By With a release date of September 16th in place for the UK, it has been announced that the upcoming adaptation of John Le Carré’s classic spy novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy has been picked up by Universal for distribution in the US. Collider is speculating that the studio will be looking to have it in American cinemas by November/December, with a possible outing at the Toronto Film Festival along the way.
The film is at the top of my most anticipated for 2011 (not often I get to say that about a British film) and you only have to look at the people working on it to see its pedigree: Tomas Alfredson of Let The Right One In fame is behind the camera, directing a cast comprising Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt and Ciarán Hinds. The novel is one of Le Carré’s finest, a taut chessmatch between spycatcher George Smiley and the Soviet mole embedded deep within the British Secret Service who he has been called out of retirement to hunt down and destroy. It’s the flip-side to Bond’s fantastical approach to the spy genre, making up what it lacks in action with slow-build tension, intricate plotting and a low-key battle of deceptions and counter-deceptions.
It will have to cast off the imposing shadow of the 1979 BBC television adaptation, but Gary Oldman should make a very different Smiley to Sir Alec Guiness (in arguably his most famous role outside Obi Wan Kenobi) and if it can convince audiences to accept it on its own terms, Alfredson’s film could be exactly the sort of suspenseful espionage film that hasn’t been seen in a long time and would be very welcome to have return. Keep your eye on this one.
[via Collider]