Billy Magnussen Cast in Netflix’s Spy Kids Reboot

About 20 years after Spy Kids was released in theaters, it was announced that director Robert Rodriguez would be rebooting the beloved family film for Netflix. Last month, it was revealed that Shazam! star Zachary Levi and Jane the Virgin‘s Gina Rodriguez would be starring in the reboot. The pair will play the parents of the new Spy Kids who are being played by Everly Carganilla (The Afterparty) and newcomer Connor Esterson. Today, Deadline revealed Billy Magnussen (No Time To Die, Game Night) has joined the cast.

It’s currently unclear who Magnussen is playing in the Spy Kids reboot, but we would not be surprised to learn he was taking on a villain role. The original film’s villain was played by Alan Cumming. You can read Deadline‘s description of the reboot here: “This latest Spy Kids chapter is set after the children of the world’s greatest secret agents unwittingly help a powerful game developer unleash a computer virus that gives him control of all technology, leading them to become spies themselves to save their parents and the world.” According to a previous report from Variety, there’s no word on when the reboot will be coming to the streaming service. 

“My most rabid fanbase all these years, by far, has been my kid films. My Spy Kids audience,” Rodriguez previously shared at Cinema-Con. “These kids watch those movies over and over because they’re action films made for children and families, in particular at a time when they need empowerment. Netflix came to me [for We Can Be Heroes] because the Spy Kids movies had done just so well on their service. They said ‘Could you make a series of films that do that?’ And I said, ‘I’d love to!’”

The original Spy Kids film was released in 2001 and was a surprise hit, earning $112 million at the domestic box office. The film starred Antonio Banderas, Carla Gugino, Alexa PenaVega, Daryl Sabara, Alan Cumming, Tony Shalhoub, Teri Hatcher, Cheech Marin, and Danny Trejo. In fact, it was Spy Kids that launched Rodriguez’s hyper-violent Machete films, which saw Trejo reprising his Spy Kids character in an extremely different way. 

In addition to the Spy Kids reboot, Netflix and Rodriguez are also working on a sequel to We Can Be Heroes.

“They’ve been shocked at how well it’s kept doing. They call it unstoppable,” Rodriguez told Collider when speaking about Netflix and We Can Be Heroes. “They’ve never seen any movie behave like that. It just will not stop. Kids will just not stop watching it. And I think it happened with the Spy Kid movies, but you couldn’t ever keep track of it, because you can’t tell how many times kids watch it on VCR or watch on Disney channel. But now with their metrics, they can tell how many times a household is watching something again and again, through completion. Which a lot of the times when it’s been a big opening weekend, it didn’t mean people actually watched the whole movie. It means they watched five minutes or more.”

Stay tuned for more updates on the Sky Kids reboot.