Having debuted four projects in fewer than 12 months, always prodigious filmmaker Steven Soderbergh (“Logan Lucky”) is back at it and returning to the espionage genre with his new movie, “Black Bag.” The spy pic stars Cate Blanchett (“Tár”) and Michael Fassbender (“The Killer”) in the lead roles. The Hollywood Reporter has revealed three more names to the growing cast, with production ramping up this spring.
Those new actors include Pierce Brosnan (“Goldeneye”), Naomie Harris (“Skyfall”), and Tom Burke (“Mank”). The former two have already played spies in this genre sandbox, with multiple installments of the James Bond franchise among their credits. Burke also has a supporting role in George Miller’s upcoming prequel, “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” which will debut in May.
While plot details are scarce for “Black Bag,” the film’s title refers to the tradecraft of spies who break into buildings to steal secrets and critical intelligence documents/files or secret locations used for interrogations (usually not entirely legal). Black bag jobs are known as covert or clandestine entries into structures to obtain information for human intelligence operations using various burglar techniques to retrieve information.
Other cast members of the movie, penned by veteran screenwriter David Koepp, include Regé Jean Page and Marisa Abela. Focus Features had won a heated bidding war to obtain “Black Bag,” and we’ll have to wait to hear from the studio about when they plan on distributing the film in theaters, but presumably sometime in 2025.
As previously mentioned, Soderbergh had dabbled with spy movies before with Blanchett’s “The Good German” and the Gina Carano-led actioner “Haywire,” which was filled to the brim with A-list actors, including Fassbender in a small part as an assassin.
Filming on “Black Bag” is said to begin this May in London, and we could see even more high-profile additions to the cast as Soderbergh is known for stuffing his films with as many names and newcomers into a cast as possible without being superfluous about it.
Soderbergh had a banner in 2023 and early 2024. In less than 12 months, he released or debuted the films “Magic Mike’s Last Dance” and “Presence” and the series “Full Circle” and “Command Z,” not to mention unveiled his new recut version of “Kafka” too.