You've Seen Kill Bill & Killing Eve, Now Prime Video Completes The Trilogy With Kill Jackie
Prime Video's New Killing Eve Replacement Completes An Unofficial Trilogy
While news of a new thriller series starring Catherine Zeta-Jones would always have been exciting, the fact that this show makes an unofficial trilogy with Killing Eve and the Kill Bill movies makes the adaptation unmissable. In 2003, writer/director Quentin Tarantino surprised fans and critics with his wildest movie yet. While Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Jackie Brown were all colorful, heightened, and blackly comedic crime thrillers, the two-part revenge thriller/martial arts extravaganza Kill Bill was something else entirely.
Previewing the more cartoony and outlandish style that came to define Inglourious Basterds and Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, Tarantino’s two-part epic mixed elements of martial arts cinema, spaghetti Westerns, Blaxploitation, crime thrillers, film noir, Hong Kong action cinema, and even anime. The result was something truly bizarre and undeniably original, a four-hour saga that could have collapsed under the weight of its ambition if it weren’t for star Uma Thurman’s peerless, fearless central role.
While all of Tarantino’s movies feature at least one truly standout performance, Thurman’s turn as the implacable vengeance-fueled Bride was a career-best outing. As such, it wasn’t a shock when this character went on to inspire an entire generation of memorable anti-heroines. Notably, 2018’s British spy thriller Killing Eve clearly borrowed some of its inspiration from the classic revenge story, which makes it particularly fitting that Catherine Zeta-Jones’s upcoming thriller Kill Jackie is now set to round out this spiritual trilogy in 2026.
What Kill Jackie Is Based On & What We Know
Killing Eve was based on the Villanelle novels by author Luke Jennings, which chart a toxic cat and mouse game between Jodie Comer’s unstable assassin Villanelle and Sandra Oh’s obsessive MI5 investigator. It is worth noting that the named character changed during the journey from page to screen, as the four-season adaptation of the Villanelle books uses dark character comedy and psychological drama to explore both women in depth.
Like Apple TV’s similarly subversive spy thriller Slow Horses, Killing Eve deconstructs the usual espionage story setup. There are no clear-cut heroes and villains in the show’s story, but rather a complex web of deeply morally compromised people, all driven as much by ire, obsession, and bile as they are by any commendable thirst for justice. According to early reports, Catherine Zeta-Jones’ Kill Jackie will keep this theme alive.
Based on author Nick Harkaway’s novel The Price You Pay, penned under the pseudonym Aidan Tureen, Kill Jackie enters on the actress’s titular rich drug smuggler turned art dealer. 20 years after leaving her criminal past behind, Jackie discovers that a group of assassins known as the Demons have been tasked with killing her. Soon, she must return to her life of crime, killing off these hitmen before they can get to her.
The Unofficial 'Kill [Name Here]' Trilogy Explained
With a creative team that includes Killing Eve’s Damon Thomas and Gangs of London’s Tom Butterworth and a ‘90s multiplex icon as its star, Kill Jackie could be mistaken for a new Guy Ritchie gangster show in the vein of The Gentlemen or MobLand. However, while the morally ambiguous crime thriller will no doubt have a lot in common with Ritchie’s output, Kill Jackie’s true spiritual predecessors are the Kill Bill movies and Killing Eve.
Like Kill Bill, Kill Jackie centers on a seemingly ordinary woman whose past as an unstoppable killer is revealed when she takes on a group of highly trained, implacable assassins. Like Killing Eve, the show has a morally ambiguous central heroine whose life of crime is catching up to her despite her best attempts to evade detection.
Thus, Kill Jackie can now provide a perfect ending to the unofficial ‘'Kill [Name Here]' trilogy when the series arrives. With the assassin-centric story of Kill Bill and Killing Eve combined with a morally ambiguous heroine worthy of either earlier hit, Kill Jackie has the potential to be a beloved cult classic if the show plays its cards right.