Atomic Blonde premiered at South by Southwest on March 12, 2017, and was released in the United States on July 28, by Focus Features. The film was a box-office hit, grossing $100 million worldwide against a budget of $30 million, and received generally positive reviews from critics. Many compared the film to the John Wick series, for which Leitch was an uncredited co-director and producer of the first film.[5][6] As of April 2020, a sequel was in development.
Plot
In November 1989, days before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, KGB agent Yuri Bakhtin kills MI6 agent James Gascoigne and steals his watch containing The List, a microfilm document with the names of every intelligence agent active in Berlin.
A day later, top-level MI6 spy Lorraine Broughton is dispatched to recover The List. She is told to keep an eye out for Satchel, a mysterious double agent for the KGB. Arriving in Berlin, she encounters two KGB agents with a message from their boss, Aleksander Bremovych. She escapes them and is picked up by her real contact, maverick MI6 station head David Percival. Lorraine searches Gascoigne's apartment and discovers a picture of him and Percival. Percival had previously denied knowing Gascoigne, so she suspects Percival was behind the West Berlin police ambushing her while she searched Gascoigne's apartment. When Lorraine visits a restaurant mentioned by the KGB agents she encounters Bremovych, but is "saved" by novice French agent Delphine Lasalle. Although initially suspicious of Lasalle, Lorraine later enters into a relationship with her. Lasalle suggests that they should work together.
Percival, having tailed Lorraine, surveils a watchmaker she visited and spots Bakhtin. Lorraine is informed that Satchel's identity has been compromised. Percival kills Bakhtin and takes the wristwatch from which he discovers who Satchel is. Meanwhile, Lorraine learns that Spyglass, the Stasi officer who gave The List to Gascoigne, has memorized it. Ignorant that Percival has The List, she makes plans with him to escort Spyglass to West Berlin. Percival meets with Bremovych and offers Satchel's identity "to keep the balance", and tips him off about their plan to extricate Spyglass. Lasalle covertly photographs the meeting.
During the extrication of Spyglass, Percival secretly shoots and wounds him. Lorraine battles multiple KGB agents while trying to escape with the wounded Spyglass. After a grueling fight and a car chase, their car is pushed into a river and Spyglass drowns. Lorraine makes it to West Berlin and realizes Percival has planted a bug in her coat. She tells Lasalle, who calls and threatens Percival with her knowledge of his Bremovych meeting. Percival goes to Lasalle's apartment and kills her, fleeing as Lorraine arrives moments later. Lorraine discovers Lasalle's photographs and realizes Percival has The List. Percival attempts to flee, but Lorraine intercepts, kills him, and takes The List.
Later, Lorraine is debriefed by MI6 executive Eric Gray and Emmett Kurzfeld. While there, she discovers Percival had told Gray he had The List and he was "very close to Satchel". She presents Lasalle's photographs and doctored audio recordings, which paint Percival as Satchel. She denies knowing The List's whereabouts, leaving MI6 no choice but to close the case.
Three days later in Paris, Lorraine, now speaking in Russian, meets with Bremovych, who addresses her as "Comrade Satchel". Bremovych, having learned from Percival there is more to Satchel than he had previously known, orders his men to kill her. Lorraine kills his henchmen. Speaking with an American accent, she tells Bremovych she always fed him misinformation to manipulate the KGB, and kills him. She and Kurzfeld return to the United States with The List. In their conversation, it is implied Lorraine is actually a triple agent and had been working for the CIA all along.
In addition, Sam Hargrave and Bill Skarsgård make brief appearances as MI6 agent James Gascoigne and as Lorraine's East German contact and presumed CIA ally Merkel, respectively. Daniel Bernhardt also played a strong thug working for Bremovych who fights Lorraine several times.
Production
Development
An adaptation of the graphic novelThe Coldest City was announced in May 2015.[7] Described by Variety as a "Passion Project" for Theron, she first came across the story five years prior, when her production company Denver and Delilah Productions was sent the then-unpublished graphic novel.[8] Theron's interest in the first John Wick movie inspired her to get David Leitch, one of the directors, to helm the project.[9] Leitch eventually left John Wick: Chapter 2 to direct the film.[10] According to Theron, the success of Mad Max: Fury Road helped guide the development of Atomic Blonde.[11] The film features a bisexual subplot that was not in the original book. This came from writer Kurt Johnstad, who suggested it after Theron was "thinking about how do you make this different from other spy movies".[12] Leitch has insisted that the scenes are not there to be "provocative", but "more about if you are a spy you will do whatever it takes to get information" and how the main character "find[s] her intimacies and her friendships in small doses".[12]
Theron's casting as the lead was announced in May 2015,[7] while James McAvoy was announced that October. In November, John Goodman was reported as also being in talks to join the film.[13][14] It was originally hoped that David Bowie would play a part in the film, although he turned down the offer shortly before his death.[15] To prepare for the role, Theron worked with eight personal trainers, who "basically made [her] puke every single day". During the process, Theron cracked her teeth from clenching her jaw and had to get them fixed in surgery.[16] She also bruised a rib during her training.[17] As Theron's training for the movie overlapped with Keanu Reeves' training for John Wick: Chapter 2, the two developed a competitive relationship, which included sparring together.[18]
From the start, Leitch felt that using the right songs for the project was crucial. Part of this was attempting to answer the question "How do you reinvent this stuffy Cold War spy movie?"[20] The soundtrack uses a combination of 1980s songs as well as covers of them. The latter were used to add "a contemporized feeling of the '80s". The movie's producers were initially worried that they would not be able to get the rights to all the songs that Leitch wanted to use,[20] but Leitch himself estimated that around 75% of his picks made it into the final product.[21] Though the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the concentration of iconic songs was from the first half of the 1980s, with the exception of George Michael's 1988 chart-topping "Father Figure", which itself was Leitch's second choice after the 1986 release "Take My Breath Away" by Berlin.[22]
In May 2015, Focus Features acquired distribution rights to the film for North and Latin America, the U.K., Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Italy, the Benelux, China and Switzerland.[23] It was initially scheduled to be released on August 11, 2017,[24] before being moved up to July 28, 2017.[25] The film had its world premiere at the South by Southwest on March 12, 2017.[26]
Reception
Box office
Atomic Blonde grossed $51.7 million in the United States and Canada and $48.3 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $100 million, against a production budget of $30 million.[2]
In North America, Atomic Blonde was projected to gross around $20 million from 3,304 theaters during its first weekend.[27] It grossed $1.52 million from Thursday night previews at 2,685 theaters.[28] After making $7.1 million on its first day (including previews), the film went on to open to $18.3 million, finishing fourth at the box office, behind Dunkirk, The Emoji Movie and Girls Trip.[29] In its second weekend the film dropped 55% to $8.2 million, finishing seventh at the box office.[30] It made $4.5 million in its third week and $2.2 million in its fourth, finishing 10th and 13th at the box office, respectively.[31]
Critical response
On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 79% based on 367 reviews, with an average rating of 6.6/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Atomic Blonde gets enough mileage out of its stylish action sequences – and ever-magnetic star – to make up for a narrative that's somewhat less hard-hitting than its protagonist."[32] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 63 out of 100, based on reviews from 50 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[33] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.[29]
Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3.5 out of 4 stars, saying: "Borrow from Bourne and Bond. Rinse and repeat. This is the recipe for the quite ridiculous, ultra-violent and deliriously entertaining Atomic Blonde, a slick vehicle for the magnetic, badass charms of Charlize Theron, who is now officially an A-list action star on the strength of this film and Mad Max: Fury Road."[34] Writing for Rolling Stone, Peter Travers praised the cast and fight scenes, giving it 3 stars out of 4 and saying, "It's the fight scenes that count – and they're astonishingly good, from a mano-a-mano beatdown involving Theron's stiletto heel and a thug's jugular vein to a climactic free-for-all in a swanky hotel suite where 99 Luftballons scores every gunshot and gut-punch."[35]
Jake Coyle of the Associated Press gave the film 2/4 stars, calling it "largely a vacant, hyper-stylistic romp that trades on the thick Cold War atmosphere of far better films".[36]
Future
Sequel
In July 2017, Leitch expressed a desire to develop a sequel film to Atomic Blonde, saying that the project is dependent on the first film's success.[37] In May 2018, Theron confirmed that a sequel was in active development.[38][39] By July 2019, Leitch announced that the project is in development as a production deal with a streaming service company, while the filmmaker's wife Kelly McCormick, will return as producer.[40] By April 2020, it was announced the film was in development as a Netflix exclusive film, while Theron will also be a producer.[41]
Potential crossover with John Wick
In July 2017, Leitch was asked about the potential of a crossover film featuring Atomic Blonde and the John Wick franchise. Leitch directed the former, after previously co-directing the first John Wick film. The filmmaker stated that it sounded like a great idea.[42]
