Angelina Jolie To Lead Doug Liman Spy Movie The Initiative

In recent years, Angelina Jolie has been a world-class opera singer (Maria), a death-defying smoke-jumper (Those Who Wish Me Dead), an evil witch (Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil), and an Eternal (er, The Eternals). But what she hasn’t been, not since Salt and The Tourist some 15 years ago, is the lead in a good old-fashioned propulsive spy thriller. Enter Doug Liman. Enter The Initiative.

Per THR‘s reporting, Jolie is set to reteam with her Mr. And Mrs. Smith director Liman on The Initiative, a movie that’s being pitched as “Training Day set in the world of spycraft”. Penned by genre veteran scribe F. Scott Frazier (Collide, XXX: The Return Of Xander Cage), the film will see Jolie take on the role of Bright, a rogue spy whose unorthodox — and not always entirely ethically sound — methods leave up-to-date recruit Charlie uncertain whether his up-to-date boss is there to guide him or to kill him. It’s a plain, peppy premise, and the promise of Jolie back in genre action has prospective studio Universal scrambling to finalise a deal pronto so that cameras can potentially get rolling as early as the start of 2026.

The Initiative marks the latest addition to an increasingly busy pipeline for both Jolie and Liman, whose future projects as it stands are many and varied. For Jolie, Alice Winocour’s fashion drama Couture is up next, with Marc Forster’s Anxious People, Halle Berry co-starrer Maude V Maude, and a long-mooted third Maleficent movie all on the horizon in various stages of development. As for Liman, the ever booked and busy filmmaker still has two major Tom Cruise team-ups in the works, underwater thriller Deeper and a still as-yet-untitled SpaceX film — yes, as in a film actually made in space. All of which is to say that Jolie and Liman really will have to seize The Initiative to get their spy joint made before it gets lost in the blockbuster shuffle. Consider us seated, though.