Universal Pushes Simon Kinberg's The 355 Back a Year

Universal Pushes Simon Kinberg’s The 355 Back a Year

November 23, 2020

With theaters still shut down around the globe and new spikes in cases being reported, Universal Pictures has elected to push back the release of Simon Kinberg’s ensemble spy thriller The 355 a full year from its original January 2021 release to January 14, 2022.

Not only is the film the second directorial effort from the creative head of Fox’s X-Men franchise, it also marks the second to see a major delay in release after his debut, Dark Phoenix, was pushed back multiple times for a total of seven months due to extensive reshoots for its finale, though given The 355‘s original release landing smack in the middle of the ongoing pandemic, Universal’s decision likely stems from wanting to see the film earn a proper theatrical release.

A dream team of formidable female stars come together in a hard-driving original approach to the globe-trotting espionage genre in The 355. When a top-secret weapon falls into mercenary hands, wild card CIA agent Mason “Mace” Brown will need to join forces with rival badass German agent Marie, former MI6 ally and cutting-edge computer specialist Khadijah, and skilled Colombian psychologist Graciela on a lethal, breakneck mission to retrieve it, while also staying one-step ahead of a mysterious woman, Lin Mi Sheng, who is tracking their every move. As the action rockets around the globe from the cafes of Paris to the markets of Morocco to the wealth and glamour of Shanghai, the quartet of women will forge a tenuous loyalty that could protect the world—or get them killed.

The 355 will be led by Oscar nominee Jessica Chastain, Diane Kruger, and Bingbing Fan as well as Oscar winners Lupita Nyong’o and Penélope Cruz. It will also feature MCU star Sebastian Stan and Golden Globe nominee Edgar Ramírez.

Chastain was also the driving force behind the cast in the film, having called all of them herself and offered the parts and receiving confirmations from all of them right away. The title comes from one of the very first spies in the United States during the American Revolution, who was also a woman, so Agent 355 has become slang for those in the CIA for a female spy, which Chastain learned while doing her research for 2012’s Zero Dark Thirty.

The 355 is directed by Simon Kinberg from a script written by Theresa Kinberg. The film is produced by Chastain and Kelly Carmichael for Chastain’s Freckle Films and by Kinberg for his Genre Films. The film is executive produced by Richard Hewitt (Bohemian Rhapsody).