Tradecraft: Nick Nack Biopic And Smart Sequel

Da plane, boss, da plane!

One of James Bond's most unusual adversaries will soon be the subject of a big budget Hollywood biopic: Variety reports that My Dinner With Hervé chronicles the wild, tragic life of diminutive superstar Hervé Villechaize, who played Scaramanga's henchman Nick Nack in The Man With the Golden Gun and went on to star as Tattoo on Fantasy Island. Schindler's List writer Steve Zaillian will produce, and Terminal writer Sacha Gervasi will write and direct. Gervasi conducted the last interview with the actor days before his suicide in 1993. The trade quotes Gervasi as saying, "Hervé wasn’t just a pop culture icon; he was one of the most charming, cultured and dangerous people I’ve ever met. His is the story of a unique misfit trying to find his place in the world." No word yet on who will play Villechaize (though I bet Leonard DiCaprio is trying to think of ways to appear smaller), or who will play Roger Moore. (I nominate Steve Coogan!)

This is a very exciting project, and one I can't wait to see come to fruition. Villechaize, a notorious ladies' man, was an amazing, larger-than-life personality, and Moore, Christopher Lee, Britt Ekland and others have all related hilarious stories in the past about working with the actor on The Man With the Golden Gun.

Smart Writers

In a story about Steve Carell signing on to play Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Brigadier Gerard in a Napoleonic comedy (which sounds as potentially delightful as it does weird, doesn't it?), Variety mentions in passing some new information about Warner Bros.' Get Smart sequel. The trade reports that it will be written by the same scribes as the first film, Tom Astle and Matt Ember, and that Carell is still mooting the second Smart movie as one of two he'll try to fit into his next Office hiatus.