineup.
“The Old Guard” hits Netflix on July 10, 2020, and with Theron, Ejiofor, Layne, Schoenaerts, Kenzari, and Marinelli all attached, the studio is clearly betting this becomes a franchise rather than a one-off — the graphic novel source material has plenty more centuries left to mine if this first outing lands.
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