Robert Rodriguez Is Bringing Back 'Spy Kids' For ‘Armageddon’

Netflix was so good to him for We Will Be Heroes

Netflix has released first look images and a teaser trailer for the Spy Kids franchise’s next phase: A reboot film with parents played by Gina Rodriguez and Zachary Levi, titled Spy Kids: Armageddon.

That’s right, the former Chuck Bartowski is back in the spy game, as Terrence Torrez with the former Jane Villanueva as his wife Nora, and their kids, a daughter played by Everly Carganilla as Patty and Connor Esterson as son Tony. In the teaser trailer the kids receive a message from mom telling them “something has gone terribly wrong.” Now the kids must retrieve their parents from that failed mission. The film also has Billy Magnussen and Levi’s Shazam! co-star D.J. Cotrona in the cast.

Netflix’s official logline for Spy Kids: Armageddon goes, “When 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, they must become spies themselves to save their parents and the world.” While this is a reboot, the franchise is still very much in Robert Rodriguez’s hands, directing, producing, and co-writing the film with his son Racer Max, now 26, who received writing credit for The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl when he was 7 as it was based on one of his stories.

The Spy Kids franchise began in 2001 with the Cortez family, Carmen, Juni, Gregorio and Ingrid played by Alexa Vega, Daryl Sabara, Antonio Banderas and Carla Gugino, building up a significant supporting cast in the sequels Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams and Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over, released in successive years. 2011’s Spy Kids: All the Time in the World ended up much like Scream 4 in failing to restart the franchise, focusing on the blended family of Marissa Wilson, Gregorio and Machete’s sister played by Jessica Alba, with Joel McHale and Mason Cook and Rowan Blanchard, eventually of Speechless and Girl Meets World respectively. The images released for Armageddon are below.

Image credit: Netflix

While it has been a dozen years since the last film, the franchise itself hadn’t quite been so dormant, as Dimension Television and Mainframe produced a 20-episode animated series Spy Kids: Mission Critical, released on Netflix over 2018. The relationship with the streamer continued when they released We Can Be Heroes, a standalone legacy sequel to Sharkboy and Lavagirl. They have set a September 22 release date for Spy Kids: Armageddon, as seen in the teaser below.

Source: Deadline