Amazon Bets The Beekeeper 2 Can Own MLK Weekend Again

Amazon MGM Studios has dated The Beekeeper 2 for January 15, 2027, the Martin Luther King Jr. four-day weekend that launched Jason Statham’s first film. The studio already paid a $50 million-plus worldwide rights fee to Miramax, then parked the sequel on the same holiday slot that turned a mid-budget revenge picture into a $162.6 million global hit.

Timo Tjahjanto, not David Ayer, directed it. Umair Aleem wrote it. The film is listed as in post-production, and on that Friday it will open against a Paramount IMAX fantasy and an untitled Universal Blumhouse horror title.

Amazon Paid North of $50 Million to Repeat MLK Weekend

Miramax closed the worldwide distribution deal with Amazon MGM in May 2025, with the price pegged at $50 million-plus, and cameras were already due that fall. Amazon MGM then set an January 15, 2027 theatrical date that copies the original’s holiday playbook beat for beat.

The first Beekeeper opened in the United States on January 12, 2024, also an MLK four-day weekend. That was not a dumping-ground booking that lucked into a sequel. Amazon MGM is treating the holiday as a slot it can reuse, the way a studio reuses Memorial Day for a known brand, except the brand here is Statham in work clothes, not a superhero crest.

Mike Hopkins, head of Prime Video and Amazon MGM, told theater owners in Las Vegas that the company is committed to 15 movies a year in theaters. The Beekeeper 2 is the January title in that volume plan: an R-rated action picture with a star the circuit already sold once on this weekend, now asked to do it again with a new director and two event films on the marquee.

Germany gets the movie a day earlier. Leonine Studios, which handled the first film there, takes German-speaking Europe on January 14, 2027, while Amazon Prime Video keeps the pay-one window in that territory.

A $162.6 Million Opening Act

The original, directed by Ayer from a Kurt Wimmer script, was a $40 million production that MGM opened in 3,303 theaters. Box Office Mojo’s ledger puts the three-day start at $16.6 million and the four-day MLK total at $18.7 million, second for the weekend, after which the film hung around long enough to finish with $162.6 million worldwide.

Domestic ticket sales were $66.2 million, or 40.7 percent of the global take. International sales were $96.4 million, 59.3 percent. That is more than four times the $40 million production budget before a streaming window on Prime Video, where the 1 hr 45 min film kept finding new viewers well after its theatrical run.

THE 2024 FILM VERSUS THE SEQUEL

Critics gave the first film a 71% score. Audiences put it at 92% Verified Hot. Those two numbers, not the modest three-day open, are what the sequel is being asked to protect. Amazon did not buy a chart-topping launch. It bought a movie that held, traveled, and left people wanting another round of the same joke played harder.

Timo Tjahjanto Took Over From David Ayer

Miramax announced the sequel in February 2025 with Tjahjanto directing and Wimmer on the script, and Statham returning as Adam Clay through his Punch Palace Productions banner. Chris Long’s Long Shot Productions stayed on. In May 2025, as the Amazon deal closed, Wimmer came off the screenplay and Aleem took it; Wimmer remained a producer.

Tjahjanto arrived from The Night Comes for Us, The Shadow Strays, and Nobody 2, the last of those shot with cinematographer Callan Green, who also photographed The Beekeeper 2. Ayer had already moved on to other Statham work and, in late August 2026, said he had not yet seen the sequel. He called Statham an actor he trusts and said he expects the movie to land.

Principal photography began on September 26, 2025, at Shepperton Studios in England. Tjahjanto posted on Instagram on November 29, 2025, that filming had wrapped, calling the shoot “an incredible, exhausting, hardcore, enlightening, and ultimately beautiful journey.” Jeremy Irons was first back, in early September 2025, as Wallace Westwyld. Emmy Raver-Lampman, Bobby Naderi, and Jemma Redgrave then signed to reprise FBI agents Verona Parker and Matt Wiley and President Jessica Danforth. Yara Shahidi, Pom Klementieff, and Adam Copeland joined as new faces in the same window.

FROM GREENLIGHT TO THE HOLIDAY SLOT

1. February 2025: Miramax confirms the sequel, with Tjahjanto directing and Statham producing and starring.
2. May 2025: Amazon MGM takes worldwide rights in a $50 million-plus deal; Aleem replaces Wimmer on the script.
3. September 26, 2025: Principal photography begins at Shepperton Studios.
4. November 29, 2025: Tjahjanto announces that filming has wrapped.
5. January 22, 2026: Amazon MGM dates the film for January 15, 2027.
6. April 15, 2026: Statham introduces footage to theater owners at CinemaCon in Las Vegas.

Set photos from London in late October 2025 showed Statham working street scenes with Shahidi and Raver-Lampman, which matches the sequel’s own logline: Clay is now a wanted man, still settling accounts with the people who came for him.

What Theater Owners Saw in Las Vegas

Statham did not walk onto the CinemaCon stage. He sent a video message into Amazon MGM’s April 15, 2026 presentation and used it to describe the movie he wants this to be.

I say more is more.

Jason Statham, video message at Amazon MGM’s CinemaCon presentation

The clips that followed treated that line as a shooting script. A Cybertruck tears down a forest road and slams through the guards around a fortified house, then takes so much gunfire it stops. The driver is not Clay. It is a taped-up goon, already dead from the bullets, used as a decoy while Clay watches from the trees.

FOOTAGE SHOWN AT CINEMACON

• The decoy run: A battered Cybertruck draws fire so Clay can reach the house on foot.
• The wound trick: After a street fight, Clay is covered in bees and lets them sting him to slow the bleeding.
• The punchline: He puts a flamethrower in a goon’s mouth and says, “You don’t have to be so hot-headed.”
• The kit: Glass capsules shatter into swarms, and a custom-armed car throws fire at soldiers on an airstrip.

Dialogue in the same reel sets the antagonist as someone who wants to control the government. That is a long way from a retired operative avenging a phishing scam against his landlady, which is the story the 2024 film actually sold. The first movie’s gag was a beekeeper who happened to be an assassin. The Las Vegas footage sells an assassin who uses bees as gear: packing for a wound, payload in a glass bomb, setup for a pun. That shift is the Tjahjanto half of Amazon’s wager, and it is also the risk. If the straight face was the joke, playing the ridiculous part louder could either mint a series or spend the goodwill that 92% Verified Hot audience built.

Three Wide Titles Land on the Same Friday

January 15, 2027 is not a quiet adult-action weekend. Paramount has dated Gina Prince-Bythewood’s Children of Blood and Bone for the same Friday, including IMAX. The studio’s own synopsis puts a young woman in the fantasy nation of Orïsha on a quest to take back magic stolen from her people, with Thuso Mbedu, Damson Idris, Amandla Stenberg, Idris Elba, Viola Davis, Regina King, and Chiwetel Ejiofor in the company.

Universal is still carrying an untitled Blumhouse event film as a wide horror date on that Friday, a placeholder that has sat on the calendar since 2024. Angel’s Fing! is also listed, though on a smaller footprint. The adult action audience that showed up for Statham in 2024 will have a YA epic in premium formats and a Blumhouse brand title in the next lobby.

THE JANUARY 15, 2027 WEEKEND

The January 2027 theatrical calendar makes the collision plain: three wide titles, three different buyers, one four-day holiday. The 2024 Beekeeper did not have to beat a fantasy epic for screens or a Blumhouse event for the horror-curious. It had Mean Girls, and it still finished second on opening weekend before winning the hold. This date asks the sequel to do the same job in a thicker field, which is the part of the bet Amazon cannot buy with a rights check.

Miramax Financed the Film Amazon Distributed

The money trail is not a simple studio picture. Miramax produced and financed The Beekeeper 2. Amazon MGM bought distribution. Statham, Long, and Wimmer produce. In November 2025, Black Bear Pictures took the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia out for sale at the American Film Market, with Amazon MGM keeping the rest. Leonine’s German-speaking deal followed in March 2026, carved to protect Prime Video’s pay-one window.

WHO HOLDS WHICH PIECE

• Miramax: Produces and finances the negative.
• Amazon MGM Studios: Distributes in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the territories it kept after the Black Bear carve-out.
• Black Bear Pictures: Sold selected markets in the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia.
• Leonine Studios: Theaters in German-speaking Europe on January 14, 2027; Prime Video holds pay-one there.

That split is how a $50 million-plus “worldwide” deal still leaves local distributors on the poster. It also means the sequel’s commercial test is not only an American four-day gross. The first film made most of its money abroad. If Tjahjanto’s louder version travels the way Ayer’s drier one did, the rights map pays off. If it does not, Amazon will have spent franchise money on a holiday weekend that now belongs to whoever wins the lobby.

The date is locked, the footage has been shown to the people who decide screen counts, and Clay is still a wanted man with a hive’s worth of new toys. January 15, 2027 will show whether repeating MLK weekend was a plan or just a calendar rhyme.