Here is our Spy Movie News for February 22, 2022! We will discuss Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre, Awards nominations, upcoming spy movies such as: Heart of Stone, Cold Sun, The Bricklayer, Kompromat, new streaming spy series, The King’s Man’s historical accuracy, and Mission: Impossible 7!
Let’s start with the spy movies coming out in March 2022.
Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre
The only spy movie being released in US movie theaters in March is Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre hits the US & UK screens on March 18th, following a 9 country release the day before.
According to the official website: “…Super spy Orson Fortune (Jason Statham) must track down and stop the sale of a deadly new weapons technology wielded by billionaire arms broker Greg Simmonds (Hugh Grant). Reluctantly teamed with some of the world’s best operatives (Aubrey Plaza, Cary Elwes, Bugzy Malone), Fortune and his crew recruit Hollywood’s biggest movie star Danny Francesco (Josh Hartnett) to help them on their globe-trotting undercover mission to save the world.”
This sounds like a fun spy movie to us.
Amazon Prime Spy Movies for March
Amazon Prime is bringing back a slew of James Bond movies on March 1st. You will be able to stream A View to a Kill, Die Another Day, For Your Eyes Only, GoldenEye, Licence to Kill, Moonraker, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, The Living Daylights, The World is Not Enough, and Tomorrow Never Dies.
On March 31, Amazon is adding Imperium to their catalog. This 2016 movie stars Daniel Radcliffe, who is an FBI agent who goes undercover as a white supremacist. Toni Collete and Tracy Letts also star in this movie.
The Ipcress File
And of course, while this isn’t a movie, we have the “The Ipcress File” series coming out in March as well. The six-part ITV series starring Joe Cole. This is going to be fantastic.
You can listen to our February 8th podcast, THE IPCRESS FILE ITV Briefing with Actors and Directors – where we talk about this series by recapping the press conference, we were invited to attend for the show We also have this available as a video if you want to also see photos along with the discussion.
The Duke
Unfortunately, the movie The Duke has been pushed until April 22, 2022, in New York and Los Angeles. Other cities will get The Duke over the following weeks. This is the movie about the heist Goya’s Duke of Wellington portrait that prompted the addition of a replica of this painting to be added to the James Bond movie Dr. No.
Award Nominations Are Out
Award season is hitting its stride. So, let’s look at the 2022 nominees.
BAFTA
First, we got the BAFTA nominations.
No Time To Die garnered nominations for:
- Outstanding British Film
- Cinematography (Linus Sandgren)
- Editing (Tom Cross and Elliot Graham)
- Sound (James Harrison, Simon Hayes, Paul Massey, Oliver Tarney, and Mark Taylor)
- Special Visual Effects (Mark Bakowski, Chris Corbould, Joel Green, and Charlie Noble)
In addition, Lashana Lynch from No Time to Die and Harris Dickinson from The King’s Man were nominated for the Rising Star award. The Rising Star award is voted by the public.
Academy Awards
No Time To Die earned 3 Oscar Nominations:
- Best Original Song – music and lyrics by Billie Eilish and Finneas
O’Connell. This is the franchise’s 6th Best Original Song nomination if you count the 1968 movie Casino Royale. The previous James Bond winners in this category have come from the last two Bond movies, Spectre and - Best Visual Effects (Charlie Noble, Joel Green, Jonathan Fawkner, and Chris Corbould)
- Best Sound (Simon Hayes, Oliver Tarney, James Harrison, Paul Massey, and Mark Taylor)
With these three nominations, James Bond movies have amassed 19 Academy Award nominations.
Upcoming Spy Movies
So, let’s shift gears and look at movies that are in development or upcoming:
Heart of Stone
Someone ought to tell the folks at Netflix that not every spy movie they do needs to star Gal Gadot. Oh wait, she’s great, she’s box office gold, and she works well with big co-stars – never mind. Gal will be starring in the upcoming Netflix and Skydance international spy thriller Heart of Stone. This time, she’ll be starring with Jamie Dornan of Belfast and Fifty Shades of Grey fame. They are keeping the plot close to the vest, but with these two actors, we can’t wait.
Cold Sun
The espionage thriller Cold Sun will film this summer in the U.K. and Malta. Malta is always a good location for a spy movie. Tara Reid has signed on to play MI6 agent, Marsha Ravencourt. She will be joined by Gabriella Wright, an Interpol agent. Variety.com tells us that this movie has been billed as “Cagney and Lacey with a difference”.
The Bricklayer
We told you in last month’s Spy Movie News about The Bricklayer. This is the upcoming espionage movie that stars Aaron Eckhart and Nina Dobrev. Well, according to Deadline.com, another actor has signed on to the cast, Oliver Trevena. We’re also told that The Bricklayer heads into production next month.
Kompromat
Set to release in French theaters on September 7th, the espionage thriller Kompromat starring Gilles Lellouche and Joanna Kulig, has been sold to SND for distribution. Variety.com tells us that the movie is about a French diplomat working in Siberia who discovers he is being framed by the FSB, the Russian Federal Security Service, a successor of the KGB. The movie has been sold to Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Benelux, Australia, New Zealand, Poland, and the former Yugoslavia. We’ve yet to see a US or UK distribution deal.
Upcoming Spy Series
With the proliferation of streaming platforms, we are seeing more spy series being produced. Here are three with news this month.
Slow Horses
Let’s start with the spy series that is coming out on April 1, 2022, on Apple TV Plus. This is the 6-part series starring Gary Oldman which is based on the novel “Slow Horses”. Oldman has been phenomenal in everything he does from playing Sirius Black in the Harry Potter franchise to Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour. But in the spy world, we must remember him playing George Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Here, Oldman plays an MI5 boss. He gets all the untalented agents. We can see where that is going. Other cast members include Jack Lowden, Kristin Scott Thomas, Johnathan Pryce, and Olivia Cooke. We like this cast.
The Night Agent
In our November 2021 Spy Movie News, we told you about the 10-episode Netflix series “The Night Agent” and that Gabriel Basso and Luciane Buchanan were cast as leads. This is the series with the FBI Agent mans a hotline in the basement of the White House.
Well, the cast is getting further fleshed out and we like what we see. Joining Basso and Buchanan are Hong Chau, DB Woodside, Fola Evans-Akingbola, Eve Harlow, Phoenix Raei, Enrique Mucriano, and Sara Desjardins. We won’t go through all the roles, but you can read about them on Deadline.com.
As is pretty normal with Netflix, we have yet to see a release date for The Night Agent.
Rabbit Hole
Paramount + has opened up a bit about the impending spy series called “Rabbit Hole”. This 8-part series will star Kiefer Sutherland playing a private espionage agent, James Weir. As we’ve seen Kiefer do in “24” and “Designated Survivor”, he needs to preserve democracy against all odds. Sutherland was excellent in those shows so “Rabbit Hole” looks like it will be another good show with him in it.
“Rabbit Hole” is expected to release this fall.
You can read more about “Rabbit Hole: on MovieWeb.com.
Other Spy Movie News
Were We Wrong Last Month?
In our January 2022 Spy Movie News, we told you that No Time To Die obliterated an explosion record that had been held by Spectre. This record was reported on many sites. Chris Corbould, who is the production special effects supervisor on both Spectre and No Time To Die, talks about this record on the official 007 YouTube channel.
Well, this doesn’t sit well with Michael Bay who was the director and producer for the 2001 movie Pearl Harbor. He told Empire magazine that the attack sequence in Pearl Harbor was larger than Spectre. His words “James Bond tried to take the ‘largest explosion in the world’ Bullshit, Ours is.” “No one knows how hard that is. We had so much big stuff out there. Real boats, 20 real planes. We had 350 events going off. Three months of rigging on seven boats, stopping a freeway that’s three miles away.”
Well, at Spy Movie News, we don’t know. We aren’t explosives experts. So, we turned to the Guinness World Records. We just checked the GuinnessWorldRecords.com site. It lists Spectre as having the record for the ‘largest film stunt explosion’ at 68.47 tonnes of TNT equivalent. It also has a listing for ‘most high explosives detonated in a single film take’. No Time To Die has this record at126.4kg of TNT equivalent.
So, while we don’t know how much Michael Bay exploded, Guinness doesn’t know about it. We believe you have to be nominated and you can nominate yourself. If Michael Bay wants to be recognized and he did set a record Guinness, he needs to let them know.
Of course, if Michael Bay wants to come onto our podcast to discuss this, we’d love to have him.
The King’s Man historical accuracy
An excellent article by Mike Reyes on CinemaBlend.com examines how the historical characters were portrayed in The King’s Man with their makeup, hair, and costumes. This was a challenge because real historical people were portrayed so some semblance of accuracy was needed.
His article has a clip where the movie’s Makeup and Hair Designer, Jenny Shircore discusses the challenges of getting historical accuracy while taking a few liberties to help the viewer. For instance, Tom Hollander plays three roles in the movie, and they have given him different eye colors for each. This wasn’t historically accurate but made it easier for us.
Mike’s article even has a link to an article he wrote about the deletion of a scene where Rasputin uses his large man parts. This was loosely based on reality too.
We love getting the behind-the-scenes stuff like this and it’s nice to see how they tried to keep most things accurate.
Mission: Impossible 7
There have been many stories this month about two Mission: Impossible topics.
The first topic being discussed is the cost overruns of Mission: Impossible 7. Variety is reporting that Mission: Impossible 7 cost $290 million to produce, and that’s counting tax incentives. Just as a point of reference, Mission: Impossible – Fallout, which was the last Mission: Impossible movie released, cost $190 million. Daily Mail has said that Cruise is in crisis talks with Mission: Impossible bosses.
The constant opening and shutting down production, moving to a different location, and paying salaries and lodging for the cast and crew added up quickly due to the pandemic, blowing out the budget. That doesn’t even count the interest that has to be carried during the delay. We talked in our February 2021 Spy Movie News about how No Time To Die had over $1 million in interest a month for that movie. Some articles are speculating that the cost overruns could affect Mission: Impossible 8’s budget. We’ll have to see about that.
The other topic we are seeing is that the Mission: Impossible 7 & 8 movies will ‘serve as a sendoff to Cruise’s Ethan Hunt character.’ They aren’t saying that this is the end of the franchise, just Ethan Hunt’s role as the big-time spy for the movies. In the past, we’ve seen quotes from Cruise saying that they will never kill off Ethan. Let’s hope that’s true and they don’t try the same crap No Time To Die did.
In Memoriam
Monica Vitti
Monica Vitti, the Italian actress known for her work with director Michelangelo Antonioni has passed was at the age of 90. Her big break came in the 1960 movie L’Avventura in which she starred with Gabriele Ferzetti who played Draco in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Spy movie fans may remember her for the campy spy movie Modesty Blaise where she played the title character.
Dina Eaton
We also lost Dina Eaton who passed away at 70. She was a music editor with 51 movie credits. Five of those were the James Bond movies, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World is Not Enough, Die Another Day, Casino Royale (2006), and Quantum of Solace.
Judd Bernard
Judd Bernand who was the screenwriter and producer on the movies Point Blank and Double Trouble has died. He was 94. Spy movie fans may remember him as the writer/producer of the 1974 movie The Marseille Contract which is also known as The Destructors.
Kenneth Wannberg
And finally, we lost composer and music editor Kenneth Wannberg at 91. Wannberg worked closely with John Williams. They worked together on almost half of Williams’ movies. His music editing is found in the first six Star Wars movies, the first three Indiana Jones movies, and over 115 other movies. Spy movie fans will recognize him as the composer for the 1982 movie The Amateur and the music editor on Catch Me if You Can, Minority Report, and Munich.
So, that’s a wrap of our February 22, 2022, Spy Movie News, brought to you by SpyMovieNavigator.com. Please Subscribe to our show, Cracking the Code of Spy Movies, right now on your favorite podcast app, and know when new episodes come out and more – Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram too!
