Trailer: THE REPORT

Amazon Prime debuted the first trailer today for their upcoming film The Report,  Scott Z. Burns' thriller/expose about torture in the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program in the aftermath of 9/11. Burns is no stranger to the subject of spies and spy agencies, with writing credits on The Bourne Ultimatum (review here), The Informant!, and next year's Bond movie No Time to Die. He also penned an unmade version of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. when Steven Soderbergh was attached to direct. Soderbergh is a producer on The Report, which stars Adam Driver, Annette Bening, Jon Hamm, Michael C. Hall, Tim Blake Nelson, Corey Stoll, Maura Tierney, and The Americans' Matthew Rhys. The Report premieres in theaters November 15th, and on Prime Video November 29th.

First Teaser Trailer for Amazon's JACK RYAN Season 2

At the TCA today, Amazon Prime unveiled a first glimpse at Season 2 of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, again starring John Krasinski as the titular CIA analyst. The show was renewed for a second season before the first had even debuted, and was successful enough for the streamer that it's already been renewed for a third. Once again, this season is an original story rather than a direct adaptation of a specific novel, but just as the terrorism-themed Season 1 took some cues from Clancy's Patriot Games, it's clear from this teaser that the South America-set second season will, as expected, take similar cues from Clear and Present Danger--both the book and the 1994 movie (which starred Harrison Ford as Ryan). Keeping up with current headlines, the action, however, is centered mainly in and around Venezuela rather than Colombia.

Along with Krasinski, Wendell Pierce and John Hoogenakker return as, respectively, Ryan's mentor James Greer and SAD operative (and quasi-Clark surrogate) Matice. With the new setting, a lot of newcomers also join the cast, including Noomi Rapace (Unlocked, The Girl Who Played With Fire) as German intelligence agent Harriet “Harry” Baumann, Michael Kelly (Fair Game, House of Cards) as CIA field officer Mike November, Tom Wlaschiha (Crossing Lines, Game of Thrones), Jovan Adepo (Overlord), Narcos alums Cristina Umaña and Francisco Denis, and the always excellent Jordi Molla (Knight and Day, Criminal). Amazon hasn't yet set a premiere date for the second season, but the first one did well in August, so I'd hazard we can expect this one soon.

Final Trailer for Amazon Prime Series TOM CLANCY'S JACK RYAN

Amazon Prime has dropped the final trailer for their long-awaited, eagerly anticipated TV series Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan. John Krasinski (13 Hours) follows in the footsteps of Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck, and Chris Pine, starring as Clancy's famous CIA analyst hero in an original storyline not based on one of the books. Like the last two theatrical attempts at re-launching this franchise, the events of the show take place prior to The Hunt for Red October, yet in the present-day. Carlton Cuse (The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.) and Graham Roland (Mile 22) run the show and executive produce. Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan (which has already been renewed for a second season) premieres on the streaming service August 31.

Trailer: The Looming Tower

Hulu has released the first trailer for The Looming Tower, their upcoming event series about inter-agency friction between the CIA and FBI in the late 1990s that led to the intelligence failure of 9/11.  Based on the Pulitzer-Prize winning book by Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower features Alec Baldwin as CIA Director George Tenet, Jeff Daniels as FBI counter-terrorism expert John O'Neill, Michael Stuhlbarg as counter-terrorism expert Richard Clarke, among a huge ensemble cast.

The Looming Tower premieres February 28 on Hulu.

New JACK RYAN Trailer

Amazon has offered fans another glimpse today at their upcoming Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan TV series. John Krasinski (13 Hours) stars as Clancy's famous CIA analyst hero in an original storyline not based on one of the books. Carlton Cuse (The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.) and Graham Roland (Lost) run the show and executive produce along with Mace Neufeld, Michael Bay, Brad Fuller, Andrew Form, David Ellison, Dana Goldberg and Marcy Ross. Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan will premiere sometime next year on Amazon Prime. (And it's one of the spy events I'm most looking forward to in 2018!)

Trailer for Amazon's New Spy Series Patriot

If I told you there were a new spy series starring both Terry O'Quinn (Lost) and Kurtwood Smith (Agent Carter, CHAOS), you probably wouldn't believe me, right? Or maybe you'd glibly reply, "What, no Gerald McRaney?" Okay, okay. You win. Sadly there is no Gerald McRaney present. But you've already got guaranteed crusty old spymaster overload with those first two! Still don't believe me? Well, lucky for me Amazon has provided a trailer to prove it. Of course, both those guys are supporting players. Michael Dorman (Killer Elite - way down the cast list) is the actual star of the Amazon original series Patriot, created by Steve Conrad (the Secret Life of Walter Mitty remake). Here's the official Amazon logline: "To prevent Iran from going nuclear, intelligence officer John Tavner must forgo all safety nets and assume a perilous 'non-official cover' -- that of a mid-level employee at a Midwestern industrial piping firm." Once again, I'm glad we've got a trailer, because the trailer makes it clear that there's a lot more than that going on here... and what looks like a really interesting tone. Some traces of In Bruges here. Or, to put it another way, it looks kind of like The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (specifically the pilot, "The Vulcan Affair") meets Fargo (the series). In fact, this looks spectacular!

The pilot has been available to stream for quite a while. I'm a bad spy fan and I haven't watched it, but evidently enough others did for it to go to series. The series itself premieres in just a few weeks, on February 24 on Amazon Prime.

Tradecraft: Amazon Greenlights Jack Ryan TV Show Starring John Krasinski

After Paramount's last attempt at a film franchise faltered, Tom Clancy's CIA analyst hero Jack Ryan will get a new lease on life in a TV show. Deadline reports that Amazon has given a straight-to-series order for a 10-episode first season of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, starring John Krasinski (13 Hours, The Office) as Ryan. Krasinski follows in the footsteps of Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck and Chris Pine. Personally, I think he's a great choice! The new take on Clancy's hero comes from writer/producers Carlton Cuse (The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.) and Graham Roland (Lost), Paramount TV, SkyDance Media, and Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes. (Bay also serves as a producer.) Like the most recent film, this take will also be set early in Ryan's career, when he's still a CIA analyst. Here's how the trade describes it: "A reinvention with a modern sensibility, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan follows Ryan (Krasinski), an up-and-coming CIA analyst, as he uncovers a pattern in terrorist communication that launches him into the center of a dangerous gambit with a new breed of terrorism that threatens destruction on a global scale."

I find this news hugely exciting. Jack Ryan is one of the great heroes of spy fiction, but has been underserved since his heyday in the 1990s. I think television may prove a better format for Clancy's brand of technothriller than feature films. I would love to see this first season lay the groundwork for season-long adaptations of Clancy's dense novels, including many of the subplots and fascinating details that the movies had to leave out. Maybe we could even, finally, get a screen version of The Cardinal of the Kremlin! Cuse, an avowed fan of Clancy's books, and Roland, a former Marine, seem like an ideal team to finally do right by the late author, and Bay seems like such an obvious match for this material that I'm frankly shocked it's taken this long to happen. I really hope he manages to wriggle free of giant robots long enough to direct the pilot, because his fetish for military hardware is a perfect match for Clancy's own.

Tradecraft: Netflix Orders Spy Kids TV Show

The Spy Kids are returning, this time on TV. Variety reports that Netflix will debut Spy Kids: Mission Critical, a series spinoff of the Robert Rogriguez theatrical kids' films, in 2018. According to the trade, "the show follows brother-and-sister team Juni and Carmen Cortez as they attend Spy Kids Academy, a top-secret spy school for kid agents. They must train and lead a team of fellow Spy Kids cadets against the forces of S.W.A.M.P. (Sinister Wrongdoers Against Mankind’s Preservation) and their leader, Golden Brain." It's unclear from this article whether this is an animated or live-action kids' show, but the head writer is FM DeMarco, who previously worked on Netflix's animated show Dragons: Race to the Edge, so that might be a clue. Bob Weinstein and The Weinstein Company will produce. No mention is made of any involvement from Rodriguez, who has directed all four installments of the film series, most recently the quasi-reboot Spy Kids: All the Time in the World in 2011. In that film, Juni and Carmen (the child heroes of the original trilogy) were young adults who had passed the torch on to a new generation of Sky Kids.

Watch Sundance's Deutschland 83 Series Premiere for Free on iTunes

Did you miss the premiere of Sundance's fantastic new Cold War spy series, Deutschland 83? Well, don't worry! You can download the series premiere for free on iTunes. And I definitely recommend doing so. This German import is something special, and I'll have my full review up in the next few days. In the meantime, here's the official synopsis from Kino Lorber:

A coming-of-age drama set against the culture wars and political events of Germany in the 1980s, Deutschland 83 was filmed across several locations in Berlin including the Berlin Stasi-Museum, located on the former grounds of the headquarters of the GDR Ministry for State Security

The series follows Martin Rauch (Jonas Nay) a 24-year-old East Germany native who is sent to the west as an undercover spy for the Stasi foreign service. Hiding in plain sight in the West German army, he must gather the secrets of NATO military strategy. Everything is new, nothing is quite what it seems and everyone he encounters is harboring secrets, both political and personal.

Upcoming Spy DVDs: Where the Spies Are?

Warner Archive recently started Beta testing an online streaming service and Roku channel called Warner Archive Instant. The Beta version doesn't have nearly all the titles that have been made available on MOD discs from the Warner Archive Collection over the years, but, interestingly, it does contain a few that haven't.  One of those is the 1965 David Niven Eurospy movie Where the Spies Are. Presumably, its inclusion here is indicative of a forthcoming disc release through WAC's standard MOD program. Directed by Val Guest (Assignment K, Casino Royale), Where the Spies Are stars Niven as Dr. Jason Love, hero of ten books by James Leasor. The supporting cast will also be familiar to spy fans. It includes Francoise Dorleac (Billion Dollar Brain), John Le Mesurier (Hot Enough For June), Noel Harrison (The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.) and Eric Pohlmann (the original voice of Blofeld). Personally, I've found that the film streams fine online, but won't play on my Roku. I'll chalk that up to the glitches of Beta testing, and hold out for the eventual DVD.

Rare Eurospy Movies Available Streaming On Netflix

A number of Eurospy and spy movies not available on DVD have turned up streaming on Netflix.  Netflix subscribers can watch these on their computers, their PS3s or other gaming systems, or on the Roku box (which I have and recommend).  Best of all, many of them are offered in terrific widescreen prints!  Here are some screen grabs from Danger Route, Matchless and Masquerade.  Other Eurospy titles to look out for streaming on Netflix include Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs,  File of the Golden Goose and Five Golden Dragons.  Additionally, there are tons of Hollywood spy movie from various eras there that aren't on DVD.  If you've got Netflix, it's worth poking around!  Hopefully the fact that there are nice prints of these titles available as streaming media can be taken as an indication that one day they'll turn up on MOD DVDs.