ONLY ONE SPY MOVIE SCHEDULED TO RELEASE IN FEBRUARY 2022
We have one new spy movie scheduled for a theatrical release in February 2022 in the US. Liam Neeson stars in Blacklight. As the official website, BlacklightMov.com says,” In BLACKLIGHT, LIAM NEESON is Travis Block, an operative whose discovery of a dark secret pits him against the FBI director he once swore to protect.” The US release date is February 11. So, we get a 2/11/22 release date. There is a staggard release date worldwide, so you’ll need to watch for it in your country.UPCOMING SPY MOVIES
So, on to the news of spy movies in development. We’re not sure when we’ll see them, but we are looking forward to their releases.The Bricklayer
Aaron Eckhart has signed for the upcoming spy movie The Bricklayer. According to Deadline.com, In The Bricklayer, someone is blackmailing the CIA by assassinating foreign journalists and making it look like the agency is responsible. As the world begins to unite against the U.S., the CIA must lure its most brilliant – and rebellious – operative out of retirement, forcing him to confront his checkered past while unraveling an international conspiracy. What is it with these spy movies pulling operatives out of retirement lately?Miénteme
Filming has started for the Chilean-Argentine romcom/spy movie Miénteme, which translates to “Lie to me” in English. This movie has actor Lucas Akoskin playing opposite his real-life wife, Leonor Varela. We’re not sure how a romantic comedy/spy movie will work, but we’ll check it out for you when it comes out and let you know. Distribution hasn’t been set yet. You can read more about Miénteme on Yahoo.com.Conmen
Cory Hardrict will star opposite Neil Brown Jr. in Conmen. This is the first movie produced by Hardrict’s Hardcor Films. The high-level plot has two black conmen, posing as FBI agents. They try to con a heroin dealer who is a Klansman and this Sherrif’s son. No release date has been set for Conmen.Eraser: Reborn
In 1996, Arnold Schwarzenegger starred as U.S. Marshall John Kruger in the movie Eraser. Well, Johnathan Fuge tells us that a reboot, titled Eraser: Reborn was shot in the summer of 2021 in secret. It has received an R rating and is expected to be released sometime this spring. Eraser: Reborn does not bring back John Kruger. Instead, Dominic Sherwood plays a new U.S. Marshall, Mason Pollard. The synopsis on IMDB says: “It is based on U.S. Marshal Mason Pollard who is specialized in engineering the fake deaths of witnesses that leaves no trace of their existence.”To Catch a Thief
We loved the original Hitchcock movie, To Catch A Thief. It starred Cary Grant who played an ex-cat burglar who had to prove he was falsely accused of another burglary. Well, Gal Godot will be starring in a remake of this classic movie. We don’t know how the plot will be changed, but we look forward to this one. You can find out more about To Catch a Thief on MovieWeb.com.Mission: Impossible
It is getting impossible to release Mission: Impossible 7 and 8
Well, the twice-delayed Mission: Impossible movies have hit another delay. We should remember that Mission: Impossible 7 was originally slated to release in November 2021. Then it was pushed to September 2022. Now Paramount and Skydance have announced the most recent pandemic-related delays for Mission: Impossible 7 & 8. The new release dates are now July 14, 2023, for Mission: Impossible 7 and June 28, 2024, for Mission: Impossible 8. Ugh.
CURRENT SPY MOVIES
The 355
So, let’s shift gears and talk about the most recently released spy movie, The 355. We released a no-spoiler review of this movie on January 9th. There has been some news about this movie, mostly about its box office, or lack thereof.Box Office for The 355
An article in Variety points out that The 355 only had a $4.8 million North America haul. Well, we just looked at BoxOfficeMojo.com and found that The 355 currently has a $16.5 million box office as we record this Newscast. This is against a production budget of about $40 million.
Given the movie’s female focus, getting young men to the theater to see it has been a challenge. It appears young men are spending their money on Scream and Spider-Man: No Way Home and not much else.
The spy movie The King’s Man, which was released before Christmas outperformed The 355 this past weekend, even though The King’s Man has been in theaters 2 weeks longer than The 355.
For their sake, we hope The 355 has a good digital rental release. We want spy movies to make money.
Lupita Nyongo didn’t attend the virtual press day
Lupita Nyongo, one of the leads in The 355 did not attend the virtual press day. She had a good reason to miss this as she had tested positive for COVID-19. She tweeted “I too have tested positive for COVID-10. I’m fully vaccinated and taking care in isolation.” We hope she’s recovered and is doing well by now.
Is The 355 a remake of the first Mission: Impossible movie?
In our January 9th no spoiler review of The 355, we mentioned a few similarities between The 355 and other movies. However, we kept spoilers out of that podcast.
Our friend, Mike Reyes at Cinemablend.com has an interesting take on The 355 and its use of tropes from other movies, specifically the first Mission: Impossible movie. He’s written an article containing spoilers that compares The 355 with Mission: Impossible. We will warn you that he has spoilers in the article so you might want to wait until you’ve seen The 355. Reyes is dead on with his analysis here.
Red Notice
Since the Netflix movie Red Notice was released, we’ve been speculating that there will be sequels to this movie. Well, according to an article by Mike Fleming Jr, two sequels are planned. The thought is to shoot them back-to-back which is becoming a trend with successful movies. Fleming says that the goal is to bring back the three main stars, Dwyane Johnson, Gal Gadot, and Ryan Reynolds. He also says that Rawson Marshall Thurber, who wrote Red Notice, has already started writing the sequels.James Bond
For a franchise that released its last movie back in September, there were a lot of articles written about James Bond in January. Many of them are speculation about which actor or actress will be chosen to carry on the role of James Bond. However, some of them talk about the making of No Time To Die.IMAX Re-Release
By now we assume you’ve had a chance to see the movie No Time To Die. If you haven’t, the movie was rereleased beginning on January 21st in select IMAX locations. According to Mike Reyes, this release is to help celebrate James Bond’s 60th anniversary. It will include a special James Bond 60th Anniversary Logo. Reyes comments that he thinks the other Bond movies should get theatrical releases as part of the 60th Anniversary celebration. He points out that the Prince Charles Cinema in London started running all of the James Bond movies in release order through SPECTRE starting January 20th and running through July 2022. He comments that he wishes other theaters or MGM itself would follow suit on a global basis.
NO TIME TO DIE VFX Team discussion
Variety’s The Shortlist Virtual FYC Fest held a panel discussion with the No Time To Die VFX Supervisors. This was an excellent 31-minute discussion moderated by Jazz Rangcay, the Senior Artisans Editor at Variety.
Charlie Noble, who was the visual effects supervisor on No Time To Die, talks about how visual effects can help augment the practical side of moviemaking. He says “We sort of pick up the bat where other departments leave off. They go as far as they can…and then we take over”.
Special Effects Supervisor Chris Corbould adds “The thing I think was so fantastic about it [was that] it was all invisible. It didn’t jump out at you as being, ‘Look, this is the greatest visual effects ever.’ It was just a marvelous blending of what they do creatively”.
The discussion breaks down scenes such as the DB5 donut stunt and gives some great background on what they did there.
You can see this discussion on Variety.com.
That Was One Big Explosion
Many James Bond movies have set Guinness World Records for their explosions. The boat explosion in Thunderball was an early example. SPECTRE set a record for its explosion.
Well, according to an article on CinemaBlend.com, NO TIME TO DIE obliterated an explosion record. The big explosions at the climax of No Time To Die set the record for the most high explosives in one shot. The previous record was for 65 kilograms of high explosives in one shot. They used 140 kilograms for the climax. Boom.
The official 007 YouTube channel has a video with Chris Corbould talking about this record if you want to see more.
