The trailer has dropped for the brilliantly titled Barely Lethal, starring Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) as a teen spy trying to fit in at a ordinary American high school. An orphan raised in Samuel L. Jackson's assassin school, Steinfeld's character fakes her own death to leave her secret spy agency and attempt to enjoy a normal teenage life. Her plans are thwarted, however, when her old life catches up with her in the form of enemy agent Jessica Alba (Spy Kids: All the Time in the World) and rival spy Sophie Turner (Game of Thrones). Fanboys' Kyle Newman directs. I'm a sucker for the teen spy subgenre, and this looks like fun to me. While we've seen plenty of movies about ordinary kids becoming spies (If Looks Could Kill, Kingsman, Alex Rider), I can't recall one about a trained teen spy trying to become an ordinary kid before. Barely Lethal premieres April 30 on DirecTV, then opens in limited theatrical release and comes to VOD May 29.
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If you like the teen spy genre, Nickelodeon and Disney XD have got your back well and truly covered with various tv shows and movies, but Jesus - that's really the title they're going with for this?
It is a pretty jaw-dropping title, but also certainly memorable. I think it's kind of hilarious, but you're right that it may not be appropriate.
Disney Channel's KIM POSSIBLE remains one of my favorite teen spy series and a great send-up of the spy genre in general, but I'm not familiar with their current programming. What are the teen spy shows you recommend? I haven't seen K.C. Undercover. The genre certainly got a kickstart this year with the success of KINGSMAN. I wish I had liked that movie more, but I'm happy to see a teen spy project do well. The CW has a primetime series in contention for next season as well, CHEERLEADER DEATH SQUAD. Another title it will be interesting to see if they end up going with...
Off the top of my head, there's Lab Rats and some thing about a hospital for supervillains that I am reasonably sure was called Mighty Med, those would be the obvious places to start, as well as Supah Ninjas and Totally Spies - which seems to have dropped off the Earth at the moment despite being omnipresent on kids' channels for years - which are very broad, but not without the odd moment of invention.
While the name suggests something self-aware, Cheerleader Death Squad's production pedigree sees it being from the people behind Law and Order SVU, and while one of the producers worked on Devious Maids, that's a camp nonsense of a show that struggles with a drastically uneven tone, so there's nothing to suggest CDS won't just be po-faced exploitative trash. Mind you, the CW lives and breathes that kind of show (remember when teenagers could actually tell when they were being patronised?), so it might do well in that environment.
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