The first time Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista shared a frame, it lasted maybe four seconds in Dune. I caught myself leaning forward anyway, thinking, “That’s it? Someone needs to give these two a whole movie.” Prime Video must have been listening. On January 28, 2026, the streamer will release The Wrecking Crew, a buddy-cop action comedy that throws Momoa’s loose-cannon charm against Bautista’s stone-faced precision. January is usually stuffed with Oscar-bait thrillers and superhero epilogues; this mid-winter adrenaline shot already feels like the first must-watch date on the calendar.
A Buddy-Cop Throwback with 2026 Muscle
Every decade gets its own mismatched-partners classic—Lethal Weapon, Rush Hour, 21 Jump Street. The Wrecking Crew steps straight into that lineage. Momoa plays Kaipo “Wrecker” Lono, a Honolulu homicide detective who treats procedure like a suggestion. Bautista is Special Agent Elias Rook, an ex-military investigator who color-codes his trauma. Their mission: escort a whistle-blower from Miami to Seattle while half the mercenary world hunts her bounty.
Prime Video spent three weeks filming practical car chases along Big Sur and closed Seattle’s Fremont Bridge for a midnight helicopter sequence locals thought was a military drill. Veep veteran Rachel Axler punched up the script, turning Bautista’s silent brow-raise into a running gag that feels destined for GIF immortality.
January’s Secret Weapon in the Streaming Wars
Netflix will tempt mystery junkies with the eight-part Harlan Coben thriller Run Away. HBO Max is leaning on Mel Brooks retrospectives. Hulu’s counter-programming the Super-Bowl hype with a Rock Hall of Fame documentary. Prime Video’s answer is a single, swaggering title built to birth memes and sequels. Early tracking suggests The Wrecking Crew could replicate the viral surge that turned The Boys into a house-brand hit—only this time the uniforms are Hawaiian shirts and shoulder holsters.
Amazon MGM Studios head Jennifer Salke spells out the roadmap: “If audiences show up the way we expect, Kaipo and Rook become our next franchise—globe-trotting sequels, spin-offs, even a theme-park stunt show.” Momoa’s Instagram clip of Bautista learning to hula danced past 8.2 million likes in two days, outpacing every superhero trailer this fall. The fan army is already enlisted; Prime Video just has to land the payload.
Why Momoa & Bautista Are the Duo We Didn’t Know We Needed
Their origin stories rhyme: both men escaped rough childhoods—Momoa in Nanakuli, Oahu; Bautista the son of a Virginia hairdresser—before Hollywood turned them into human special effects. On screen they’re oil and water. Momoa glides through scenes with surfer-zen menace, half kiss, half head-butt. Bautista weaponizes stillness; he’s the rare wrestler-turned-actor whose comedy lands because he never winks at the joke.
Director Kat Coiro calls the tone “Butch Cassidy meets The Odd Couple by way of Bad Boys.” She credits Bautista for the first-day note that became a through-line: “Can Rook hate sand?” Suddenly every beach scene pitted a battle-hardened vet against a single grain between his toes—perfect foil for Momoa’s beach-bum demigod.
Why This Pairing Isn’t Just Stunt-Casting
Hollywood loves duct-taping two marketable names together and calling it a franchise. What separates The Wrecking Crew is the fieldwork. Momoa rode night shifts with Honolulu’s Crime Reduction Unit, taking notes on how detectives crack jokes while a body bag sticks. Bautista shadowed a VA trauma counselor, learning the micro-expressions of veterans who can’t switch off hyper-vigilance. When their characters clash—one volcanic instinct, one granite protocol—it’s two philosophies of masculinity duking it out in real time.
Co-director Adil El Arbi showed press a rough-cut scene shot entirely in a stalled elevator: no explosions, no green screen, just the two men trading stories about fathers who never said “I love you.” Half the room teared up. “Everybody expects us to blow up a submarine,” he laughed, “but the real explosion is the one inside their chests.”
The Algorithm-Proof Release Strategy
| January 2026 Streaming Heavy-Hitters | Format | Prime Video’s Counter-Programming Move |
|---|---|---|
| Netflix: Run Away (Coben thriller) | 8-episode binge | One-night global premiere at 9 p.m. local time |
| Hulu: Rock Hall of Fame special | 2-hour music doc | Post-premiere “after-party” live-stream with Momoa & Bautista Q&A |
| HBO Max: Mel Brooks retro | Classic catalog | Day-and-date IMAX sneak in 300 auditoriums |
Everyone else is betting on nostalgia or serialized gloom. Prime Video’s marketing unit—stacked with ex-Disney parks imagineers—opted for appointment viewing. No autoplay dump, no staggered episodes. The film streams worldwide at the same hour, followed by a 30-minute fan Q&A shot on the Seattle rooftop that doubles as the climax. Skip the premiere and you’ll spend a week dodging spoilers.
The Buddy-Cop Renaissance No One Saw Coming
Industry headlines love to bury genres—until they thunder back. Westerns were toast until Yellowstone printed its own money; rom-coms supposedly fossilized until Ticket to Paradise cashed a $168 million vacation. Now the buddy-cop, dismissed as a 90s relic, is next in line. Momoa, a Native Hawaiian, demanded Hawaiian-language signage on Honolulu streets and hired 75% of the below-the-line crew from local academies. Bautista funneled part of his salary into a transportation stipend for low-income extras so Seattle wouldn’t look like a tech-bro diorama.
Those choices matter. Since production wrapped, Pinewood Atlanta—where the interiors shot—has green-lit two more mid-budget odd-couple scripts that had been languishing: one pairing a deaf stuntwoman with a TikTok-famous ASL interpreter, the other teaming a retired astronaut with a teenage climate hacker. Financiers suddenly remembered audiences will forgive a modest budget if the emotional stakes feel huge.
Last Call: Why You’ll Remember Where You Were
I’ve sat through enough midnight rollouts to know the drill: Twitter flare, algorithmic fade, thumbnail graveyard. The Wrecking Crew feels different because it bets on intimacy when spectacle is cheap. Sure, a freight-train chase obliterates a farmers market, but the moment that lingers is quieter—Momoa teaching Rook to say “mahalo” without sounding like a tourist. It’s vulnerability you rarely let giants show, and it lands harder than any head-butt.
Mark January 28. Prime Video isn’t adding another tile to the endless scroll; it’s reviving the communal gasp, the living-room chorus of “did you see that?” In a fragmented landscape of lone-wolf binges, The Wrecking Crew invites us to laugh, wince, and maybe call an old friend when the credits roll. Some explosions are loud enough to remind us why we still gather around the screen.