Tradecraft: KILLING EVE Spawns a Cold War Spin-off

On the eve of Killing Eve's series finale (airing this weekend), Deadline reports that "producer Sid Gentle Films is in early stage development on [a] spin-off, though it hasn’t got a greenlight yet." The spin-off (for BBC America and AMC Networks) would focus on Fiona Shaw's character, Carolyn Martens... but not as the cool, commanding spymaster we met in the show's first season. Instead, the potential spin-off would focus on her early days with MI6. From what we know of her history on the show, that could be incredibly compelling! Presumably such a series would focus on her time on Russia Desk and in Moscow during the waning days of the Cold War, when she recruited a crucial asset. I'm not so interested in this potential series because of its Killing Eve connection (though I do love that show's wit and tone and performances, and it would be nice to see them continue), but because of its setting. We don't see many Cold War era series, and when they do come along, I'll always be watching! It would be particularly cool to see one set in the late 80s with that focus. The Americans of course reveled in its 80s setting, but that was focused on Soviet agents undercover in America. A show about a British agent operating in Moscow at that time would be very different! 

USA Shares Amazing TREADSTONE Clip on Eve of Premiere

USA's Bourne spin-off series Treadstone premieres tomorrow night. While I've been surprised by the paucity of advertising in the real world, the network has released many, many clips online over the past month--enough, seemingly, to create a fairly good assembly cut of the pilot episode! But they've saved the best for last. A clip with an extended fight scene and a chase across European rooftops shared today by the International Spy Museum really demonstrates that they appear to have captured the tone and feel of Doug Liman's 2002 movie The Bourne Identity. (The lead actor also seems to have been cast at least partly for bearing a slight resemblance to Matt Damon.) This has me very excited to sample the series tomorrow night! Watch the clip here.

Read my review of the novel that started it all, Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Identity, here.

Treadstone premieres on Tuesday, October 15, at 10/9c on USA.

Tradecraft: Bourne Spin-off TV Show TREADSTONE Sets Cast, Starts Filming

It's been a while since we've heard anything about Treadstone, the TV series spun off from the Bourne films and based on the secret super assassin program originated in Robert Ludlum's novel The Bourne Identity (review here), but that doesn't mean things haven't been happening! Yesterday, Deadline gave us a glimpse at some of those developments.

Reiterating what we already knew, the trade summarizes, "Treadstone explores the origin story and present-day actions of a CIA black ops program known as Operation Treadstone — a covert program that uses behavior-modification protocol to turn recruits into nearly superhuman assassins. The first season follows sleeper agents across the globe as they’re mysteriously 'awakened' to resume their deadly missions." Assuming the series takes place in the movie universe (which seems likely), then it would make sense for the present-day segments to feature a reactivated Treadstone under new leadership, and the origin sequences to serve as a prequel to the films set in the late 90s or early 2000s, theoretically opening the door for a new actor eventually being introduced as a younger Jason Bourne.

According to the trade, spy veteran Michelle Forbes (Berlin Station, 24) leads the cast in what sounds like a role similar to Joan Allen's in the movies as "Ellen Becker, a savvy CIA veteran trying to balance the demands of work and family while investigating a conspiracy with international implications." Patrick Fugit, who stood out in a small role in last year's First Man, "recurs as Stephen Haynes, a high school math teacher with a dark side that he’s struggling to keep under control." (I'm assuming that means he's one of the sleepers.) Michael Gaston, whose extensive spy credits include playing the President on Jack Ryan as well as turns on The Americans, 24, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Blindspot, and The Man in the High Castle, "plays Dan Levine, a no-nonsense senior CIA veteran overseeing an investigation that involves some of the Agency’s darkest secrets." Bollywood star Shruti Haasan "stars as Nira Patel, a young woman in Delhi whose waitress job serves as a cover for a dangerous double life as a trained assassin." Brian J. Smith (World On Fire, Sense8) stars as Doug McKenna, and Australian actress Tess Haubrich (Alien: Covenant) recurs as his wife Samantha, a nurse who must reconcile her husband's dark past. Jeremy Irvine, Omar Metwally, Tracy Ifeachor, Hyo Joo Han, Gabrielle Scharnitzky and Emilia Schüle also star. So it sounds like Treadstone will follow characters all over the globe, similar to series creator Tim Kring's previous series Heroes.

Kring produces along with Captivate Entertainment's Ben Smith. Smith's fellow Keeper of the Ludlum flame at Captivate, Jeffrey Weiner, will executive produce (as he does on the Bourne films) along with Ramin Bahrani, among others. Acclaimed Iranian-American helmer Bahrani will direct the pilot. Bahrani has directed such indie features as 99 Homes and Chop Shop, the latter of which late film critic Roger Ebert famously anointed the sixth best film of the 2000s. More recently Bahrani directed HBO's Fahrenheit 451, with Michael B. Jordan and Sophie Boutella. His involvement really elevates this series!

Perhaps the best news related in the Deadline article is that filming on this incarnation of Treadstone is already underway in Budapest! I say, "this incarnation" since, as long-time readers will be well aware, this is not the first attempt to bring Treadstone to television. Back in 2010, CSI creator Anthony Zuiker attempted a Treadstone show for CBS. But when Tony Gilroy came aboard to direct the theatrical spinoff The Bourne Legacy, he didn't want a competing version of the mythology on TV, and made it a condition of his directing that the nascent show be killed.

In Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Identity (review here), Treadstone 71 was the shadowy intelligence group that David Webb worked for (based out of a New York brownstone), with whom he created and assumed his more famous identity as assassin Jason Bourne. Nebulous and illegal though it may have been, in the book Treadstone's motivations were basically heroic. The Treadstone of the movies, which creates super-assassins through brainwashing and later drugs, is a much more sinister organization. It was also, I believe, officially shut down by Brian Cox's character, Abbott, in The Bourne Supremacy, and then reconstituted as Outcome by Ed Norton's character in The Bourne Legacy (review here). It will be interesting to see if the TV series mentions Outcome at all, and how closely it sticks to the mythology established in the movies.

Treadstone is not only keeping alive on the small screen, but also in print. As I reported yesterday, the Ludlum estate has commissioned author Joshua Hood to pen the first book in a new Treadstone literary series, The Treadstone Resurrection, which will be in stores this fall—I assume about the same time the show premieres on USA.

Trailer for FAST & FURIOUS Spy Spinoff HOBBS & SHAW

Universal released the first trailer the other day for the Fast & Furious franchise spinoff Hobbs & Shaw, starring Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham. The Fast & Furious is an odd franchise, because it started out as a mid-budget street racing/crime series, then morphed into a mega-budget international heist series with a serious espionage bent and car stunts to rival Bond and Mission: Impossible. It's also one of the few series I can think of that got significantly better along the way. For me, the fifth film, Fast Five, was a real turning point, when Justin Lin, who had already directed two previous entries, really perfected what would become the series' formula. It was also the movie that introduced Dwayne Johnson's character, a tough-as-nails DSS agent named Luke Hobbs who was on the trail of Dominic Toretto's (Vin Diesel's) gang in Brazil. That was also when, after several less successful attempts, The Rock truly became an action star. His palpable charisma made Hobbs an instant fan-favorite character, and he was brought back in the next entry, Fast & Furious 6, which also introduced (in a post-credits coda) Jason Statham (Transporter 3) as former MI6 agent gone rogue Deckard Shaw. Shaw returned as the main antagonist in Furious 7, before reluctantly joining forces with the good guys (including Hobbs) in The Fate of the Furious. In Furious 7, the series had already shifted its focus to international espionage, courtesy of Kurt Russell's Nick Fury-ish spymaster Mr. Nobody. With Dom working with the bad guys for much of Fate, Hobbs and Shaw had a chance to shine on the good guy team, emerging as the series' clear new stars. So it only made sense to give them a spinoff! With Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, we could see a new spy franchise grow out of what started as a street racing series.

It's high time Transporter star Jason Statham got a big budget action series, and pairing him with The Rock should double the thrills. Atomic Blonde director David Leitch takes the helm, and he's brought on able spy support in the form of Idris Elba (he of perpetual tabloid rumors about James Bond, not to mention the solid neo-Eurospy flick The Take) as the villain (clad in a very Steranko bodysuit) and Mission: Impossible - Fallout standout Vanessa Kirby as an MI6 agent on the run. Eddie Marsan (Atomic Blonde) and Eiza González (Baby Driver, Alita: Battle Angel) round out the impressive cast. The action looks, as expected from that team, hyper-kinetic, Johnson and Statham's chemistry looks good, the cars look cool, and it generally looks like we might have a new action-heavy spy franchise to rival 007 and Mission: Impossible on our hands!

Tradecraft: Bourne Spinoff TV Series TREADSTONE Gets Series Order from USA

USA has given a straight to series pickup to the TV show spun off from the Bourne films, Treadstone, Deadline reports. (This move comes hot on the heels of cancelling another TV series based on a movie based on a popular novel about an assassin, Shooter.) The cable network will bypass a pilot (first announced in April) and go directly to a series in part because of an international deal with Amazon Prime, the trade speculates. In Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Identity (review here), Treadstone 71 was the shadowy intelligence group that David Webb worked for (based out of a New York brownstone), with whom he created and assumed his more famous identity as assassin Jason Bourne. Nebulous and illegal though it may have been, in the book Treadstone's motivations were basically heroic. The Treadstone of the movies, which creates super-assassins through brainwashing and later drugs, is a much more sinister organization. It was also, I believe, officially shut down by Brian Cox's character, Abbott, in The Bourne Supremacy, and then reconstituted as Outcome by Ed Norton's character in The Bourne Legacy (review here). According to the trade, "Treadstone explores the origin story and present-day actions of a CIA black ops program known as Operation Treadstone — a covert program that uses behavior-modification protocol to turn recruits into nearly superhuman assassins. The first season follows sleeper agents across the globe as they’re mysteriously 'awakened' to resume their deadly missions." Assuming the series takes place in the movie universe (which seems likely), then it would make sense for the present-day segments to feature a reactivated Treadstone under new leadership, and the origin sequences to serve as a prequel to the films set in the late 90s or early 2000s. (These parts could even, theoretically, feature a younger Jason Bourne.)

This incarnation of Treadstone was created and written by Heroes showrunner Tim Kring. Keepers of the Ludlum flame Captivate Entertainment are also involved, of course, with Ben Smith and Jeffrey Weiner executive producing on their behalf. (The same role they fill on the Bourne films.) Ramin Bahrani (Fahrenheit 451, 99 Homes) will direct the first episode. I say "this incarnation," because this is not the first attempt to bring Treadstone to television. Back in 2010, CSI creator Anthony Zuiker attempted a Treadstone show for CBS. But when Tony Gilroy came aboard to direct the theatrical spinoff The Bourne Legacy, he didn't want a competing version of the mythology on TV, and made it a condition of his directing that the nascent show be killed.

Tradecraft: TAKEN Series Gets New Showrunner for Season 2

Deadline reports that Greg Plageman has been hired to succeed the departing Alex Cary as showrunner on the second season of Taken, the NBC TV series prequel to Luc Besson's neo-Eurospy movies starring Liam Neeson. Plageman specializes in "procedural drama with an ongoing mythology," and most recently served as co-showrunner on CBS' procedural spy show Person of Interest. It is expected that he will take Taken in a more procedural direction (with ongoing mythology) in its 16-episode second season, Taken stars Clive Standen and Jennifer Beals, and follows Bryan Mills (Standen, in the Neeson role) in his formative days as a secret agent, decades prior to the events of the first film (yet set in the present day). Plageman's credits also include writing an episode of the 2000 spy series Secret Agent Man.

Trailer for Famke Janssen in Blacklist Spinoff Redemption

NBC has released a trailer for The Blacklist: Redemption, the new spinoff of their hit series The Blacklist starring the always awesome Famke Janssen (GoldenEye) as the leader of a team of former spies and criminals seeking redemption for their past transgressions by using their espionage skills to solve problems official government agencies don't dare touch. Sounds like The Equalizer meets Leverage. I don't watch The Blacklist, but I'll watch anything with Janssen in it, so I'll be giving this one a try for sure! The Blacklist: Redemption premieres Thursday, February 23 at 10/9c on NBC, filling in the eight week hiatus of The Blacklist.

Delroy Lindo Joins S.H.I.E.L.D. Spinoff as Dominic Fortune

The Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. spinoff Marvel's Most Wanted (is that whole thing the actual title, or can we leave off the "Marvel's" like we do with AOS and just call this thing Most Wanted?) has added another cast member... a Marvel character fairly beloved by a loyal cult of comics fans. Joining S.H.I.E.L.D. stars Adrianne Palicki (as agent Bobbi Morse, aka Mockingbird) and Nick Blood (as agent Lance Hunter), Deadline reports that Delroy Lindo (Broken Arrow, Get Shorty) will play Dominic Fortune, a character created by Howard Chaykin in the Seventies (based on his previous Atlas Comics character the Scorpion). Chaykin's Fortune was a Jewish freelance costumed adventurer (or "brigand for hire"), seeking thrills and, er, fortune, in the 1930s. His adventures appeared (often as backups) in various Marvel comics in the late Seventies and early Eighties. An elderly version of the character also popped up in various contemporary Marvel titles, interacting with the likes of Spider-man and Iron Man. In 2006 he was re-introduced to the Marvel Universe miraculously de-aged in modern times in Sable and Fortune, the first three issues of which were drawn but legendary Modesty Blaise and James Bond artist John M. Burns. (Sadly that book suffered the fate of all Burns books, meaning the issues trickled out late, the artist was changed, and the series was ultimately truncated.) It was the de-aged Fortune (now sporting a mustache) who encountered Mockingbird in the comics, appearing in the series Hawkeye and Mockingbird (which seems to serve as some sort of template for Marvel's Most Wanted, albeit with Lance Hunter as Bobbi's paramour instead of Clint Barton, who's tied up in Avengers movies in the person of Jeremy Renner, who seems quite unlikely to turn up in a TV series).

More recently, however, the Fortune of the comics has aged again overnight (it all has to do with serums and formulas, as you would expect from Marvel), and the elderly Fortune showed up in an especially fun recent issue of S.H.I.E.L.D. drawn by Chaykin (issue 11), teamed up with TV's Phil Coulson. At 63, Lindo is neither old enough to play this version of the character, nor young enough to play the adventurer of the original 1930s-set comics, so presumably they're doing something different with the TV Fortune. (Will he be a Nick Fury surrogate?) Chaykin seems to approve of the casting with one caveat, which he posted in the comments on Deadline's story: "Just as long as he’s still Jewish." Personally, I was really hoping to see the young, vital Dominic Fortune appear on Agent Carter, where his incessant womanizing would have surely rubbed Peggy the wrong way. But perhaps he's too similar to the Howard Stark character played by Dominic Cooper.

Tradecraft: ABC Officially Orders S.H.I.E.L.D. Spinoff Pilot

The saga of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. spinoff series focusing on romantically entangled secret agents Bobbi "Mockingbird" Morse (Adrianne Palicki) and Lance Hunter (Nick Blood), has been going on for long enough to warrant a Stan Lee level of hyperbole. It was first rumored in April of last year, but by May we'd learned that it wasn't going forward. At that time, anyway. Perhaps ABC was concerned at the time (as I was) that they would neuter the flagship series by removing the two most interesting new characters, who had almost singlehandedly elevated Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in its second year. But the network must have liked the pilot script by Agents executive producers Jeffrey Bell and Paul Zbyszewski, because according to Deadline, ABC President Paul Lee told reporters at the TCA conference yesterday that the network has given a pilot order to the spinoff, now titled (somewhat lamely) Marvel’s Most Wanted, The trade reports the pilot had been quietly greenlit in August, but only officially acknowledged by the network now. As originally conceived, the project was said to be Mr. and Mrs. Smith in the Marvel Universe (which sounds like a great premise to me), but it has since been retooled. Lee told reporters,“We are making [the pilot] in the next few months. It’s a really good script.” Spinning off Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. standouts Palicki and Blood no longer seems like such a bad idea to me. The flagship series has gotten further and further away from spying this season, focusing too much on the sci-fi antics of the deathly dull Skye (sorry, Daisy) and her Inhuman pals. So a more espionage-centric spinoff focusing on Lance and Bobbi would probably appeal to me more than Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in its current incarnation.

Tradecraft: Potential for Even More xXx Sequels and Spinoffs

The xXx franchise began life as a 2002 movie starring Vin Diesel as an extreme sports athlete turned spy. Diesel didn't return for the 2005 sequel xXx: State of the Union, but co-star Samuel L. Jackson did in his proto-Nick Fury role as eye-patched spymaster Augustus Gibbons. This time around Gibbons recruited Ice Cube as an agent with even more attitude than Diesel's Xander Cage. (Because everyone knows that the number one factor making a good agent is attitude!) So that movie could qualify as either a sequel or a spinoff. But since it underperformed at the box office, the xXx franchise has nestled itself nicely into a happy existence as a relic of the early 2000s. Now, after a decade of exactly no one clamoring for any further sequels or spinoffs... we suddenly find ourselves facing the prospect of both! In August, Vin Diesel announced that a sequel, xXx: The Return of Xander Cage, would start shooting in December. (He reiterated that intention this week, though there have still been no director or supporting cast announcements.) On top of that, Deadline reported on Thursday that "Revolution Studios has entered into a multi-project agreement with Universal 1440 Entertainment, the production arm of Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, to create new, non-theatrical productions based on properties in Revolution’s film library." Among the properties included in the pact... you guessed, it xXx! So we could potentially be seeing new theatrical xXx movies with Xander Cage and new direct-to-DVD (by which, of course, now I mean direct to multiple platforms) xXx spinoff movies featuring other extreme athletes or spies with attitude. (If they are all about original xXx co-star Asia Argento, I will suddenly become a lot more interested!) It should be noted, of course, that just because they can make direct-to-DVD xXx spinoff movies (akin to their very successful Scorpion King franchise) doesn't mean that Universal will make them. The Mission: Impossible franchise was once in contention for the direct-to-DVD treatment from Paramount (during the period of Tom Cruise's falling out with the studio), and of course that never happened.

24 to Continue With Younger Lead?

Last year's limited series revival, 24: Live Another Day, was a creative and commercial success. Since then 24 fans have been hoping for another 12-hour limited series event. Sadly we're not getting one this summer. But the beauty of the limited series format as opposed to an ongoing TV series is that there doesn't have to be a season every year. Fox can produce them as the cast and crew are available. The rarer they are, in fact, the more of an "event" they become. A schedule like that also helps keep the series from getting stale. Especially if each season is set in a different city around the world, as Live Another Day took place in London. In my opinion, the 12-hour length served the real-time series so much better than a full 24-episode season, or 24-hour day. Many a season of the original series got bogged down halfway through only to rebound in the end. Live Another Day simply cut out that sagging middle, and gave us twelve propulsive, action-packed hours. So personally I've been hoping that we see Jack Bauer return again in a couple of years for a 12-episode (or even fewer) limited series set in Moscow or someplace. But, sadly, it doesn't look like Jack will necessarily be part of the equation in the next 24 event series. When Keifer Sutherland first indicated that he wasn't ready to commit again to any sort of regular TV schedule, we heard rumblings starting in January that Fox might be looking for ways to continue the show without him. Now it appears that they've found one.

Series producer Howard Gordon (Homeland) has confirmed to TV Line (via Dark Horizons) that the current plan involves Jack Bauer passing the torch to "a new, twenty-something male terrorist hunter." According to the site, "While there are no current plans for Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack to appear, it’s entirely possible his iconic character could pop in and out on a guest-star basis. The project would find the new male antihero working alongside an older, more seasoned female agent (not Yvonne Strahovski’s Kate Morgan [from Live Another Day], although she also may also appear)." The spinoff would begin as a limited series in the vein of Live Another Day, but should it prove successful might turn into an ongoing drama.

Hm. I have mixed reactions to this news. While I do think the 24 format could easily focus on new agents and new threats, a lot will depend on how those agents are written and the actors who play them. Because for me, the main appeal of 24 as a series is not its patented real-time format. (By its final seasons on the regular Fox schedule, that format felt like it had become more of a hindrance to the writers than an asset.) It's the character of Jack Bauer, one of the best TV spies of all time. Specifically, it's Keifer Sutherland in that role. Personally, I would be far more likely to follow Jack Bauer into a different format (like a feature film, as was in the works for several years before being scrapped in favor of the miniseries) than watch a new agent chained to the same real-time format. But as long as they stick with shorter seasons and don't try to fill in every hour of a whole day, I think the format can survive. I just think Sutherland's shoes are awfully big ones for someone to have to fill.

If a new CTU agent does take over, however, I hope we see some of Jack's support staff return—particularly Chloe (Mary Lynn Rajskub, who appeared in Live Another Day) and Tony Almeida (Carlos Bernard, who turned up in a short that appeared on the Live Another Day DVD). I'd also like to see Chuck star Strahovski's CIA agent Kate Morgan return, and I'm kind of disappointed that they aren't considering her as a potential lead for this 24 spinoff series. But I like the series, and I really liked Live Another Day, so I'm sure I'll end up tuning in for whatever they come up with. And a limited series with another star doesn't man Jack won't still return down the line, when Sutherland's good and ready. It would be kind of cool if we end up with a new agent leading an ongoing 24 TV series with occasional appearances from Jack Bauer, and a simultaneous, James Bond-like series of theatrical features (ideally not beholden to the real-time gimmick) starring Sutherland as Bauer!