THE OCEAN 14 AFFAIR

[12.03 - French Time] Borys Kit reports in his Heat Vision blog that Steven Soderbergh (Erin Brockovich, Ocean's Eleven) is in early talks to direct the long-in-development movie adaptation of the cult classic The Man From U.N.C.L.E. TV series.

The original Man from U.N.C.L.E. ran on NBC from 1964 to 1968 and was a product of the 60s James Bond craze. It followed the adventures of two spies, Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn) and Illya Kuriakin (David McCallum), working for U.N.C.L.E. (United Network Command for Law and Enforcement). They received their assignments from Alexander Waverly (Leo G. Carroll) and fought an evil organization named Thrush.

In the heyday of the show, co-producer MGM released theatrical movie compilations of episodes with extra footage and there was a spin-off series, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (1966-1967), with Stefanie Powers as April Dancer. Solo & Kuriakin and Dancer even appeared respectively in two episodes of a NBC/MGM sitcom called Please don't eat the Daisies (1965-1967).

Vaughn and McCallum returned as the U.N.C.L.E. agents in The Return of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. - The Fifteen Years Later Affair, a 1983 backdoor pilot for CBS, which unfortunately didn't pick up the series. Three years later they played "disguised" versions of their characters in an episode of The A-Team's fifth season - where Robert Vaughn was a regular.

With Steven Soderbergh helming the 2010 U.N.C.L.E. movie project for Warner Bros, does that mean we can expect George Clooney as Napoleon and Matt Damon as Illya? Clooney would not be a bad choice at all for the cool and suave Mr Solo, as long as Soderbergh's film doesn't recall the painful memory of the calamitous 2002 cinema adaptation of I Spy with Eddie Murphy.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/blogs/heat-vision/steven-soderbergh-man-uncle-46007

See also:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC88U1SyQQw