Picture Credit: Netflix
If you woke up to headlines claiming IShowSpeed wandered onto the set of The Gray Man 2 in New York, we’ve got bad news: Netflix isn’t filming a Gray Man sequel, and the film crew Speed stumbled across belongs to a small indie comedy with no connection to Netflix at all.
Here’s how the rumor started. IShowSpeed spent the back half of this week streaming from New York City, where he ran a hide-and-seek event across the five boroughs on October 28 and then stuck around for Halloween. During a stream on October 31, he walked down a residential street lined with brick apartment buildings (and some Halloween cobwebs) where a small film crew had set up with a camera and a flag.
The aggregator account FearBuck (@FearedBuck) then posted the footage with the caption that Speed had “crashed the set of Netflix’s The Gray Man 2 starring Ryan Gosling and Ana de Armas.” Within hours, the post had racked up over a million views, and by Sunday morning, multiple entertainment outlets (Comic Basics and Fiction Horizon, which did absolutely 0 research into what they were talking about) had written it up as though a sequel was quietly in production. Neither Gosling nor de Armas appears in the footage, no Netflix signage is visible (although they have been filming their new series The Roman in New York City in recent days), and nothing in the clip identifies the production.
We’ve been tracking The Gray Man 2 since the day it was announced, and we can say with confidence: this isn’t it.
So what was actually filming?
Based on the production listings we track, the shoot Speed walked past is almost certainly Great Men, (easily misheard) a low-budget independent feature that’s been filming in New York since October 19.
The project is being produced through Lyrical Media. It’s written and directed by Arlen Konopaki and Alex Black, with Delaney Buffett and Marie Nikolova producing (the same pairing behind the indie comedy Adult Best Friends) and Carlos Zozaya as line producer. Casting is by Fay Grande and David Morris.
The logline couldn’t be further from a $200 million spy thriller. Here’s the official synopsis:
When life crumbles under the weight of expectations, two estranged thirty-somethings reunite in a desperate attempt to reclaim the past. But their nostalgic misadventure takes a disastrous turn, threatening to destroy what little remains of their relationship.
It’s also been listed under the alternate title Great Men: The Major Motion Picture, which should tell you what kind of tone they’re going for.
The Gray Man notably shot across Prague, Los Angeles, France, Thailand and Croatia with hundreds of crew, road closures and a fleet of trucks. You don’t stumble into that by accident on a Brooklyn sidewalk.
If anyone from the production wants to confirm what Speed walked into, our inbox is open.
Picture: Netflix
Where The Gray Man 2 actually stands
The short version: nowhere.
For those who need the refresher, Netflix announced The Gray Man 2 and a separate spin-off on July 26, 2022, just four days after the first film debuted at number one in 92 countries. Ryan Gosling was set to return as Court Gentry, the Russo Brothers were set to direct, and Stephen McFeely was writing the script. Deadpool writers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese were attached to the spin-off, which was never given a title or a lead character. Then-head of film Scott Stuber called the audience reaction phenomenal and talked openly about building out a Gray Man universe.
That was more than four years ago, and every update since has been a step backwards:
- April 2023: The Russos told us the sequel would be based on Greaney’s second novel, On Target, and told GamesRadar+ they were halfway through the script.
- April 2024: Joe Russo told GamesRadar+ they were “developing concepts” while juggling around fourteen projects at once.
- March 2025: Anthony Russo told The Playlist there was “still interest” but blamed scheduling between the brothers, Gosling and everyone else (via ScreenRant).
- February 2026: Asked again by ScreenRant at the premiere of The Bluff, Anthony Russo admitted there was no “momentum news right now,” only that people were “still thinking about it.”
That’s the last anyone has said on the record. In the meantime, the Russos have been consumed by Avengers: Doomsday (out December 18) and Avengers: Secret Wars after that, and Gosling has been busy with Project Hail Mary and Star Wars: Starfighter.
Our understanding from sources is that both the sequel and the spin-off are inactive at Netflix. The sequel was greenlit under Scott Stuber’s film regime, and with the leadership change that followed (and is in the processing of changing once again), the appetite for a second $200 million swing on a franchise with a 46% critics score simply isn’t there, regardless of how strong the viewership numbers were. The original still performs well whenever it drifts back into the top 10, but that hasn’t been enough to move the needle.
You can read our full history of the project in our everything we know about The Gray Man 2 guide.
