Guy Ritchie's Spy Thriller "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." Casting And Plot Details

According to Variety, the film "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." is described as an “origin story that tells of the first pairing of two spies, one American, one Russian.” Starring Henry Cavill (Man Of Steel) as Napeoleon Solo and Armie Hammer (The Lone Ranger) as Illya Kuryakin starts filming in September. Alicia Vikander signed on to the film a few months ago, and now The Great Gatsby actress Elizabeth Debicki is set to play another female role. The film has been in development for years with a number of different directors coming and going, but Ritchie will finally be the one to see this thing through. 

“Unlike the friendly banter of the original TV series, the pair are initially hostile to each other,” someone familiar with the script commented.

Warner Bros. hopes to turn the film into a possible franchise despite the falling out of Tom Cruise in late May and a paring down of the production budget to $75 million. Plans are to shoot the film in Ritchie's native London and in Italy working from a script written by Ritchie with his Sherlock Holmes collaborator, writer and producer Lionel Wigram. 

You can read the full extended story about how this project came together despite having been in development hell and losing previous directors and stars like Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney over at Variety.

"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."

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