“This whole city is about to be a crime scene,” warns actor Don Cheadle, in the role of an Atlanta police detective, in the newly released first trailer for “Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist,” an upcoming eight-episode series from Memphis producer-director Craig Brewer that will debut Sept. 5 on the NBCUniversal streaming service, Peacock.
To accompany the announcement of the premiere date, Peacock released the 45-second “official teaser” trailer Wednesday, June 12, giving audiences a first look at a slippery cohort of malefactors that heist mastermind Chicken Man (Kevin Hart) calls “the baddest mothers around,” played by actors Hart, Samuel L. Jackson, Taraji P. Henson and Terrence Howard, all in vivid and outlandish 1970s wardrobe.
The assemblage represents something of a Brewer all-star team, reuniting Howard and Henson, the leads of the filmmaker’s Oscar-winning 2005 made-in-Memphis “Hustle & Flow,” and adding Jackson, the star of Brewer’s similarly locally produced followup, “Black Snake Moan,” from 2007.
Created and written by Shaye Ogbonna with Brewer among its executive producers (others include Hart and entertainment industry veteran Will Packer, who had produced a podcast about the same crime), “Fight Night” dramatizes the planning, execution and aftermath of an infamous armed robbery that occurred after Muhammad Ali’s highly publicized comeback match against Jerry Quarry. Or, as the teaser boasts: “Based on Some Sh*t That Really Happened.”
The series was shot in Atlanta earlier this year, with Brewer directing the first two and last two of the episodes. With vivid colors and expressive period production design, the trailer suggests “Fight Night” will have something of the comedic-tragic vibe of such true-crime predecessors as “Goodfellas” and “BlacKkKlansman.” “I don’t think I’ve ever been more excited about something in my life,” Hart told Vanity Fair.
