Guy Ritchie appears to have lined up his next project after December 16thâs Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. Deadline reports that heâll re-team with that filmâs producer, Lionel Wigram, for The Man From U.N.C.L.E..
Steven Soderbergh was originally planning to direct the feature, based on the original NBC television series that starred Robert Vaughn as Napoleon Solo and David McCallum as Illya Kuryakin. They were agents of United Network Command for Law Enforcement (U.N.C.L.E.) who fight the forces of Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity (T.H.R.U.S.H.).
In a recent interview with ComingSoon.net, screenwriter Scott Z. Burns talked about setting the film in the 1960âs.
âI thought it would be really fun to go back and look at spycraft in the Cold War and what you could and couldnât do,â he said. âWhen you think about the world in the 1960âs just in terms of cars and fashion and the aesthetic, to be able to go and shoot that world with todayâs cameras and todayâs technology, I think we could do some really cool stuff. Then also, the thing that was so cool about âU.N.C.L.E.â that people donât realizeâand this is why I like it more than âMission: Impossibleââthe initial conceit of âU.N.C.L.E.â was amazing. It was really about an organization that didnât have an affiliation with a country and Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin were guys who shouldâve been sworn enemies. One was Russian and one was American and they worked together. In that way, it was a really incredibly progressive, hopeful kind of show.â
Whether Ritchie works directly from the Burns screenplay or whether a rewrite is in order remains to be seen.
