Tom Cruise and Armie Hammer join The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Warner Bros. is planning an adaptation of the 1960s TV series; The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Guy Ritchie (director of Snatch, and the Robert Downey Jr.-starred Sherlock Holmes movies) will helm as director, with Scott Z. Burns (The Bourne Ultimatum) to write the screenplay. Tom Cruise and Armie Hammer are being eyed to star in the movie.

The original TV series was one of the many popular espionage TV series in the 1960s, which include Mission; Impossible, I-Spy, and Get Smart. The series follows the exploits of two secret agents, Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin, who work for a secret international espionage and law-enforcement agency called U.N.C.L.E. (United Network Command for Law Enforcement). Like many spy series and movies of the 60's this show had a lot of intrigue, thrilling suspense, action, and amazing spy gadgets. [READ MORE ABOUT THIS PROJECT, CLICK THE LINK BELOW]

The studio previously had Steven Soderbergh in line to direct with George Clooney starring, but the latter dropped out due to surgery which would have limited him in a physical role.  In an interview with our own Steve Weintraub, screenwriter Burns recently talked at length about his treatment for the feature adaptation, saying:

“Steven and I both loved it because it was a way of doing a spy movie and setting up a really interesting character that was fascinating to us, because U.N.C.L.E. wasn’t affiliated with the US or with Russia, it was this great Cold War thing.  And now spies have all these great toys but we would have to take some of them away, because it was the 60s and there would be different plots because you didn’t always have a cell and you couldn’t solve problems with some of the things now. 

So we had this idea based on something happening in the real world where there was this—I’ll tell you what, here I’ll reveal a whole bunch.  I don’t know if Warner Brothers is going to use this but there was a thing that happened with a B-52 bomber in like 1966 or 1967 over Spain where it was refueling and there was an accident and it lost its payload and three bombs fell on Spain and the Atlantic, and they hadn’t been armed, but the contained warheads.  So we scattered plutonium all over a farm field in Spain, the second bomb was recovered, but the there was a period of time when the third bomb was laying on the floor of the Mediterranean and no one could find it and so it was the race to find it that was what our episode was about, which I thought was going to be really, really cool and I’m bummed we didn’t get to do it.”

This sounds like a great franchise to be reinvigorated and rebooted back into motion. I am not, however, thrilled that Cruise will be in this movie. He already has Mission: Impossible which is closely similar to The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Seeing him play another spy on a seemingly different tone is, well, boring. I'd rather see Johnny Depp in it, coz I have not yet seen Depp play a spy role. But then again, him and Hammer are already paired in the Lone Ranger movie, which we will be seeing this year. Tell us your ideas in the comments section...