The trailer has just been released for John Cena’s next action film, Matchbox: The Movie, which is coming to Apple TV in October.
The live-action film, written by David Coggeshall, is based on the classic Mattel toy brand of the same name that launched in 1953. Cena’s co-stars in Matchbox are Jessica Biel, Sam Richardson, Danai Gurira, Teyonah Parris, Arturo Castro, Randeep Hooda, Corey Stoll, Bill Camp and Golshifteh Farahani. Sam Hargrave, who helmed the Extraction movies, is the director.
At San Diego Comic-Con 2026, Apple TV held a panel in Hall H to preview its upcoming slate, including Dark Matter, Mayday, Widow’s Bay and Silo.
The streaming service also released the trailer for Matchbox: The Movie, which stars Cena as an undercover FBI agent named Sean Walker who returns to his hometown but ends up getting his childhood friends involved in an international adventure with huge stakes for everyone. Check out the Matchbox: The Movie trailer below:
Biel’s character, Amy, begins by telling Cena’s Sean that “it’s been a long time since we played Matchbox cars together.” The trailer then flashes back to their childhood, as Sean and Amy greet each other with twinkles in their eyes.
In the present day, she asks him what he’s been up to all these years, but Sean seems hesitant to go into details, only saying, “It’s a bit of a longer story.” Sean reunites with all of his childhood friends and admits he doesn’t stay in one place for long. They all have shots together at a bar, but it appears they’ve been drugged.
Sean, realizing what’s happening, tells his friends that they’re all going to “wake up someplace different,” which is exactly what happens. When the friend group wakes up, they’re tied up on a plane heading for an unknown destination.
That’s when the villains of Matchbox: The Movie enter the picture and demand that Sean tell them the location of the nuclear warhead. They threaten his friends if he doesn’t give them the information they need, but Sean fights them off and explains that the CIA believes he stole a nuclear warhead, so now everyone’s after him. Amy suggests that they re-steal the bombs so they can get their lives back.
Sean knows how much danger he’s put his friends in, so he tells Amy that he works alone, but she rebuffs the statement by replying, “Not anymore.”
The rest of the trailer features several shots of car chases, shootouts, and explosions. One of Sean’s friends thinks back to their time as kids playing with Matchbox cars and realizes they can use those ideas in the dangerous predicament they’re in now, saying, “Remember when we were kids and we used the Matchbox tow truck as a ramp?“
Matchbox: The Movie is Cena’s latest movie after starring in Trainwreck, Bumblebee, the Fast & Furious franchise, The Suicide Squad, Argylle and Heads of State. On the small screen, he reprised his character from The Suicide Squad in the HBO Max series Peacemaker. Before Matchbox is released, the wrestler-turned-actor can next be seen in the live-action/animation hybrid film Coyote vs. Acme, which arrives in theaters on August 28.
Matchbox is Biel’s first feature-length project since 2017. In recent years, she’s starred in Limetown, Candy and The Better Sister on the small screen and executive-produced Cruel Summer. Now Cena and Biel are working together for the first time in the upcoming action comedy based on the classic Matchbox toy brand that’s a mashup of Game Night and Mission: Impossible.
Matchbox: The Movie will be released Friday, October 9, 2026, on Apple TV.
- Director
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Sam Hargrave
- Writers
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David Coggeshall, Jonathan Tropper
