Bradley Cooper looks like he could be filling the role of Napoleon Solo in the upcoming Warner Bros. adaptation of the ’60s spy series The Man From U.N.C.L.E.. Variety has word that Cooper is currently the top choice to headline the Steven Soderbergh film.
Robert Vaughn starred in the original NBC series as Solo and David McCallum as Illya Kuryakin. They were agents of United Network Command for Law Enforcement (U.N.C.L.E.) who fight the forces of Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity (T.H.R.U.S.H.).
In a recent interview with ComingSoon.net, writer Scott Z. Burns talked about setting the film in the 1960’s.
“I thought it would be really fun to go back and look at spycraft in the Cold War and what you could and couldn’t do,” he said. “When you think about the world in the 1960’s just in terms of cars and fashion and the aesthetic, to be able to go and shoot that world with today’s cameras and today’s technology, I think we could do some really cool stuff. Then also, the thing that was so cool about ‘U.N.C.L.E.’ that people don’t realize–and this is why I like it more than ‘Mission: Impossible’–the initial conceit of ‘U.N.C.L.E.’ was amazing. It was really about an organization that didn’t have an affiliation with a country and Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin were guys who should’ve been sworn enemies. One was Russian and one was American and they worked together. In that way, it was a really incredibly progressive, hopeful kind of show.”
Cooper himself, while not yet signed for U.N.C.L.E., is said to have been made an offer. He will next appear in The Silver Linings Playbook, The Place Beyond the Pines and Paradise Lost.
(Photo Credit: WENN.com)
