The old franchise resurrections are a bit tired, really, but here’s the bright side: this one, in particular, could be looking so much worse. In Variety, it’s reported that Elizabeth Debicki — fresh off her big break as The Great Gatsby‘s Jordan Baker — will take a supporting, “splashy” role alongside Henry Cavil and Armie Hammer in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Under the direction of Guy Ritchie, this Australian newcomer is, somewhat unsurprisingly, said to be taking a “femme fatale role” — maybe a physical match against the also-cast Alicia Vikander? — for which she had bested the more bankable names of Charlize Theron and Rose Byrne. Warner Bros. must have been quite fond of the work put in for Baz Luhrmann, then.
Little remains clear about what narrative direction the TV-to-film picture will take, though a second, much-lengthier Variety piece brings note of “a fairly serious action pic set in the ’60s” centered on an American and Russian spy who don’t see eye-to-eye on finer points of espionage conduct. (It was the Cold War, after all, and not exactly the waning ’80s.) Sadly, the script which Scott Z. Burns had composed for Steven Soderbergh is no longer in place, the picture having since been penned by Ritchie and his Sherlock Holmes producer, Lionel Wigram — hopefully not to make a copy of that stale action franchise. With four promising leads, though, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. has a fighting chance of coming out a worthwhile effort. Cameras roll in early September.
More than two-and-a-half years after its placement on the Black List — not to mention the nearly eighteen months since a director was hired — Oren Uziel‘s genre mash-up screenplay The Kitchen Sink has found its initial set of stars. As told by TheWrap, Denis Leary and Vanessa Hudgens are expected to come aboard the Zombieland-esque romp, playing a wealthy man and teenager (do I even need to say “respectively”?) fending off the dangers of a small-town alien invasion — but, if that sounds familiar, there’s a kicker. The central youngster partners with… a zombie and vampire, hence the “kitchen sink” aspect of it all. That’s that.
Robbie Pickering (Natural Selection) will helm, while Chris Zylka (The Amazing Spider-Man‘s Flash), Mackenzie Davis (Drake Doremus‘ Breathe In), Josh Fadem, and Nicholas Braun (The Perks of Being a Wallflower) are locked as co-stars. Sony and producer Matt Tolmach have been placed behind the effort, which, considering this activity, should go before cameras within a relatively brief amount of time.
Does Debicki bolster your hopes for the Ritchie project? What do you make of The Kitchen Sink and its initial cast?