Philip Seymour Hoffman for Corbijn’s A MOST WANTED MAN

By Nick Martin | Feb 8, 2012 | Movie News (0) Comment

It seems like a new adaptation of John Le Care’s work has landed an A-list lead as Control director Anton Corbijn is looking to cast Philip Seymour Hoffman in his modern day thriller A Most Wanted Man, adapted from le Care’s 2008 novel.

The screenplay has been adapted by Edge of Darkness writer Drew Bovell.

A Most Wanted Man takes place in present-day Hamburg, Germany, where a mysterious, near-dead half-Chechen, half-Russian man on the run arrives in the city’s Islamic community desperate for help and looking to recover his late Russian father’s ill-gotten fortune, but also draws an innocent British banker and a young female lawyer into his web of intrigue.

What the book describes well is the problem with intelligence agencies manipulations — they may appear to be on people side but in the final analysis all their loyalty is with their own organization.

Hoffman who put on two stellar performances last year in The Ides of March and Moneyball will be playing the rogue chief of a covert German spy unit who spends the film trying to solve the mystery of this new stranger.

Producer Gail Egan said,

We are completely thrilled at the prospect of Philip Seymour Hoffman playing Bachmann in Andrew Bovell’s brilliant adaptation of this very modern thriller by John le Carre. We will start shooting in Hamburg in September and are delighted to be working with Anton Corbijn on this film. His unique vision for le Carre’s complex and stylish story is very contemporary, very real, very human.

Production is scheduled to begin in Hamburg in September.

Here’s the trailer for the book: