Director Steven Soderbergh (Traffic) had been working with Contagion screenwriter Scott Z. Burns on a movie version of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. for a couple years, until he decided to step down from the project in November after he and Warner Bros. couldn't agree on casting and budget. Warners isn't giving up on the adaptation, based on the 1960s TV show that followed two agents of a fictitious espionage agency called the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement (or U.N.C.L.E.), with The Wrap reporting last month that the studio thinks the movie can become a franchise and have a script "they're very happy with." All they had to do is find a new director and it didn't take long.
Deadline reports that director Guy Ritchie (Sherlock Holmes) has come aboard the project, replacing Soderbergh. Lionel Wigram, who produced Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes movies as well as several Harry Potter sequels, will produce the movie, which looks like it will retain the script from Burns.
Spderbergh had planned The Man from U.N.C.L.E. to be his follow up to the indie stripper comedy Magic Mike, and will instead direct the thriller The Bitter Pill, also written by Burns. After Pill and a Liberace biopic entitled Behind the Candleabra, Soderbergh is planning a "sabbatical" from making movies.
Posted 12.12.11 by Ryan