Jessica Chastain's 'The 355' Gets Pushed Back To 2022

The 355 will have to wait another 365 days to hit theaters. Universal's spy thriller The 355, which stars Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong'o, Penelope Cruz, and Diane Kruger, has been pushed back a year, setting its new release date in January 2022. The 355 is the latest film to vacate the winter release calendar amid surging coronavirus (COVID-19) cases.Variety reports that Universal has delayed The 355 release date by a year, pushing back the female-led heist thriller from its initial January 15, 2021 date to January 14, 2022.The 355's release date change follows a string of reschedulings and delays from Hollywood's biggest studios, as they contend with shuttering movie theaters and record-high coronavirus cases in the U.S. Warner Bros. recently set a day-and-date release for its former December tentpole Wonder Woman 1984, and essentially vacated the winter theatrical release calendar, while Disney has pushed back and unscheduled all of its winter films.

Universal has been at the forefront of these delays, moving its Fast and Furious sequel F9 to mid-2021, and postponing Jurassic World: Dominion to June 2022. While a groundbreaking deal with major movie theater chains like AMC and Regal has allowed the studio to be one of the few studios releasing films theatrically in recent months, like the Thanksgiving animated sequel The Croods: A New Age, and the Tom Hanks-led Western News of the World on Christmas Day, it appears that even Universal is pulling back from theatrical for the time being.

The 355 is a splashy heist thriller directed by Simon Kinberg from a script he wrote with Theresa Rebeck, which Universal nabbed for a reported $20 million after it premiered at Cannes in 2018. The film stars Chastain, Nyong'o, Cruz, Kruger, and Fan Bingbing as a team of international spies who team up to stop a world-threatening event — named the 355 in a nod to historic female spies.Sebastian Stan (Avengers: Endgame) and Edgar Ramirez (Zero Dark Thirty) also star in The 355. Jessica Chastain is also producing with Kelly Carmichael through their Freckle Films banner, and Kinberg is producing through genre films with Richard Hewitt (Bohemian Rhapsody) serving as executive producer.

When a top-secret weapon falls into mercenary hands, wild card CIA agent Mason "Mace" Brown  Jessica Chastain) will need to join forces with rival badass German agent Marie (Diane Kruger), former MI6 ally and cutting-edge computer specialist Khadijah (Lupita Nyong'o), and skilled Colombian psychologist Graciela (Penélope Cruz) on a lethal, breakneck mission to retrieve it, while also staying one-step ahead of a mysterious woman, Lin Mi Sheng (Bingbing Fan), 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.