How Guy Ritchie Keeps His Spy Thrillers Fresh And Exciting

Published May 14, 2026, 2:02 PM EDT

ScreenRant's Tatiana Hullender spoke to Ritchie about In The Grey, and how, after decades in the business, he manages to inject a fresh, fun, and new perspective into every one of his spy thrillers.

When It Comes To Crafting A Spy Thriller, Entertainment Is Key

Ritchie is no stranger to the spy thriller genre, from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre to his recent work, including The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, and some of his more crime-forward dramas like The Gentlemen and Young Sherlock. And he's done it all with his own signature style. When it comes to setting each one apart and bringing something new to films and television series he helms, Ritchie said he wants to make sure he's just as entertained as he hopes audiences will be when they tune in.

Guy Ritchie: I'm trying to entertain myself as much as I am trying to entertain an audience. This world I stumbled into, which I found to be provocative and interesting, is one where there's an illegal world behind the legal world. You've got legally trained people exercising their skills in a world of moral ambiguity, and that became good nutrition for a story. That's principally why I was interested in this particular story.

How Ritchie Sets The Stakes In Each Of His Projects

While In The Grey starts as a heist film, it spirals into something much bigger for the characters. As for how he decides to set the stakes for each of his projects, Ritchie said there are big differences between "global" stakes and "personal" ones, but both come with their own set of implications.

Guy Ritchie: Stakes can be very small. You can have global stakes, but then you can have personal stakes. It's strange because you'll be surprised by how personal stakes can mean more than global stakes sometimes, as long as the audience can relate to those personal stakes. It's a bit like public speaking. Public speaking in front of 50 people is really the same as speaking in front of 50,000 people. It's a weird thing, as you would've thought there would be an exponential challenge when it came to numbers. But funnily enough, there isn't.

While the prospect of the world ending is a major, global stake, a personal stake as ordinary as a character's pet dying can have just as big an impact on audiences, if not more, with Ritchie telling ScreenRant that it all goes back to the "human condition."

Guy Ritchie: Movie stakes operate in a very similar way. You think you need to turn up the volume on the stakes, and in some films, you need that. Even if it's a hyperbole in order to illustrate a point, you go, "The world will end!" But then you find out someone's cat's going to die, and sometimes the cat dying can have more stakes to it than the world dying. It's an odd dynamic about the human condition. So, it just depends on how you can manipulate those stakes into a world that feels plausible and appropriate.

Check out more of our In The Grey coverage here:

• Guy Ritchie Is A Month Away From Completing His Unofficial James Bond Trilogy
• Guy Ritchie's In The Grey: Spiritual Sequel To The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
• Henry Cavill, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Eiza González Become Guy Ritchie's Most Stellar Trio Yet In First Look At New Thriller In The Grey