Star-Lord is back in uniform, but probably not the one that you're expecting!
Apple Original Films unveiled the first trailer for Way of the Warrior Kid on Tuesday, October 27th, and the Chris Pratt movie is set to premiere globally on Apple TV on Wednesday, November 25th, the day before Thanksgiving.
That's a few days later than first planned. When Apple announced the film back in February, it had the premiere down for November 20th. The trailer announcement now lists November 25th, so if you had the 20th circled, move it to Thanksgiving week. Check it out below!
Pratt plays Uncle Jake, a decorated former Navy SEAL recovering from an injury who comes to spend the summer with his nephew Marc (Jude Hill) and Marc's mom, Sarah (Linda Cardellini). Marc is a good kid, but he's getting bullied by his classmates and falling behind in school, in sports and with friends.
So Jake builds a program around his own SEAL training and calls it Operation Warrior Kid. According to Apple's synopsis, the real lesson is courage, and Jake confronts his own struggles along the way.
The A.V. Club had some fun with the trailer, describing it as Pratt training a little Chris Pratt. Hill, who made his feature debut as Buddy in Kenneth Branagh's Belfast, plays Marc.
McG (Charlie's Angels, Terminator Salvation) directs from a screenplay by Will Staples (Without Remorse), and the author himself is in the cast. Jocko Willink turns up on screen as an intimidating instructor during the jiu-jitsu training scenes. Ava Torres, Levi McConaughey, Darien Sills-Evans, Carl McDowell and Parker Young round out the cast.
Skydance's David Ellison, Dana Goldberg and Don Granger produce alongside McG and Mary Viola, Pratt through his Indivisible Productions banner, Ben Everard, Bruce Wayne Gillies and Willink.
Deadline first reported the package was heading to the Cannes market back in April 2024. By June, Deadline reported that Skydance had closed what was believed to be an $80-85 million global deal to bring it to Apple, the biggest package acquisition out of a film market since Apple bought Emancipation in 2020.
Neither Apple nor Skydance has confirmed that number publicly.
Cardellini is a Marvel alum and has already shared a movie with Star-Lord! She played Laura Barton, Clint's wife, in Avengers: Age of Ultron, Avengers: Endgame and the Hawkeye series, and she voiced Lylla, Rocket's otter friend, in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.
Pratt has played a SEAL before, too. He stars as James Reece in Prime Video's The Terminal List, adapted from former SEAL Jack Carr's novels, and Season 2 is streaming now, with all eight episodes on Prime Video since October 21st.
The second season really takes it up a notch, both in action and production value. It's a must-see for fans of the books and of Pratt!
He's also reportedly been eyed for Paramount's new G.I. Joe movie with Danny McBride directing. That one is still just a report for now.
On a personal note, I'm a huge fan of Jocko Willink's books.
If you don't know the name, Willink served in the Navy from 1990 to 2010 and commanded SEAL Task Unit Bruiser during the Battle of Ramadi in Iraq, earning the Silver Star and the Bronze Star. Bruiser's Charlie Platoon also included Chris Kyle, the American Sniper himself. These days Willink hosts Jocko Podcast and runs the leadership consulting firm Echelon Front.
He wrote the first Way of the Warrior Kid novel in 2017, and according to Deadline's April 2024 report, he did it because he wasn't happy with the reading options out there for his own kids. The book follows Marc, an 11-year-old who can't do a single pull-up, through a summer of training with Uncle Jake.
That first book turned into five, with Way of the Warrior Kid followed by Marc's Mission, Where There's a Will, Field Manual and Letters from Uncle Jake, and the original now has a movie tie-in edition too.
But the books that really hooked me are his leadership titles. Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win came out in 2015, co-written with Leif Babin, who led Charlie Platoon under Willink in Task Unit Bruiser. Its idea is that a leader owns everything in their world, INCLUDING the failures. Each chapter pairs a story from Ramadi or SEAL training with the principle behind it, then shares how it plays out in business.
The follow-up, The Dichotomy of Leadership, landed in 2018 with Babin again. It pairs up principles that pull against each other. A leader has to own it all and still empower the people under them. The same leader needs to hold people accountable without holding their hands and be confident without getting cocky.
I recommend Willink's leadership books to anyone and everyone! I found them during a personal growth and leadership training, and when I came back as a coach, I got them added to the training's core reading. They changed how I look at and evaluate problems, both in my personal life and in my businesses. Tracing back how something you did (or didn't) do or say led to a result, then asking what you could have done differently and how that might have changed things, is priceless. If Way of the Warrior Kid plants even a little of that in a new generation of kids, that's a win!
Which Jocko Willink book would you hand to a kid first? What do you think?
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