According to new reports from Deadline, Tom Cruise is lined up for a main role in The Man From U.N.C.L.E., which is set to be helmed by Guy Ritchie, with a screenplay by Scott Z. Burns and based on the classic NBC television series starring Robert Vaughan and David McCallum. The film will be the latest set up for a new spy franchise for Cruise, who is currently riding the success of the sequel-bound Jack Reacher, directed by Christopher McQuarrie, who is also set to direct the fifth installment of Mission Impossible.
In a recent interview with ComingSoon.Net, Burns shared his enthusiasm for exhibiting the 1960’s era, and the “progressive” nature of the story:
“I thought it would be really fun to go back and look at spycraft in the Cold War and what you could and couldn’t do, …When you think about the world in the 1960’s just in terms of cars and fashion and the aesthetic, to be able to go and shoot that world with today’s cameras and today’s technology, I think we could do some really cool stuff. Then also, the thing that was so cool about ‘U.N.C.L.E.’ that people don’t realize–and this is why I like it more than ‘Mission: Impossible’–the initial conceit of ‘U.N.C.L.E.’ was amazing. It was really about an organization that didn’t have an affiliation with a country and Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin were guys who should’ve 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.”
Cruise is also slated to appear in the March 7, 2014 release of Doug Liman’s Japanese manga film adaptation for All You Need Is Kill and this year’s April 19 release of Oblivion, directed by Joseph Kosinski.
View the third Oblivion trailer below or click HERE if the embed fails to load.
