Tom Cruise likes to be kept busy as
he's already looking to his next project, the long-mooted big screen take on a classic 1960s espionage TV series,
The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
This spy thriller has been bubbling away for several years at Warner Bros., going through
Matthew Vaughn, David Dobkin, and
Steven Soderbergh before finally landing with
Guy Ritchie in 2011.
George Clooney was the first choice for the role of Napoleon Solo, but when the star went down with a back injury Soderbergh went through a wide array of potential replacements including
Michael Fassbender, Joel Kinnaman, Johnny Depp, and
Channing Tatum and none of them has stuck.
Scott Z Burns has penned a screenplay for the movie. If Cruise agrees on this, the studio will continue to look for Illya Kuryakin, Solo's blond Russian partner.
Burns recently revealed that the take he had developed with Soderbergh would ‘take U.N.C.L.E. back to its roots' and center on the 1966 Palomares B-52 crash, but it's unclear how much has changed since then.
In addition to the
Mission: Impossible series and the
Jack Reacher movies, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. has the potential to give Cruise another major studio franchise. He will next be seen in
Joseph Kosinski's
Oblivion, due out next month, and
Doug Liman's
All You Need is Kill, due out in March of next year.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjmOkqU6Roo[/youtube]
