Heads of State

About the film

Heads of State is a 2025 action comedy film directed by Ilya Naishuller. It stars Idris Elba as the British Prime Minister and John Cena as the President of the United States, two world leaders who are forced to work together after becoming targets of a foreign adversary. The supporting cast includes Priyanka Chopra, Jack Quaid, Paddy Considine, Stephen Root, and Carla Gugino.

The film was released worldwide on July 2, 2025, by Amazon MGM Studios via Prime Video.

Plot

A joint team of MI6 agents and CIA officers, led by senior agent Noel Bisset, are in Buñol, Spain, during the La Tomatina festival, chasing Russian arms dealer Viktor Gradov. Bisset's team are ambushed and killed, and Gradov acquires a link to ECHELON, the global surveillance program used by the Anglosphere intelligence alliance Five Eyes.

Sam Clarke, the UK Prime Minister, receives a state visit from the newly elected United States President Will Derringer, a former action movie star. The two do not get along due to their differing views on leadership, and a public argument breaks out between them during a joint press conference. Their respective aides Quincy and Bradshaw convince them to fly to the upcoming NATO summit in Trieste together aboard Air Force One to present a united front to the world.

During the flight, Air Force One is shot down by Gradov's men. Clarke and Derringer escape using parachutes but are stranded in Belarus and presumed dead by the rest of the world. Realizing that someone in their inner circle has betrayed them to Gradov, the two journey to a safe house in Warsaw with CIA officer Marty Comer. Gradov's men, led by assassins Sasha and Olga, attack the safehouse. Comer kills the majority of the attackers before being shot in the head. Clarke and Derringer escape with the help of Bisset, who survived Gradov's attack in Spain.

Production

It was announced in October 2020 that Amazon Studios had picked up the project, which would star Idris Elba and John Cena, the pair having previously co-starred together in The Suicide Squad (2021). Two years later in October 2022, Ilya Naishuller was hired to direct the film. In April 2023, Priyanka Chopra joined the cast. Paddy Considine, Stephen Root, Carla Gugino, Jack Quaid, Sarah Niles and Richard Coyle would be added to the cast the following month.

Filming began in London in May 2023. Filming continued in Liverpool's St George's Hall in June 2023. Later in July and August, location shooting moved to Trieste for some chase scenes. In May 2024, additional scenes were shot in Belgrade, Serbia. The studio spent $189.7 million to produce the film, with the net budget being $154.8 million after a $31.3 million tax incentive return from the UK government.

Release

Heads of State was released on Prime Video on July 2, 2025.

Reception

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 68% of 114 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.9/10. The website's consensus reads: "Heads of State's lighthearted handling of geopolitics may be too cute by half, but the comedic alliance between Idris Elba and John Cena remains strong in this slick action flick." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 57 out of 100, based on 19 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.

Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com gave the film two and a half out of four stars and wrote, "All in all, it's stupid fun, done with enough panache that its thin story and sometimes too-glib attitude doesn't hurt it too much."

Key details