Updated: The Playlist has heard from an insider that George Clooney is already in talks with Soderbergh for the Napoloen Solo role and that the movie will 'take U.N.C.L.E. back to it's roots' and will firmly be set in the 1960's. It's all early days but the desire here is for a BIG tentpole, birthed from a completely original idea from the director which is getting a blank page restart from writer Scott Z. Burns. I mentioned merely four hours ago that Clooney would be perfect for this, so I'll try another stab here -- how about WB's Inception star Leonardo DiCaprio in the McCallum role? ORIGINAL ARTICLE FOLLOWS... I don't understand why
Steven Soderbergh is
being drawn to direct the long anchored movie remake of
The Man From U.N.C.L.E. at Warner Bros. when he could just as easily create a new spy universe with his Informant/Contagion co-scribe
Scott Z. Burns. But... I suppose there's a lot you can do with this flexible property. Soderbergh is in early talks to revive the cold-war inspired international espionage show of the 60's that was partly an
Ian Fleming creation and centered on an American/Russian secret agency called United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. Or U.N.C.L.E. for short.
Robert Vaughn (as American Napoloen Solo) and
David McCallum (as Russian Illyva Kuryakin) starred and made a pretty formidable on-screen duo in in what was a mostly series spy thriller but occasionally descended into the same kind of camp the latter Connery/Moore 007 films would. I mean when the arch nemesis organisation is known as THRUSH, you kind of know what the show is.
And it's that kind of tone that Warner Bros. had previously envisioned for an update of this material as a
Get Smart-esque comedy for The Wedding Crashes director
David Dobkin to helm. But that never happened as they chose to actually remake Get Smart instead. Presumably with Soderbergh on board, we are in for something much more serious and authentic. We would even hope for a film set in the 60's (something the James Bond franchise is too scared to do) but I'm guessing Soderbergh has something contemporary in mind. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC88U1SyQQw Burns will be writing the screenplay in the hope to get The Man From U.N.C.L.E. before camera's late next year, or more realistically early 2012. This will give Soderbergh plenty of time to film the
Liberace biopic with
Michael Douglas (health permitting) and
Matt Damon. The latter of which by the way would make a great Napoloen Solo if it wasn't for the property treading on Bourne's toes a little, as would former Soderbergh collaborator
George Clooney.