ACTION BRONSON'S BAKLAVA 2811 PREMIERES CHAPTER 1 JULY 14

Pale green mesh. Teal overlays. A cushioning platform borrowed wholesale from a shoe already a decade into its own lineup. That is the actual product sitting underneath Action Bronson's new movie trailer, and it deserves as much attention as the film does.

The "Mikročpske" colorway is the first edition of the Baklava 2811, Bronson's first true signature New Balance model, and the elaborate film campaign built around it is doing a job the shoe alone would take years to do on its own.

New Balance 2811 Borrows Its Platform From The 2010

The New Balance 2811 builds on the ABZORB cushioned platform of the New Balance 2010, an existing shoe already in the lineup, rather than starting the cushioning system from scratch. Bronson's team layered a new upper on top of that platform, defined by thin synthetic overlays instead of the 2010's simpler paneling, and dressed the whole thing in the pale green mesh, teal overlays and colorful accents the "Mikročpske" launch colorway is built around. It reads as familiar Baklava territory, loud but controlled, and it sits closer in spirit to the ABZORB heritage running shoes New Balance has been reissuing all year than to a typical rapper collab colorway. ABZORB is New Balance's own cushioning compound, not a licensed outside technology, which matters for a signature shoe: it means the 2811 is built on a platform New Balance controls end to end rather than a third party sole unit dressed up for the occasion.

July 14, 2 PM Eastern. Chapter 1 Premiered On Schedule.

The first installment of "Mikročpske," a short film Bronson bills as a late 90s Y2K Balkan international hardware and software romantic crime thriller, premiered on his own YouTube channel on Tuesday, July 14 at 2 PM Eastern. Bronson wrote the script himself and stars in it as Special Agent Bach, the character built to carry the Baklava universe past a single drop. Chris Grosso produced and directed, Bernardo G shot it as director of photography, and Dean Samuel White both supervised the sound edit and handled the re recording mix, credits that read more like an independent feature than a sneaker teaser. Foley was recorded at a dedicated studio, Foley Walkers, and a separate production logistics coordinator is credited by name, the kind of below the line detail a fourteen day content shoot does not usually bother with.

A Vintage Mercedes Gets A Producer Credit

A 1993 Mercedes Benz 500E, borrowed from the Ridgefield Collection, gets its own courtesy line in the rollout, the same billing usually reserved for a human co star. The car fits the genre Bronson is chasing: a boxy, understated German sedan from exactly the late 90s Y2K window the film's Balkan crime thriller premise is set in, cast as carefully as any actor. Pair that with a dedicated steady cam operator, a separate steady cam first assistant, a sound recordist, a gaffer and a colorist all named individually, and the production scale says something specific. Bronson is not treating this launch as a sneaker ad with a rap cameo. He is treating it as a film with a shoe attached, and crediting the crew like one.

This Is Not The Ellipse Collab Anymore

New Balance and Action Bronson already worked together once this year, when the brand unveiled the Ellipse running shoe with him back in March. The 2811 is a bigger commitment than that release, a full signature model carrying Bronson's own Baklava name rather than a guest colorway on an existing performance shoe, and the numbers back that reading up. A Tri-State area private launch offered only 300 pairs, with tickets going on sale July 16, the day before this rollout hit full public view. New Balance has spent the year building franchise energy through other names too, running capsules with Aime Leon Dore among them, but those are designer collaborations layered onto existing performance shoes. A musician getting his own numbered model and his own colorway name is a different tier of investment, closer to how a sneaker brand builds a signature athlete line than a seasonal capsule.

No retail price or wide release date has been confirmed yet for the Baklava 2811, which tracks for a shoe still running its film campaign before the drop. What is confirmed is the platform underneath it, a proven ABZORB cushioning system New Balance already trusts on the 2010, dressed in a colorway loud enough to survive a movie trailer built around a vintage Mercedes and a fictional special agent. Buy interest here should track the film's audience first and the shoe's actual retail number second, because right now Bronson has built a bigger story than New Balance has built a price tag.