2025 is shaping up to be a great year for fans ofSteven Soderbergh. The Oscar winner has two new films coming next year, starting with his subversive horror flickPresenceshot from the perspective of a being that haunts a family home, releasing on January 17. In March, then, the director will debuthis new spy thrillerBlack Bag, a film that, to this point, has been kept mostly under wraps. A new trailer released today finally pulled back the curtain on the title to reveal something intimate, packed with high tension and suspicion that enraptures its main characters, played byCate BlanchettandMichael Fassbender.
Set in the U.K.,Black Bagprimarily follows a couple in the British intelligence community who become wrapped in a mystery involving those among their ranks. Soderbergh previously teased toThe Hollywood Reporterthat he and writerDavid Koeppdeveloped the idea during the creation ofPresenceas a sort of spin onWho’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?set in the high-stakes world of spies where international relations come into play. “So it’s a very, very specific take on people who are in the intelligence business but also have complex personal, emotional lives,” he said. “It’s the kind of thing that I like a lot.” At the heart of this spy story is also a strong love story that gets blurred when trust among fellow agents is fleeting.
In all, this type of twisty thriller issomething Soderbergh has plenty of experience in. Most recently, he tackled the genre throughEd Solomon’s starry mystery seriesFull Circleon Max, which strung together several seemingly unrelated characters through a kidnapping plot that uncovers their long-held secrets.Black Bagoffered some unique challenges for him though. He further shared with THR that there’s one long dinner sequence that was especially difficult for him to film because of how little it gave him to work with from a cinematic perspective. Still, he saysit’s a worthwhile scene for Koepp’s writing alone and includes a climactic payoffthat’s well worth the wait and speaks to the complexity of the project:
“It was terrifying because there’s a 12-page dinner sequence, in which nobody even moves from their seat. And that kept me up. Because how do you do that? It’s a director’s nightmare. How do I keep this thing interesting for 12 minutes, and nobody’s moving? The good news is the scene as a piece of writing is spectacular. And what happens at the end of it, you don’t see coming. But the challenge of creating a visual scheme that evolves, as the scene is evolving, identifying where the gear shifts are, and making sure visually, where is the camera. The camera has been outside the table. Now, the camera is inside the table looking out, because of this thing that somebody said and the tenor of the room has shifted.”
Who Else Is on Board for ‘Black Bag’?
Black Bagbrings Blanchett and Fassbender back together for the first time sinceTerrence Malick’sSong to Songin 2017. Like that romantic drama, they’ll have a starry cast around them once more, includingMarisa Abelahot off her turn asAmy WinehouseinBack to Blackearlier this year. Joining her areTom Burke,Naomie Harris,Regé-Jean Page, andPierce Brosnan, the latter of whom is also gearing up forChris Columbus’s star-studded Netflix movieThe Thursday Murder Clubnext year.
Black Baghits theaters on August 09, 2025. Check out the trailer in the player above.
