Oscar-Winning Director Vents After Latest Movie Flops: Steven Soderbergh on ‘Black Bag’ Box Office

The acclaimed director bemoans the state of movie theater attendance and Hollywood’s studio system.

April 21, 2025, 7:52pm

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – FEBRUARY 07: Steven Soderbergh attends the Netflix "High Flying Bird" Film Comment Select Special Screening at Walter Reade Theater on February 07, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Steven Ferdman/Getty Images for Netflix)

Academy Award-winning director Steven Soderbergh’s latest film Black Bag was a critical success, but its box office numbers were much less exciting.

The Ocean’s Eleven filmmaker spoke with The Independent last Monday to discuss his waning faith in Hollywood and the studio system, and said that the box-office disappointment of his latest work was a negative indicator for entertainment at large.

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Black Bag, Soderbergh’s recent spy thriller starring major faces like Cate Blanchett, Michael Fassbender, and Pierce Brosnan, cost over $50 million to make and will just barely break even at the box office.

“This is the kind of film I made my career on,” he began. “And if a mid-level budget, star-driven movie can’t seem to get people over the age of 25 years old to come out to theaters—if that’s truly a dead zone—then that’s not a good thing for movies. What’s gonna happen to the person behind me who wants to make this kind of film?”

He’s been told by Focus Features that the film will eventually “be fine and will turn a profit” due to video on demand sales and streaming licenses, “the bottom line is that we need to figure out a way to cultivate this audience for movies that are in this mid-range, that aren’t fantasy spectacles or low-budget horror movies. They’re movies for grown-ups, and those can’t just go away.”

Soderbergh even said that some of his best-known, Oscar-winning works would likely not find funding from major studios today. “Erin Brockovich wouldn’t get made today; Traffic wouldn’t get made. Unless you get Timothée Chalamet who, god bless him, seems to be interested in doing different kinds of movies. But that window is getting smaller and smaller for filmmakers to climb through.”

Soderbergh is one of Hollywood’s most beloved and prolific filmmakers. He has already released two films this year, Black Bag and ghost horror-thriller Presence, and will soon release black comedy The Christophers starring Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel.