Alan Ritchson Goes to War Against an Otherworldly Threat in Netflix's 'War Machine'
The ‘Reacher’ star leads a squad of Rangers into a high-concept fight for survival.
Summary
- Netflix has released the first trailer for War Machine, a sci-fi action thriller starring Alan Ritchson as an elite Army Ranger candidate
- The plot centers on the final 24 hours of a grueling selection program that turns into a lethal encounter with an otherworldly killing machine
- Directed by Patrick Hughes (The Hitman’s Bodyguard), the film features a high-profile cast including Dennis Quaid, Jai Courtney, and Stephan James
Alan Ritchson is officially trading the nomadic life of Jack Reacher for the high-stakes battlefield of science fiction. Netflix has debuted the explosive official trailer for War Machine, a high-concept actioner that finds Ritchson at the center of a military selection process gone horribly wrong. Directed by Patrick Hughes– the filmmaker behind The Expendables 3 and The Hitman’s Bodyguard — the film aims to blend the grounded intensity of a modern war movie with the visceral tension of a sci-fi survival thriller, pitting a group of elite trainees against a technologically superior alien threat.
The narrative focuses on “81” (Ritchson), a combat engineer and top-tier candidate in the world’s most demanding Ranger selection program. During the final stage of their training—a 24-hour endurance exercise—81 and his unit discover that they are being hunted by an “unimaginable threat.” The trailer reveals this antagonist to be a towering, weaponized machine of extraterrestrial origin, turning a controlled exercise into a desperate fight for survival. Ritchson, who famously tattooed “81” on his ribs before filming began, has described the project as “the coolest thing [Netflix] has ever made.”
Supporting Ritchson is an ensemble of veteran and rising stars. Starring alongside him are Dennis Quaid, Jai Courtney, Stephan James, Esai Morales, Daniel Webber and Keiynan Lonsdale. To ground the sci-fi elements, Hughes reportedly pushed the cast into extreme real-world environments, filming on mountaintops and in glacial waterfalls across Australia. Check out the trailer above. War Machine is set to begin streaming globally on Netflix on March 6, 2026.
