Tradecraft: Brad Pit is The Gray Man

This is exciting news. I've always wanted to see Brad Pitt star in a spy franchise. He was initially rumored (and reportedly considered) for Bourne. Then Matt Damon got that, and he did Spy Game instead, which was fine (as far as I recall, anyway; it wasn't a very memorable movie), but not franchise material. Now, as proof that Jeremy Renner can't topline every spy franchise out there, Deadline reports that Pitt will star in James Gray's The Gray Man, a spy movie we first heard about last year based a novel (the first in a series, and therefore a potential film franchise) by Mark Greaney. Adam Cozad, one of the many writers to contribute to the ongoing saga of the Chris Pine Jack Ryan reboot, wrote the script. According to the trade blog, The Gray Man follows a former CIA operative who finds himself "targeted by a powerful multinational corporation" and "must fight his way across Europe and past special forces teams from around the world in order to save the life of his handler and the handler's family." The New Regency film is set to shoot in the first quarter of 2012.