Matthew Vaughn and Cristiano Ronaldo Team Up on Day 1s

A brisk opening scene: a film director who owns a slice of a Premier League club, a global football superstar, and an actor known for morally complicated leads all sign on to build a TV series about the messy, thrilling world of English football. It sounds like a pitch meeting. It is a pitch meeting — and a greenlit Paramount+ series called Day 1s.

Paramount+ has confirmed Day 1s as a comedy set against the backdrop of the Premier League, with Brentford F.C. — the real club — folded into the story as a central element. Damian Lewis will headline and serve as an executive producer, while Matthew Vaughn, best known for Kingsman and other genre hits, will direct the pilot and also executive produce.

The premise is deliberately intimate: a gifted young player finally cracks the top flight, signing for Brentford and dragging along the friends who were there from the start — his literal “Day 1s.” Think loyalty, temptation, fame and the gravitational pull of sudden success. These are not locker-room caricatures but people who have history with the protagonist, and the series aims to explore how a single break can reorder every relationship in sight.

What makes the project feel unusual — and magnetic — is the collision of film and football power. Cristiano Ronaldo and Thierry Henry are listed as executive producers. Dan Mazer, the writer-producer behind Borat, has been tapped as showrunner. Production comes from UR-MARV, the new studio founded by Vaughn and Ronaldo, alongside DoubleD Sports (run by Darren Dean) and Archery Pictures. Doug Ellin and Chris Tucker are also attached as executive producers, adding further industry clout.

Vaughn’s link to Brentford is more than cinematic décor. He is a minority owner of the club, which gives the series an insider flavor and a slightly different perspective than the typical Hollywood take on sport. Day 1s will mark Vaughn’s first time directing a television episode, although he’s no stranger to small-screen work — he produced the Lock, Stock… TV adaptation back in 2000. Still, most audiences know him for films: Layer Cake, Stardust, Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class and, of course, the Kingsman saga. In 2024 he also released Argylle; now he’s pivoting back toward serialized storytelling.

Damian Lewis brings his own pedigree. The Homeland and Billions veteran has lately appeared in films including Fackham Hall, Pressure and The Runner, and his involvement suggests the series will balance comedy with more grounded dramatic notes. That tonal blend is tricky. Ask yourself: do you want the warm optimism of a sitcom or the bone-deep grit of sport as survival story? Day 1s appears poised somewhere between the two.

Paramount+ is adding Day 1s to a varied slate that includes a Clueless sequel and other series such as The Best of Us and Discretion. As of now, there’s no production start date, episode count, or wider casting list announced. The studio has simply signaled intent — and in today’s streaming wars, intent backed by recognizable names often becomes momentum.

Vaughn also has cinematic irons in the fire. His stunt-driven universe returns with Stuntnuts: The Movie, slated to debut at the American Film Festival on November 6, 2026, and a previously shot follow-up, Stuntnuts Does School Fight, sits ready. A third, Stuntnuts Does Shiver, is in development, and all three tie back to the same cheeky stunt-world that has threaded through his recent work.

For now, Day 1s remains a tease: a creative roster that bridges the pitch and the pitch, a story rooted in a real club, and the promise of football seen through a filmmaker’s eye. Will it capture the zeitgeist the way other sports comedies have? Keep an eye on the sidelines — kick-off could come when you least expect it.