Steven Soderbergh has spent his career making movies that go against the grain.
He's made indie gems ("Sex, Lies, and Videotape," "The Girlfriend Experience"), off-kilter crime thrillers ("Out of Sight," "The Limey), movies that bring nuance to real-life issues ("Erin Brockovich," the Oscar-winning "Traffic,") and too-real disaster movies that have become even more relevant in retrospect ("Contagion"). When he did play the studio game, as he did with the "Ocean's Eleven" and "Magic Mike" franchises, his movies were made with such originality that you'd wonder why Hollywood hasn't made more like them. (Answer: there's only one Soderbergh.)
It's a career that few can match when it comes to diversity and volume: 2025 marks the ninth time in Soderbergh's career that he's had two movies released in the same year.
But Soderbergh has hit a snag lately. While both of his last two movies, "Presence" and "Black Bag," garnered positive to downright glowing reviews from critics —"Black Bag" is tied with his feature debut "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" as his best-reviewed movie ever, with a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes — lackluster performance at the box office resulted in both leaving theaters quickly.
Both were right in Soderbergh's sweet spot, combining a high-end concept (a twisty ghost story, a twisty spy story) with name actors (Lucy Liu, Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender) on a small or relatively economical budget ($2 million and $44 million, respectively). This kind of movie has historically been a winning formula for Soderbergh, one in which everyone recoups on their investments, allowing him to go make another one (or two) the next year.
But as audiences have stopped showing up to movie theaters in droves and big-budget franchises have became the draw when they do, it's become increasingly difficult for a mid-budget movie to succeed. And Soderbergh's latest batting average has shown that even he might struggle to revive the genre.
Seeing "Black Bag" disappear from most theaters in just three weeks (it's now available on Video on Demand and hits Peacock on May 2) has Soderbergh questioning his future as a storyteller.
"It's not fun to spend a lot of time and effort on something that just occupies zero cultural real estate," Soderbergh told Business Insider. "That's not why any filmmaker wants to make movies. You want as many people to see them as possible. I've really got to think deeply about what kind of material I can find that I'm excited by and has the potential to draw a bigger audience than the last two movies."
One thing's for certain: the prolific filmmaker will keep going against the grain to find it.
In Business Insider's latest Director's Chair interview, Soderbergh has a frank discussion about the future of movie theaters, his never-made "Logan Lucky" prequel, and why he's not surprised David Fincher is making a sequel to Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood."
Business Insider: Before we get into the specifics of the movie itself, give me your Monday morning quarterbacking of what the theatrical run of "Black Bag" was like. You made it for $44 million and it took in $36 million worldwide.
Steven Soderbergh: It was frustrating. The people we needed to come out didn't come out. And unfortunately, it's impossible to really know why. My concern is that the rest of the industry looks at that result and just goes, "This is why we don't make movies in that budget range for that audience because they don't show up." And that's unfortunate, because that's the kind of movie I've made my whole career. That middle ground, which we all don't want to admit is disappearing, seems to be really disappearing.
I mean, it's the best-reviewed movie I've ever made in my career, and we've got six beautiful people in it, and they all did every piece of publicity that we asked them to do and, you know, this is the result. So it's frustrating.
I think it was on 2,000-plus screens for three weeks. In your eyes, did you want more runway, or did Focus Features do what it had to do?
No. I think they did everything right. Going any wider wasn't going to solve the problem, obviously. They spent the money. I liked the campaign. They were incredibly supportive. I had a good experience with them making the movie. Everything went right except that people just didn't show up.
The way the theatrical window has been shortened since COVID, is Hollywood programming audiences to stay at home?
I don't know. Again, how do you tease out the kind of data that you need to answer that question? Obviously, the topic that never goes away and never will go away is windowing. How do you determine — if people that were aware of "Black Bag" and had some interest in it, if they knew it was going to be 45 or 60 days before it showed up anywhere else, would they have gone? Or did it not matter? We don't know. That's the problem.
And that becomes the $100 million question. People know it's out because of the marketing, so are they saying to themselves, "Well, I'm going to wait to see that at home?" But here's the thing, Steven: Then they're watching on PVOD, and they would be paying as much at home as they did in the theater in that case.
Well, all I can tell you is Focus told me they will break even on this movie. I was worried. I don't like losing people's money.
Especially when you want to work with them again.
Yeah. But when I talked to [Focus Features chairman] Peter Kujawski the Monday after we opened he said, "We'll get out." Unfortunately, the people who write about the movie business aren't privy to how all of that downstream revenue works precisely, and that's why things are perceived as not turning a profit when actually they turn out to be profitable. He told me, "We're fine."
But I won't know if any of that is true until I start getting statements, and then I'll be able to see how that world looks. I'll see exactly what they spent on P&A and as the PVOD numbers come in. So by the end of the year, I'll be able to tell if the movie turned a profit, and if so, how. And that's good information.
Right. Because that's going to dictate how you want to move forward in regards to the kind of movies you want to make.
Yeah. It's really not fun when someone asks you, "What are you working on?" and you go, "Oh, I just made this thing," and they go, "Oh, did that come out?" You get tired of that.
Let's talk a little about what actually happens in "Black Bag." The ending of George and Katherine embracing in bed confirmed for me that the events in the movie are very much a twisted foreplay for them. Was that how it was always written?
It went through a couple of variations of the same idea. It was written initially to be in the bedroom. Then, while we were shooting it, I thought I wanted to do a version where he's making a meal for her because this cooking thing is also very intimate and very much part of their ritual. And then I saw that and it was okay. And I said, I want to go back to the version in the bedroom, but I said to [screenwriter] David [Koepp], I think the reason that I was moving it out of the bedroom was because it was missing just a tiny bit of a button and I couldn't articulate exactly what it was. David said, "I think I know what you mean."
He sent me back a variation of the original version in the bedroom, but it had Katherine asking about the money, and that was the little thing, because it's a quiet runner through the movie that she's money-obsessed. That's when I was like, "That's it."
After "The Christophers" do you know what you want to make next? What has the release of "Black Bag" made you feel?
I don't know. We're finishing "The Christophers" now. Nobody has seen it. It's a single-source, independently financed movie. So I think the most likely course is it will premiere at a festival. Which one? I don't know. But beyond that, I don't know. I've got to figure that out. I'm agnostic in terms of where it shows up, theatrical versus streaming. But you can't keep making the same mistake over and over again.
Do you have to go back to the epic route? Do you have the endurance, the heart, the willpower to do something like "Che" again?
Physically, I do. Psychologically, though, it's really got to be something that deserves that kind of treatment and doesn't feel like Oscar bait.
Is there anything you're developing currently that would have the potential like that at all?
No. It does require an aspect of the grandiosity gene, you've got to think about yourself a certain way to want to go out and do those things. That is not my default mode. I have to work myself up to that because I don't have that kind of sense of my place.
If I hadn't made "Che," I don't think I would have made "The Knick," which I think is the last epic thing that I've done. "Che" was good for me in that sense. But knowing what goes into that, it has got to be something that I feel really electrified by, and those are just hard to come by. Then you've got to cast Timothée Chalamet.
Your wife, Jules Asner, wrote the screenplay for your 2017 movie, "Logan Lucky." When are you two going to stop messing around and give us a sequel?
Oh, she's working on stuff.
But is she working on another "Logan Lucky"?
Well, we talked about it, but when that movie didn't perform well we had to put it away. We had it all set up. We had everybody willing. We were going to do the story of how Daniel Craig's character Joe Bang got into prison. We were going to do that whole story of how things got all fucked up. But you've got to have a hit movie if you want to make a sequel.
So you had the cast attached?
Everybody wanted to do it. The story was pretty funny.
But can you admit that since that movie opened, it has had a second life through streaming?
Yeah, and this is why I'm desperate for Warner Bros. to license "The Knick" to Netflix, because I think "The Knick" on Netflix would really go over well.
Would that mean you've thrown your hat back in with doing another season of "The Knick"?
No. I don't think there's any going back to that.
What else is your wife working on?
Rebecca Blunt [Jules Asner's pen name] and I have a very professional relationship, and you're never supposed to ask a writer how it's going.
Are you as surprised as we are that David Fincher is going to do a "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood" sequel?
No, because of Brad [Pitt]. I think they're always on the lookout for something to do together, and so this was, it sounds like, an unusual set of circumstances where Quentin decided he didn't want to do it and Brad asked him, "Can I show it to David?" and he said sure, and David read it and said let's do it. That seems to be what happened. That's not surprising at all. What's surprising is Quentin's agreeability.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
"Black Bag" is available On Demand and digital rental. It will be available to stream on Peacock starting May 2.
