Ryan Gosling Is a Stuntman on a Mission for Emily Blunt in “The Fall Guy” Trailer

From director David Leitch, ‘The Fall Guy’ is in theaters March 1

Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt are showing off their action-hero skills in The Fall Guy.

The action-comedy is loosely based on the 1980s CBS series of the same name. As its trailer demonstrates, it’s the story of Hollywood stuntman Colt Seavers (Gosling) roped by his former flame Jody Moreno (Blunt) into helping her pull off filming an explosive sci-fi-Western.

David Leitch, the director behind Atomic Blonde and Deadpool 2, directed the film.

As revealed to Vanity Fair, he brought his distinct expertise to the “bonkers” job as a stuntman himself — for Matt Damon on The Bourne Ultimatum, Brad Pitt on Fight Club, and more.

“Obviously in modern cinema we have the use of CGI, and we use it liberally,” said Leitch, 47. “But when we’re making a love letter to stunts and the blue-collar crews that make these movies come to life, we explored doing old-school high falls into airbags, and jumping a car as far as we could, and rolling a car as many times as we could.”

Related: Greta Gerwig Says Sylvester Stallone Inspired Ken in the Barbie Movie: 'Ryan Gosling Loves Him'

The Fall Guy’s first trailer offers glimpses of some of those death-defying stunts, as well as Winston Duke as the movie-within-a-movie’s stunt coordinator, Hannah Waddingham as its smarmy producer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson as its cocky leading man — who mysteriously disappears — and Stephanie Hsu as his beleaguered assistant. 

Blunt plays a former camera operator for whom the sci-fi-Western production is her big directing break. As her ex, hired to track down the film’s missing star, Gosling “wanted to find a real motivation for this character in the love story,” Leitch revealed.

The director added that Gosling has “done action, he’s done romance, he’s done comedy, but this movie allowed him to do all of it.”

Related: Cillian Murphy Says He’s Open to Playing a Ken in 'Barbie 2'

Among the multiple stunt performers used to double Gosling throughout filming The Fall Guy were driving specialist Logan Holladay, fighter Justin Eaton and "the core double" Ben Jenkins, who, according to Leitch, "got hit by cars" and "jumped over fences."

Another stunt double, Troy Brown, executed a fall of 150 feet.

“You have your friends and colleagues and all these people that you love so much doing these big stunts, but you know the consequences,” Leitch told Vanity Fair. “You have full confidence they’re going to do ’em safely, but there’s still that small fraction of a chance that something could go wrong. Yeah, there are some heavy moments waiting for that thumbs-up.”

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

The Fall Guy features a screenplay by Drew Pearce, reuniting with Leitch after their collaboration on 2019's Fast & Furious franchise spin-off Hobbs & Shaw.

It will also feature Blake Shelton doing a new rendition of the original TV series’ theme song, which was performed by the show’s star Lee Majors.

The Fall Guy is in theaters March 1.

For more People news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter!

Read the original article on People.