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Argylle
Photograph: Peter Mountain/Apple TV+

00-who? Henry Cavill is playing a super-spy in Apple TV+’s globe-trotting ‘Argylle’

Does this rule ‘The Witcher’ star out of the James Bond running?

Phil de Semlyen
Written by
Phil de Semlyen
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He may have stopped played Superman, but Henry Cavill is still playing supermen – usually of the shadowy but lethal variety.

After Mission: Impossible – Fallout and The Man from U.N.C.L.E., the Brit is playing another super-spy in Apple TV+’s new action-thriller Argylle.

‘The spy thriller follows the globe-trotting adventures of a super-spy named Argylle across the US, London and other exotic locations,’ runs the official Apple logline.

Who is starring in Argylle?

Cavill co-stars with Dua Lipa, pictured above in Apple’s first-look image, as well as Sam Rockwell, Bryce Dallas Howard, Bryan Cranston, Catherine O’Hara, John Cena, Ariana DeBose and Samuel L Jackson.

What is Argylle about?

Directed by Kingsman: The Secret Service’s Matthew Vaughn and based on a yet-to-be-published, Ian Fleming-esque novel by Elly Conway, Argylle will follow a novelist with amnesia who pieces together his past as a spy and looks to take revenge on the shady organisation is once worked for.

Which probably rules Cavill out of any Jason Bourne reboots, too.

‘When I read this early draft manuscript, I felt it was the most incredible and original spy franchise since Ian Fleming’s books of the ’50s,’ said Vaughn. ‘This is going to reinvent the spy genre.’

Intriguing, it’s billed as the first of at least three films, all starring Cavill and involving a wealth of exotic global locations. Sounds like it will scratch the Bond itch – and then some – for the Londoner.

It’s a comparison that Vaughn has already been flirting with. ‘Henry Cavill, that man was born to play Bond,’ he said. ‘When you see how he is in this film, I was just like, “Wow, this guy is everything you’d imagine Bond to have been, or be. Bond has obviously been a huge influence on me, but you wait until you see Argylle.’

There’s another mystery around this one: who exactly is the author behind it all? Elly Conway – also spelt ‘Ellie’ in publicity materials – remains as shadowy as her characters and the novel remains unpublished. With Argylle, intrigue is everywhere.

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