Lionsgate has released the first trailer and images for Karōshi, a near-future action thriller produced by John Wick director Chad Stahelski and starring Giancarlo Esposito and Cynthia Erivo, set for a theatrical release February 5, 2027.
Written and directed by Takashi Doscher, Karōshi imagines a version of Manhattan where corporate loyalty has effectively replaced tradition, reshaping daily life around a single powerful company. The story follows a mysterious outsider who infiltrates that company after a worker’s death, uncovering a violent, ritualized system operating just beneath its polished corporate surface. The film’s title comes from the Japanese term for death caused by overwork, and the story leans into that literally: the company frames its internal culture around “the path of the samurai,” turning corporate loyalty into something closer to combat.
The trailer puts that premise on full display, opening with Takehiro Hira addressing a crowd about how the company has reshaped modern life, before cutting to an employee falling to his death and splattering blood across Isabel May’s character. From there, the footage escalates quickly, employees choked, hacked apart, and mutilated in sequences that play out like a battle royale happening inside the company itself.
The cast also includes Teo Yoo, May, Hira, Bill Camp, and Show Kasamatsu, alongside Esposito and Erivo in key roles. Stahelski produces alongside Jason Spitz, Alex Young, and Nathan Kahane, through 87Eleven Entertainment and True North. At 88 minutes, the film runs notably shorter than any of Stahelski’s John Wick installments, which range from 101 to 169 minutes, suggesting a tighter, faster-paced structure. The film hasn’t yet received an MPA rating, though the trailer’s level of violence strongly suggests an R.
For Esposito, best known for playing Gus Fring across Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, Karōshi adds to an especially packed stretch of work spanning Captain America: Brave New World, The Electric State, The Boys, and the Netflix limited series All the Sinners Bleed. For Erivo, the role continues a run that includes playing Elphaba in Wicked and Wicked: For Good, with Karōshi arriving just two weeks after her role in Children of Blood and Bone, which opens January 15, 2027, and ahead of her turn as Afeni Shakur in the Snoop Dogg biopic Snoop, out in August.
Karōshi opens the same day as several other early-2027 releases, including Paramount’s The Rescue, and arrives ahead of a notably packed franchise-heavy year that includes Avengers: Secret Wars and Star Wars: Starfighter, positioning itself as one of the few major genre releases that early in the year not tied to existing IP.