The first trailer for By Any Means is out, and it puts Mark Wahlberg in heavy prosthetics as mafia hitman Greg Scarpa while Yahya Abdul-Mateen II plays FBI agent Strider. The film, directed by Elegance Bratton, is based on a true story and is headed to theaters on September 4, 2026.
The trailer is the first clear look at the project since Paramount acquired distribution rights in April, and it answers the most immediate question for viewers curious about the by any means movie: what kind of story this is and who is playing whom. It is a crime drama and action thriller set in 1960s Mississippi, where a young Black FBI agent is sent to investigate a wave of brutal killings targeting civil rights leaders.
Abdul-Mateen’s Strider is forced into an uneasy partnership with Scarpa, a notorious mafia hitman whose world sits far from the Bureau’s side of the line. That setup gives the film its edge. The law and the underworld are not treated as clean opposites here; both men operate in a space where rules have limits, and the trailer leans into that uncomfortable overlap instead of pretending the divide is simple.
Wahlberg’s transformation does much of the selling. The prosthetics make him look nearly unrecognizable, turning the casting reveal into the trailer’s sharpest image. Nicole Beharie, Josh Lucas, LisaGay Hamilton, LaChanze and Ethan Embry also appear in the film, with David Strathairn and Giancarlo Esposito in supporting roles. Sascha Penn wrote the script, giving the story a lineup built to sell both character drama and procedural heat.
What the trailer does not spell out is how closely By Any Means follows the real events that inspired it, or where the partnership between Strider and Scarpa ends up. It does make one thing plain: this is not a standard cops-versus-criminals story. By Any Means is trying to turn a true-crime case into a moral tangle, and the next date to watch is simple enough — the movie opens in theaters on September 4, 2026.
