Now that Steven Soderbergh’s three-year overall deal with HBO is over, he’s free to work with any studio he chooses. And the filmmaker is doing just that, in his usual workaholic way, as Deadline reports that Focus Features outbid everyone for “Black Dog,” Soderbergh’s upcoming spy thriller with Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender. It’s the second pickup of a Soderbergh feature this week, as NEON nabbed “Presence” for distribution after its buzzy premiere at Sundance this past week.
“Black Dog” and “Presence” see Soderbergh working with writer David Koepp again. The longtime screenwriter first worked with Soderbergh on his Max movie “KIMI” with Zoë Kravitz, a small-stakes thriller that scored high marks with critics. Their next two collaborations could not be more different, though. “Presence,” a ghost story about a family who think their house is haunted, has rave reviews coming out of Sundance (read The Playlist’s take here), while “Black Bag” is a spy movie. Whether it’s a globetrotting take on the genre or something more intimate but no less stylized like Soderbergh’s 2012 romp “Haywire” (also starring Fassbender) remains to be seen.
No other news about “Black Box” yet outside of Casey Silver and Greg Jacobs produce the picture and Soderbergh looks to shoot it in Europe this summer. A Blanchett-Fassbender leading pair is a formidable one, though, and another role for Fassbender after “The Killer,” “Next Goal Wins,” and the upcoming Irish rap comedy “Kneecap.” It’s nice to see the actor in roles regularly again after a few years away racing cars and building a family with Alicia Vikander.
Soderbergh plans to shoot “Black Bag” on a $60 million budget, which should be no problem for his indefatigable talent. 35 years after he changed the American independent film scene forever at Sundance with “sex, lies, & videotape,” Soderbergh is still going strong, ripping through several projects every calendar year. Will be he add something else to his 2024 besides “Presence” and “Black Bag”? With Soderbergh, it’s always a possibility.
