Director Steven Soderbergh (“The Good German,” “Traffic”) is putting together his next high-profile project as he’s now shopping around a package deal for a new spy thriller, “Black Bag.” According to The Hollywood Reporter, the director has a script from screenwriter David Koepp (“Mission: Impossible”) with actors Michael Fassbender (“The Killer”) and Cate Blanchett (“Nightmare Alley”) attached for the main roles of the project.

Plot details for “Black Bag” are being kept under lock and key, but we’re sure a logline will emerge once a studio or streaming service ends up buying the film. However, we could speculate that the title may refer to mystery off-the-book military sites that are used for interrogation/torture purposes by intelligence agencies or simply an operation to collect valuable information from a secured/unsecured location via trade-craft, aka, spying.

UPDATE: THR has shared that Universal’s Focus Features has landed the film after winning a bidding war among multiple studios and streamers. Focus has a good reputation for solid marketing of mature genre flicks and could be a great home for a thriller like “Black Bag.”

Soderbergh once attempted to turn MMA fighter Gina Carano (“The Mandalorian”) into an action star with his spy pic “Haywire,” which could have spawned a new budget-friendly franchise for the filmmaker. That plan didn’t exactly come together as the film only made $34.5 million at the box office and criticisms of Carano being able to lead the film among such other talented actors (Fassbender had a minor role). There is an assumption that the slick visuals and gritty action sequences from “Haywire” could be the template for “Black Bag.”

SOURCE: THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER