We don’t even have a trailer yet, and I’m already pumped for The Beekeeper 2.
In 2024, The Beekeeper combined Jason Statham’s unhinged action-star energy with director David Ayer’s visual flair to score an unexpected hit. Propelled by explosive combat, John Wick-adjacent worldbuilding, and an unprecedented number of bee puns, The Beekeeper achieved buzzy blockbuster status, raking in $162 million on a budget of $40 million. A sequel seemed inevitable, and The Beekeeper 2 was announced a year later in early 2025.
A year after that, Amazon MGM Studios hasn’t officially released a single frame of footage, but at CinemaCon this week, attendees got a first look at The Beekeeper 2. The response so far has been overwhelmingly positive, eschewing any concern that the sequel might fail to live up to the first film without its original director Ayer or screenwriter Kurt Wimmer. (They’re replaced by the relatively unknown director Timo Tjahjanto and writer Umair Aleem.)
The trailer, as described by various attendees, expands the world of The Beekeeper, which established a secret military society that operates beyond the chain of command to “protect the hive” (aka human society). In that movie, Adam Clay (Statham) came out of retirement to take down an internet scammer, quickly unraveling a conspiracy that went all the way to the top of the U.S. government.
In the sequel, The Beekeepers have apparently gone rogue and are trying to take down the entire U.S. government. It’s up to retired Beekeeper Adam Clay (Statham) to stop them after he’s recruited by former CIA Director Wallace Westwyld (Jeremy Irons), who served as a key antagonist in The Beekeeper.
More important than the movie’s setup are its action and puns, which defined the original and seem to be going strong in the sequel. The trailer includes one moment when Clay gets shot and gets into a tank of bees, explaining that their stings will heal him. In another, he jams a flamethrower into an enemy’s mouth and ignites it before saying, “Don’t be so hot-headed.” At one point, Clay also throws a “canister of bees” at someone as a weapon.
Those few details alone are enough to get the blood pumping, and The Wrap notes, “The entire trailer is very tongue-in-cheek with graphic violence.”
We wouldn’t have it any other way.
The only bad news is that The Beekeeper 2 won’t buzz into theaters until January 2027. In the meantime, you can always watch (or rewatch) The Beekeeper. It’s streaming now on Hulu and Prime Video.
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