Ladies First (2026 film)

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The wealthy, chauvinistic Damien Sachs is an executive at advertising agency Atlas. At a meeting for a potential Guinness stout campaign for women, the client feels the absence of women in power positions in the agency makes them less appealing. To secure the account, Damien dishonestly says a female creative director was recently promoted.

Atlas CEO Fred, happy with this, tells Damien he is considering him to replace him upon his retirement. Damien then gets his assistant Ruby to find any woman to promote to cover his lie. Hardworking single mother Alex Fox is chosen, a 20-year employee constantly overlooked for being a woman.

At Alex's first creative meeting, however, she is ignored, while the male staff, led by Damien, pitch sexist ideas for the Guinness campaign. Afterwards, Alex overhears him revealing she was only promoted for being a woman. Disgusted, Alex quits, after Damien claims it is more difficult to be a man than a woman in the workplace.

As Damien follows Alex out, insulting women's ability to function in the office, he walks into a pole, falling unconscious. Upon awakening, he is in a world similar to his own. However, rather than a patriarchy it is a matriarchy, so sociocultural norms are drastically affected.

Upon Damien's return to Atlas, he sees the major effects of the new gender dynamics: Damien and Alex have swapped roles, so Alex now has his old office; Ruby is an executive; Fred is a meek assistant, his old assistant Felicity is CEO; and former cleaner Glenda is now a chair of Atlas's board. When Damien visits his parents, sister Sunny, and her family later that day, they have also changed.

That night, the mysterious Pigeon Man (named for the pigeons that rest on his head), approaches Damien. He was sent from Damien's world nine years prior, and tells him that to go back to the normal world, he must reclaim his position of power by becoming Atlas' CEO. Damien goes to work the next day believing he can easily rise through the ranks, but unsuccessfully flirts with Felicity, then is ignored at a creative meeting as Alex leads the women in pitching sexist concepts for Guinness wines marketed toward men, just as Damien did to her previously.

Damien consults Sunny for advice, who tells him that women will not take him seriously if they are not attracted to him. He makes drastic changes, buying new clothes, getting his body hair waxed, and going on a diet. When he arrives at work, Felicity is visibly attracted to him, and invites him to a meeting with the male CEO of Guinness, accompanied by Alex. Though Alex appears to offend the CEO with her sexist rhetoric, she soon pitches an idea that he approves of. Felicity invites Damien to a ‘meeting' at her house that evening, where she propositions him while wearing a bathrobe; Damien reluctantly dances for her while dressed as a cowboy, only for her to suddenly die as she achieves orgasm. At her funeral, Fred tells Damien that Glenda is holding a weekend get-together to select a new CEO, presumed to be Alex. Damien goes to Glenda's country house and manages to get inside. He impresses Glenda by playing piano and singing Ginuwine's "Pony," then goes out drinking with her and Alex.

Glenda holds a meeting with the Atlas staff, inviting pitches on the future of the company. Damien gives a presentation focusing on the need for change that impresses Glenda, but he is interrupted when Alex gets a call from her child Charlie, who has a chipped tooth. Damien offers to get Charlie an appointment with Sunny, who is an accomplished dentist, in order to get Alex out of the way. She agrees, but demands that Damien go with her. The two argue on the drive about who deserves the CEO position, but also begin to form a respect for each other. Despite both of them claiming to be heading home after getting Charlie to the appointment, Damien goes back to Glenda's house, only to find that Alex has had the same idea. Their argument turns passionate, and the two sleep together. The next morning, Damien awakens to find Alex planning to quietly leave, much as he often did with the women he slept with. While talking, Alex gets a call informing her that she has been named the new Atlas CEO. A frustrated Damien complains how the world works against men; Alex immediately fires him.

Encouraged by Sunny's husband Chris, Damien visits a lawyer, who says that Damien has a case for a wrongful dismissal suit against Alex and Atlas. While the lawsuit negatively affects Atlas's business, Damien refuses to share that he and Alex had sex, which keeps it from moving forward. When Alex finds out, she realizes that she has feelings for Damien, and rushes to see him. However, while talking, she discovers that Damien will be receiving the CEO job instead of her. Moments later, Damien falls and hits his head, awakening back in his own world. He rushes back to Atlas a changed man, focused on giving the women at the company more opportunities and admonishing Fred for his philandering. He then visits Alex at her home, apologizing for the way he treated her, and agreeing to re-hire her with a better salary, as well as ceding his office to her. She agrees to return, and her idea for the Guinness campaign is a massive, award-winning success. Meanwhile, the Pigeon Man shares Damien's story with Fred, who has become the latest man to be pulled into the women-first world.

Ladies First is inspired by the 2018 French film I Am Not an Easy Man (French: Je ne suis pas un homme facile), written and directed by Éléonore Pourriat. It is written by Natalie Krinsky, Katie Silberman, and Cinco Paul and directed by Thea Sharrock. It was produced by Liza Chasin of 3dot Productions, under her partnership with Netflix. Eleonore Dailly, Edouard de Lachomette and Four By Two Films also produced the film. ^[2][3]

Filming began in November 2024, taking place primarily at Shepperton Studios in Surrey, England. The production was expected to run through January 2025.^[4] Filming locations also included London's Financial District and Hampstead.^[5]

Atli Örvarsson was hired to compose the score for the film.^[6]

Ladies First was released on Netflix on May 22, 2026.^[7]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 26% of 34 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 3.9/10.^[8] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 39 out of 100, based on nine critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews.^[9]

Benjamin Lee of The Guardian gave the film 1/5 stars, describing it as "an excruciatingly unfunny high-concept thought experiment" and "a criminal waste of talent, a murderer's row of actors who hopefully got paid handsomely for the embarrassment of this whiffing up their IMDb pages", summarising the film as "unashamedly silly [...] tiresomely un-fun and, by the end, laughably earnest".^[10] Robbie Collin of The Daily Telegraph gave it 2/5 stars, writing, "The dreary plot which eventually kicks in, and has Baron Cohen and Pike vying for a promotion, feels like something cut from one of the weaker Bridget Jones films – albeit shot in that odd Netflix house style that somehow looks simultaneously expensive and cheap."^[11] Variety's Todd Gilchrist wrote, "the most interesting read on Ladies First is a metatextual one, where Cohen's most famous creation, the cheerfully chauvinistic Borat, gets emotionally vivisected by Pike's calculating Gone Girl character, Amy Dunne."^[12]