‘Black Bag’ Director Steven Soderbergh Wants Hollywood to Put More ‘Movies for Grown-Ups’ in Theaters

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Steven Soderbergh almost didn’t make “Black Bag.”

When he and “Jurassic Park” writer David Koepp first began collaborating, Koepp brought Soderbergh a handful of ideas. One of those was “Black Bag.” Soderbergh didn’t spark to the concept, instead choosing to focus on “Presence,” a ghost story that premiered at Sundance in 2024 and was released by Neon earlier this year.

Soderbergh said that he still encouraged Koepp to write it. “It was more of a case of, Dude, just write it. My immediate interest was more in seeing him get it done than it being something that I could then direct,” Soderbergh told TheWrap during a wide-ranging interview that touched on everything from the making of “Black Bag” to the difficulty of getting adult dramas in theaters to why he’s not directing the next “Ocean’s” movie.

When the screenwriter finally did write “Black Bag” and sent it to Soderbergh, his collaborator on “KIMI” and “Presence,” the director thought, Oh, I want to do this.

Koepp’s script concerns a pair of married spies George and Catherine — played, wonderfully, by Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett — whose relationship is tested when George is asked to spy on Catherine. It’s a crackling espionage thriller told through the prism of a marital drama: how well do you really know your partner? How do you know what they’re capable of? “Black Bag” is equal parts “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and “Mission: Impossible.”

Soderbergh and Koepp have “very similar tastes,” so he wasn’t shocked by how much he loved the screenplay. But there were some things that scared him to death – namely two very long dinner sequences (“every director’s nightmare”) that he knew there was no way around.

“He’d really constructed the narrative around these two set pieces,” Soderbergh said. “It’s not a thing that any screenwriting class or guru would encourage you to do – stop your movie cold and write 12 pages of a dinner table scene. But I understood why it had to be that way and then my job becomes OK, how? How do I do it? And that made me anxious, but there should always be something that makes you anxious about whatever you’re doing. Otherwise you know you’re complacent and you end up with something that looks like it was directed from the back of the limousine.”

Unlike Soderbergh’s other 2025 offerings, which were produced independently and gained (or will gain in the case of “The Christophers”) outside distribution, “Black Bag” was fully produced by Universal’s Focus Features shingle, which recently found success with their counterprogramming Christmas smash “Nosferatu,” now the third most successful movie in their catalog.

“They deserve a lot of credit for making a kind of movie that most studios are backing away from, which is a mid-range budgeted movie for adults. This is supposed to be a no man’s land,” Soderbergh said of working with Focus on “Black Bag.” “But they love the script, they love the cast and it’s all been very smooth.”

Soderbergh said that he hopes his movie makes money – for a very specific reason. “I’m really hoping it’s successful enough that another filmmaker can roll up with a movie in a mid-range budget with stars that’s for grown-ups. And they go, ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’ I don’t want it to perform just for my own personal benefit. I’d really like to see more movies like this being made by the studios for theatrical release,” Soderbergh said.

The “for theatrical release” is key for Soderbergh. Following “Unsane” and “Logan Lucky,” which he released through his own distribution label (Fingerprint Releasing), Soderbergh decamped to the world of streaming. Between 2018 and 2021 he made five movies for two streaming companies (Netflix and what was then known as HBO Max), along with two series for HBO – 2018’s “Mosaic” (which also had a live app component and aired on HBO) and 2023’s “Full Circle,” which was exclusive to Max. He said he looks back at his time in streaming fondly.

“Most of those are movies that at the time didn’t appear to be viable theatrical releases for the companies that were making them,” Soderbergh said. He points to “No Sudden Move,” a labyrinthine crime caper starring Benicio del Toro and Don Cheadle, a movie that he’s really proud of: “What do you point to and go, ‘It’s going to do that kind of money?’ I’m really glad that we got to make that movie.”

One of the movies that he made for streaming, 2023’s “Magic Mike’s Last Dance,” was meant to debut on Max but got bumped up to a theatrical release where it grossed $57 million worldwide before its streaming debut. While that was half of what “Magic Mike XXL” made in 2015, Soderbergh noted the changed environment with streaming meant “Last Dance” performed appropriately.

“I think it ended up doing exactly what they wanted it to do. The theatrical release functioned as an ad campaign to create awareness for the movie. I know it did well enough that it covered the cost of putting it out,” Soderbergh said. People had seen the movie and talked about it, giving it “a little bit of runway in front of it” before it hit streaming. He said he was thrilled that Warner Bros. execs saw the movie and said, “We want to put this out.”

Soderbergh said that he’s encouraged by what he understands is an increase in attendance by young people – he’s heard it from Focus, from Neon (who put out “Presence”) and he’s heard it from A24, all studios that have had banner years. “Young people are going to the movies and they’re interested in filmmakers, they’re very filmmaker-driven, and they want to see a wide range of stuff,” Soderbergh said. “I hope this is a trend that continues, not only here, but expands outside the U.S. I’m hopeful that an audience for movies like ‘Black Bag’ can be cultivated and convinced to get out of the house.”

Making “Black Bag”

Soderbergh and Koepp had been friends since 1989, when they both had films making the festival circuit (for Soderbergh it was “Sex, Lies and Videotape” and for Koepp it was “Bad Influence”). “I was very concerned, because we were good friends, that when we started actually working together, that we would no longer be friends. I’ve seen that happen,” Soderbergh said. But that wasn’t the case. Not that Soderbergh isn’t still worried that, after three successful collaborations together, Koepp will want to stop. “I think if people had really been unhappy with ‘Black Bag,’ he’d be more motivated to go out on a high note, but I feel like he’s going to let me down easy,” Soderbergh said. “There’ll be a new email and phone number and I’ll just fade away.” (Koepp recently told TheWrap that he has a new script that he’s working on for Soderbergh.)

“Black Bag” marks a reunion between Soderbergh and actors Michael Fassbender, who last appeared in Soderbergh’s “Haywire” back in 2011, and Cate Blanchett who was in “The Good German” back in 2006. The actors are both on his “permanent list.” “But this was the first thing I had that, that I felt, I’m going to go to them with this,” Soderbergh said. He offered them the roles at the same time, because he “really imagined them as a great on-screen couple.” “It was a tricky ask, because it was designed to be a bit of a glam fest. And so you need people who can embody that, who look good in clothes, and have all those angles that you want if you’re making a kind of Hollywood star-driven movie. But then you need, obviously, the skills underneath all that.”

This was especially true of Fassbender’s George Woodhouse, a steely spy who was comfortable surveilling his cheating father but keeps everything underneath the surface. “It’s such an interior character that you need somebody that’s comfortable with that and who can do very little on screen and be compelling, and that’s Michael. He’s a very secure actor and he knows it’s there in the text,” Soderbergh said. “And then we had this great opportunity to fill the gallery with some other people that either I’ve been tracking or, in the case of Naomie [Harris], I was already in conversations with her about another project that I wanted her to do and then this came up and I said, ‘Oh can we talk about this and we’ll get to the other one later?’”

Soderbergh said that Tom Burke, who plays another spy, was someone he’d been “watching for a while.” He said that he suggested Burke to Soderbergh’s bestie David Fincher for his “Citizen Kane” movie “Mank.” “I saw ‘The Souvenir’ and said, ‘I just saw your Orson Welles.’” As for “Bridgerton” breakout Regé-Jean Page, Soderbergh said, “That guy’s a movie star.” Soderbergh had been impressed with Marisa Abela’s work on “Industry.” And while the stars seemed to align on casting, Soderbergh wasn’t sure that they’d be able to nab Pierce Brosnan, who plays a senior analyst at the spy organization. “I didn’t know if he felt that there was enough there for him to feel that he hadn’t done it before. And luckily, he said, ‘No, this is great. I love this guy. I understand this guy.’ And you legitimately needed somebody that you believed could rattle Michael Fassbender,” Soderbergh said. He was right – Fassbender reported back that sharing a scene with Brosnan, a legendary star and former 007, was “appropriately uncomfortable.”

Back in 2011, Soderbergh had exited an adaptation of the 1960s spy series “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,” citing budget concerns with Warner Bros. (It was later made by Guy Ritchie.) None of what he was planning on doing for that spy film made it into this spy film, though. “It was a very different animal, I think it was more overtly physical. It had big action set pieces in it,” Soderbergh said of the adaptation that was to star George Clooney. While that tantalized him, “Black Bag” appealed to him because “it was a lot of people in rooms talking, which I like.”

Getting adults to the movie theater

Soderbergh admitted that people’s home video setups are getting sophisticated, but said he was dazzled by a recent tech check for the New York premiere of “Black Bag” in a movie theater. Too often, according to Soderbergh, people are “pulled by this idea that the thing that’s bringing people out of their homes and into the theater has to be spectacle-driven.” “I don’t think that’s true,” Soderbergh said. The theatrical release of “Contagion” had an Imax component and it “did really well.” “I thought, Well, any movie is going to have a bigger impact in Imax,” Soderbergh said. “And why should it just be movies with stuff flying around and blowing up. I wish there was more flexibility there, with access to those screens for movies that are not spectacles.”

Universal films traditionally have a very short life as a theatrical exclusive. Typically, after 17 days (three full weekends), they will move their films over to be available to buy or rent digitally. Sometimes this doesn’t slow down their momentum; “The Wild Robot” managed to make more than $300 million worldwide despite its exclusive theatrical window lasting less than a month.

“The trick with a movie like this is figuring out how to eventize it. You get people out of the house by making them think it’s special. And you know, the way we’re trying to do that is with what we feel is a very commercial movie with a lot of movie stars in it, and those elements will create enough of a critical mass to get people to go out,” Soderbergh said. “It’s easy to eventize a giant spectacle. It’s, I’m not going to say easy, but not too difficult to eventize a horror movie with a big gimmick in the middle of it. And I say that as somebody who’s done that,” Soderbergh said. “That’s got a built-in audience. There are people that like those and Neon and A24 are very, very good at targeting those people. But eventizing this kind of movie is just trickier – and it’s the kind of movie that I made my career on.”

Soderbergh serves as his own editor and cinematographer and, famously, usually screens a mostly completed cut for his cast and crew at the wrap party. (At the end of shooting “Presence,” star Chris Sullivan told the filmmaker that he couldn’t wait to see the final movie; Soderbergh then just showed it to him.) But he needed additional photography for one extra little bit for “Black Bag” (a moment in the very last scene) and found himself waylaid by his star’s career.

“The movie was done and I had to wait for three months to do two hours of shooting with Michael to get this one thing,” Soderbergh said of Fassbender’s schedule for his Paramount+ show, also a spy thriller. “I’d never been through anything like that before. I mean, literally, everything was finished. We just had to drop this one thing in, and we had to wait for three months because he was on ‘The Agency.’”

What’s next for Soderbergh?

Besides “The Christophers,” which Soderbergh just wrapped a couple of days before we spoke (and will screen for the cast a couple of days after we spoke) and will likely be out later this year (“it seems like a good fall movie”), Soderbergh has also been working on a Blu-ray box set of some of his earlier films that he’ll sell himself through his website. The set was announced years ago but the end is near, according to the filmmaker.

“There’s no reason it shouldn’t be out this year,” he said. The set will contain both versions of his long-unavailable “Kafka” from 1991, including the “Mr. Kneff” cut that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival; plus “shorter versions” of 1996’s “Schizopolis” and 2002’s “Full Frontal;” along with 2005’s “Bubble,” 2009’s “The Girlfriend Experience;” and “the two Spalding films” – 1996’s “Gray’s Anatomy” and 2010’s “And Everything’s Going Fine” (both of which have deluxe Criterion Collection versions already).

This is music to the ears of many collectors, since several of these movies are either completely unavailable or long out-of-print. Soderbergh said this was by design.

“A few of those, the rights reverted back to me, and I pulled them in anticipation of this event,” Soderbergh said. Not that he’s even a big physical media guy anymore. “I did a real culling recently. I got rid of a lot of stuff,” Soderbergh said. “My physical collection is pretty tight and very motivated by my subjective feelings about that particular film.” He donated much of his library to a film school in Brooklyn that he’s on the board of. Not that he is completely out of the game. He loves Criterion’s “Citizen Kane” 4K and is going to pick up some of the recent remasters of Fincher’s movies (“Seven,” “The Social Network” and “Panic Room” were just released on 4K). When we asked if he was hopeful that some of his streaming movies would get physical releases, he wasn’t sure.

“It’s funny to think that there are movies I’ve made that have no space on the shelf,” Soderbergh said. He was encouraged by Warner Bros.’ decision to release a 4K version of “Contagion,” “in the aftermath of all the COVID stuff.” “I’m assuming they’re doing that because people are buying it,” Soderbergh said.

One thing that Soderbergh will not be doing is return to the “Ocean’s” franchise. The first film, “Ocean’s Eleven,” was released in 2001 and served as a slick update of a shaggy Rat Pack heist movie. It inspired two more mainline movies directed by Soderbergh – 2004’s “Ocean’s Twelve” and 2007’s “Ocean’s Thirteen” – along with an all-female follow-up, 2018’s “Ocean’s 8.” Since then, there have been rumors of a 1960s-set prequel (starring Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie) and a direct sequel (“The Fall Guy” filmmaker David Leitch is in talks to direct). “I made it clear to everybody that, you know, Go with God. I did what I could, and then produced ‘Ocean’s 8,’ and just felt like I’ve done my time,” Soderbergh said. He hopes future entries will be made “by somebody who’s super f–king excited to be there, like I was when I did them.” But Soderbergh? “I’m somewhere else now,” he said. (Soderbergh does hope to work with George Clooney again; he nearly showed up in the Matt Damon role in “No Sudden Move.”)

Another thing Soderbergh is adamant about is not making any more “serious” films. He made this proclamation following the production of 2008’s two-part “Che.” “It’s hard for me to to imagine making the kind of film that I was trying to describe, and I’m not using ‘serious’ as a pejorative or poo-pooing people who are trying to make things that you would characterize as serious,” Soderbergh said. “It’s just where I’m at and what I want to be inside of. I’m really enjoying genre-hopping.”

When we asked if there was a genre he was looking to teleport to next, he said he didn’t know. There are some “nascent” things in development (like that new Koepp script) but nothing concrete. His wife, Jules Asner, recently reminded him that they haven’t taken a vacation in two years. (We asked if Asner was writing again; she wrote Soderbergh’s “Logan Lucky.” He said that she is.)

One thing that appeared on his annual list of everything he’s watched and read was a lot of “Star Wars” material. Is Soderbergh considering a visit to a galaxy far, far away? “That’s Tony Gilroy’s fault. Tony’s a friend, and has really immersed himself in that world,” Soderbergh said. When Gilroy worked on “Rogue One,” which turned into him creating “Andor,” it sparked something in Soderbergh. “I realized, Gee, I’m not really very conversant in that language. I want to talk to him about what he’s doing and why, but I need to do a little bit of homework before I can talk to him about, So, what are you doing? Tell me more about how you world-build like this and how you figure all that stuff out. It’s really his fault,” Soderbergh said.

Another project that seems unlikely is a continuation of “The Knick,” Soderbergh’s critically beloved but hardly watched Cinemax series that was set at a New York hospital in 1900. Original star André Holland has a plan to continue with director Barry Jenkins, which wasn’t the plan when Soderbergh was still at the helm. He said that the third and fourth seasons of the show would have been set “just after World War II,” with an entirely new cast. And that the fifth and sixth seasons would have taken place “10 minutes into the future,” with both casts coming together. They had even written all of seasons three and four before getting the ax, following a regime change at the network. “I loved making that show,” Soderbergh said.

Before we wrapped up, we had one more question for Soderbergh: Had his hypochondria, which he has spoken about publicly and led to him making “Contagion” and “The Knick,” gotten better since the pandemic?

“Not really. The shift was made after ‘Contagion.’ I became much more conscious while making that movie and forever after of these fomites. I was already there when COVID happened. But the overwhelming sense of making ‘The Knick’ was, Thank God I didn’t live back then,” Soderbergh said. “One of the things that always cracked me up when we were making ‘The Knick’ was, whenever anybody said, ‘We now know’ and they would say something ridiculously transparently stupid. I’m like, OK, what’s the version of that now? I’m sure we’re doing that now. I’m sure there’s some version of we now know, and in 10 years, we’re going to be like, wow, that was wrong.”

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