EXCLUSIVE: Guy Ritchie is returning to the style of filmmaking that launched his directing career with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. Ritchie will unveil in the Cannes market Toff Guys, a stylized and inherently British drama.

Summit

Toff Guys will be the next film Ritchie directs, and will be one of the buzzier titles when CAA Media Finance and Rocket Science introduce it at next week to foreign and domestic buyers. Ritchie will produce, and he wrote the script with Marn Davies and Ivan Atkinson. Here’s what to expect, per insiders: Pic is set at the intersection of Sexy Beast and Downton Abbey, and follows a very English drug lord attempting to cash out on his highly profitable empire by selling it off to a dynasty of Oklahoma billionaires.

The propulsion is Ritchie’s signature hyper-real and high-energy shooting, with inherently English dialogue that is hard for some of us to understand as it’s delivered rapid-fire by fast-talking, quirky characters. The early films launched the careers of Jason Statham, Dexter Fletcher, Vinnie Jones, Jason Flemyng and a bunch of other blokes. That style collides with the American “Okies,” who bring a lyrical banter all their own as urban and rural lifestyles collide. Insiders said it’s “about old money, new money, and show me the money.”

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It’s a return to form for Ritchie, who’s been working squarely in the studio space with the Sherlock Holmes franchise, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., King Arthur and Aladdin, the Disney live-action adaptation of the animated classic that he just completed.

Ritchie is repped by CAA.