{"id":360916,"date":"2025-12-22T03:30:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T03:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/360916\/"},"modified":"2025-12-22T03:30:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T03:30:10","slug":"read-david-koepps-screenplay-for-spy-thriller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/360916\/","title":{"rendered":"Read David Koepp’s Screenplay For Spy Thriller"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tDeadline\u2019s Read the Screenplay<\/a> series spotlighting the buzziest awards-season movies continues with Black Bag, the spy drama that reunites director Steven Soderberg with screenwriter David Koepp<\/a> for a third time after 2022\u2019s tech thriller Kimi and 2024\u2019s ghost story Presence.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe plot centers on George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) and his wife Kathryn St. Jean (two-time Oscar winner Cate Blanchett), both high-level operatives at the UK\u2019s National Cyber Security Center and both passionately in love with each other. When it\u2019s discovered there a mole inside the NCSC that seeks to unleash a destructive cyber worm attack, George is given the job of stopping them and is handed a list of five suspects. One of them is his beloved Kathryn.<\/p>\n

\n\tBlack Bag hit theaters via Focus Features in March and has grossed $43.9 million at the global box office. Its A-list cast includes Rege\u0301-Jean Page, Marisa Abela, Naomie Harris, Tom Burke and Pierce Brosnan.<\/p>\n

\n\tKoepp, whose wide range of stellar credits include the likes of Jurassic Park, Carlito\u2019s Way, War of the Worlds, The Paper and Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire edition) and of course Steven Spielberg\u2019s upcoming UFO movie Disclosure Day<\/a>, said he conceived of the idea for Black Bag while doing research on and interviewing spies for on another of his iconic scripts: that for the first Mission: Impossible movie directed by Brian De Palma and starring Tom Cruise.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAll the spycraft stuff was very cool, but I learned more than I ever expected about the people,\u201d Koepp says. \u201cOne woman told me that her job made it impossible for her to sustain a relationship. A line in the movie was inspired by my conversations with her. \u2018When you can lie about everything, how do you tell the truth about anything?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThink about it,\u201d he adds. \u201cIf you want to have an affair, it couldn\u2019t be easier. You just say, \u2018I\u2019ll be gone for three days and you can\u2019t ask me where I\u2019m going because you don\u2019t have clearance.\u2019 You can\u2019t trust people and people can\u2019t trust you. For George and Kathryn, the confidential information they can\u2019t share goes into what they call their \u2018black bag.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSoderberg sparked to the idea, seeing \u201cthe same kind of opportunity that the Ocean\u2019s films presented\u201d: a star-driven drama with commercial appeal (Koepp has cited character-driven conspiracy thrillers like Klute and All the President\u2019s Men as touchpoints). Amid developing the script together, the setting was changed from the U.S. to the UK and the NCSC, where intelligence is drawn from technology rather that human sources.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt just felt like a fresher location for this story, if only because there seem to be so many series and movies set in the American intelligence world,\u201d Soderberg says. \u201cLondon is a city I find very
cinematic. David agreed to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRead the screenplay below:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Deadline\u2019s Read the Screenplay series spotlighting the buzziest awards-season movies continues with Black Bag, the spy drama that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[49,48,155343,75,149298],"class_list":["post-360916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-david-koepp","tag-entertainment","tag-read-the-screenplay"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}