Soderberg Taking on ‘The Man From U.N.C.L.E.’

Spy films of the 1960’s have a reputation of getting terrible remakes. It happened with Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman in 1998’s The Avengers. It happened with Jim Caviezel and Ian McKellan in last year’s The Prisoner. But that all may change, now that Steven Soderberg has expressed interest in taking on The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

Here’s the official word from THR.

Steven Soderbergh is in early talks to take over directing duties on the long-in-development film The Man From U.N.C.L.E. at Warner Bros. Scott Z. Burns, who wrote Soderbergh’s The Informant and the director’s upcoming medical thriller Contagion, is negotiating to come aboard as writer.

The show was a basic serialized spy drama from 1964 starring Robert Vaughn, who found a strong career later in life on the hit BBC show Hustle. The plan is most likely to gear the film towards the action/comedy hybrid, which is what original screenwriter Max Borenstein was tasked to do.

Now that Scott Burns is taking on the script, you can expect to see elements of both The Bourne Ultimatum and The Informant–Burns’ previous films–to arise in this script. The only question remains: will we see Matt Damon as the titular Man?