Here’s our September 15 2020 edition of Spy Movie News with the latest updates on Mission: Impossible 7, Red Notice, Five Eyes, TENET, The Duke, NO TIME TO DIE, and some Idris Elba and spy industry news. 

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MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 7

• Let’s start with some Mission: Impossible 7 news. We know that Tom Cruise has been in England on some rented land practicing stunts for the movie Mission: Impossible 7. 
• From a Cinemablend.com article, Christopher Mcquarrie, the director says filming has started up again.  And he and released the photo that shows a huge ramp.  This will be used for a stunt with a motorcycle launching off this ramp which is probably 600 feet in the air. It’s something to see if you haven’t seen it yet.  
• According to independent.co.uk, Mission: Impossible 7 filming in Norway.  Tom Cruise rented a £ 500,000 cruise liner. That’s about $645,000. And this is for the crew and the stars, to prevent further delays and to protect them from COVID-19. So this is clever.  Expensive but clever. Bravo, Tom Cruise you are Top Gun. 

RED NOTICE

• The Netflix movie Red Notice has some news.  In March, shooting was postponed because of the COVID-19  pandemic. In August 2020 they announced the shooting would start back up in mid-September. So here we are.  According to cinemablend.com, it looks like they are back on the set.  They are being vigilant about making sure that anyone arriving back on the sets for filming is COVID-19 free through testing and so on. No other details were available, but Ryan Reynolds posted pics of him taking the COVID-19 test and said it was easy.
• Good to hear Hollywood is being careful.

THE GRAY MAN

• Speaking of Netflix, they’re investing 200 million dollars, according to theverge.com, on a movie based on Mark Greaney’s, “The Gray Man” series of books.  The movie will be about a former CIA agent who was an assassin, also called The Gray Man, starring Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans. And Chris Evans would be the CIA agent who’s on the hunt for The Gray Man.
• Netflix hopes to build a franchise out of this first movie. We don’t know much else about the movie other than what was reported, but sounds a little like Bourne doesn’t it? Hey, no release date yet. Production should start next year. Check theverge.com for all the details.

Five Eyes

• From deadline.com we see that German major Leonine has won the rights to the recently announced Jason Statham and Guy Ritchie spy thriller, Five Eyes.  This marks the first major deal to go down during Toronto’s virtual market. According to the article, in this spy thriller, Statham will play an MI 6 guns-and-steel agent recruited by the Global Intelligence Alliance,’ Five Eyes’.  His mission will be to track and stop the sale of a deadly weapon that threatens to disrupt the world order.  Reluctantly paired with a high tech CIA expert, he sets off on a globe-trotting mission to infiltrate a billionaire arms broker.
• Principle photography is due to start in October 2020 in Europe. Additional casting is underway. 
•  In a related article in collider.com, they say that Jason Statham and Guy Ritchie are teaming up again for Five Eyes. They say Statham’s character, the MI 6 agent, will be named Orson Fortune, who is paired with CIA agent Sarah Fidel. This is the fifth time Statham and Ritchie are working together.  And the article says, hey, this is an appropriate title then, Five Eyes. Oh wait, there are two of them. Shouldn’t the title be Ten Eyes? (groan)

WIFE OF A SPY

• Yahoo has a review of the Kyoshi Kurosawa movie, Wife of a Spy, which premiered at the Venice International Film Festival. 
•  The review makes it unclear if the movie is really a spy movie.  But there are bioweapons,  smuggled reels of surveillance footage, and forged letters.
•  The author appeared to not want to give away the film, which of course, hey, that’s a good idea. 
• This movie is seeking US distribution.

TENET

Here’s an update on TENET from Europe and the US.

• Hollywoodreporter.com reports that while the domestic box office launch for Warner Brother’s TENET has widely been described as tepid, one analyst said he sees it as a good sign. “We actually view the results as encouraging and a positive indicator of demand. Given all of the COVID-19 headwinds.”  That’s what B Riley, analyst Eric Wold wrote in a Monday report.
• The analyst echoed Warner Brothers’ argument that it was a promising sign that TENET this weekend dropped just 29% from the 9.4 million earned during the September 4th through the 6th weekend. Even though that isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison since the film rolled over the long Labor Day weekend and is now playing in 100 more theaters.
• According to deadline.com, one of the offshoots of the release of tenant has Warner Brothers, who has both TENET and Wonder Woman 1984, pushing Wonder Woman 1984 to a Christmas release.  Part of the speculation is that the original early October release might have competed with what Warner Brothers hopes will be an early October reopening of theaters in New York and Los Angeles. Warner Brothers will release TENET in those cities if they do open up.  They didn’t want to have Wonder Woman 1984 compete with it.
• Also, 30% of the nation’s theater space in the US is still closed down due to the pandemic.  If TENET doesn’t open in New York in LA, Warner Brothers might not want to open another blockbuster to only 70% of the US market. In addition, the spot opened up once, the movie Top Gun: Maverick had its release pushed to July 2021. 
• So what does this portend for the November 6th and 20th release in the US of Black Widow and NO TIME TO DIE respectively? Well in terms of NO TIME TO DIE,  in an article on express.co.uk, they’re wondering about the release date. In a compelling statement, they suggest that
• Wonder Woman 1984 has moved from its October 2nd release to Christmas Day.
• MGM’s Candyman has been delayed indefinitely from the same month to 2021
• The same studio, MGM, has the movie NO TIME TO DIE, which is internationally distributed by Universal Pictures.

So what does this mean? Read their article for more info, but it does make one wonder!  And they point out we should take another look at the most recent movie poster release for NO TIME TO DIE. Anything about the date pop out? Check out their article.

IDRIS ELBA

• Movieweb.com has an article on an upcoming espionage movie starring Idris Elba.  The movie is untitled, but will release on Apple TV plus.
• So it isn’t James Bond, but Elba will have another spy movie leading role. 
•  Not much else has been said about the movie other than it’s being called a “spy movie with romance” and is set in Africa.

Let’s hope it’s not a romance movie like director John Woo called Mission: Impossible II. Let’s also hope it’s a better movie than Mission: Impossible II.

JAMES BOND, LIFE AFTER NO TIME TO DIE

• Digitalspy.com has an article quoting Crazy Rich Asians star Henry Golding, saying that the next James Bond movie is an “opportunity for change, be it female, male, BI gay, straight, trans, Asian, Black, Latina.”
• He ducks the question of if he’s been approached for the role.

THE DUKE

• We’ll end with a story about a movie that isn’t technically a spy movie.  But the story it tells had a slight influence on the first James Bond movie, Dr. No.  In our podcast on Dr. No, we talked about how EON Productions brought a bit of the real world into the movie.
• In one scene when James Bond is in Dr. No’s lair, he passes a portrait,  “The Duke of Wellington” by Goya. He stops and takes a quick look.   That portrait in real life had been stolen from the National Gallery in London before the filming of the movie. EON Productions added that touch of reality.
• At the Venice Film Festival, the movie The Duke, starring Helen Mirren, Matthew Goode, and Jim Broadbent, was shown.  The topic of that movie, the theft of the Duke of Wellington portrait. The movie has an expected UK release in 2021.

So that’s it for this edition of Cracking the Code of Spy Movie News.  Be sure to check out our website, SpyMovieNavigator.com, and our podcasts on your favorite podcast app,  we have a YouTube channel too.  Tell your friends about us.

We’ll catch you in the next edition of Spy Movie News.

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Spy Movie News Sept 15 2020: RED NOTICE, FIVE EYES, M:I 7, THE DUKE, TENET, NTTD

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Listen to our September 15 2020 edition of Spy Movie News with latest updates on Mission Impossible 7, Red Notice, Five Eyes, Tenet, The Duke, No Time to Die - and some Idris Elba and spy industry news!