John le Carré Teases New Smiley TV Series, Potentially Starring Jared Harris

In a great profile in Saturday's New York Times promoting his new novel Agent Running in the Field, author John le Carré  reveals that his sons' production company, The Ink Factory, are plotting an epic new TV series about his most famous character, spymaster George Smiley. "According to le Carré," asserts the article's author, Tobias Grey, "The Ink Factory now plans to do new television adaptations of all the novels featuring Cold War spy George Smiley - this time in chronological order. 'That means that if you actually go back to the first big conspiracies in The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, you've got to consider how Smiley ages and how young he was at that time,' le Carré says. That would mean finding an actor who can play younger than the Smiley incarnated by Gary Oldman in the film version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Le Carré says that his sons are interested in casting the British actor Jared Harris, whose performance they all admired in the recent TV mini-series Chernobyl." Harris (The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Allied), interestingly, was originally cast in Tomas Alfredson's 2011 le Carré  adaptation Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy as Circus (MI6) chief Percy Alleline, but had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts with Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, in which he played Professor Moriarty. Toby Jones took on the Alleline role, and embodied the character perfectly. Besides Oldman, Smiley has been played in the past by Denholm Elliott, James Mason, Rupert Davies, and, most memorably, Alec Guinness in two famous BBC miniseries.

A new miniseries version of The Spy Who Came In From the Cold was first announced back in 2016 as a follow-up to the hugely successful le Carré miniseries The Night Manager. Le Carré worked with the producers and writer to crack their take on the material, and that work led him to write a whole new sequel to the book, A Legacy of Spies, but did not yield a series. Instead, The Little Drummer Girl (2018) proved to be the next le Carré miniseries, but work continued on The Spy Who Came In From the Cold. Now, apparently, that project has grown in scope and morphed into this one. I've long craved a long-form TV series about le Carré's Circus, devoting a season to each book and dropping in the short stories from The Secret Pilgrim at the appropriate historical moments and, most crucially, finally giving us a television version of the (to date unfilmed) middle book in the Karla trilogy, The Honourable Schoolboy. This sounds like it could turn out to be exactly that! (Though hopefully they'll begin at the real beginning with Call For the Dead, and not The Spy Who Came In From the Cold.) It's a most tantalizing prospect!

Read my George Smiley Primer here.

Tradecraft: Jamie Bell Joins Clancy Adaptation WITHOUT REMORSE

It looks like this time, Paramount's decades-held hopes of making a movie out of Tom Clancy's epic saga Without Remorse are really going to happen! Last month, Variety reported that Jamie Bell will join the previously announced Michael B. Jordan (playing frequent Clancy hero John Clark) in the movie from director Stefano Sollima (helmer of the very Clancy-esque Sicario: Day of the Soldado). Bell will play a familiar character from the Tom Clancy universe, CIA Deputy Director of Operations Robert Ritter. Henry Czerny memorably essayed the role in 1994's Clear and Present Danger, in which Willem Dafoe played Clark.

Today, several more actors joined the cast, making this Without Remorse more and more of a reality! (Forgive my incredulity. It's just hard to believe this movie is finally happening after literally decades of development!) Deadline reports that Luke Mitchell (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), Jacob Scipio (Bad Boys For Life), Cam Gigandet (Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden), Jack Kesy (12 Strong), and Todd Lasance (Spartacus) are all signing on as members of Clark's SEAL team. Nearly all of them have played special forces operators before. Additionally, Jodie Turner-Smith (The Last Ship, The Neon Demon) has been cast as a potential love interest for Jordan.

According to the trade, "Without Remorse is the origin story of John Clark, played by Jordan, a Navy SEAL-turned-CIA ops officer, who seeks revenge after his girlfriend is killed by a Baltimore drug lord." That sounds more or less like the novel, so if this capsule summary comes from the studio (and not just a Deadline writer Wikipedia-ing the book), then perhaps we can expect a fairly faithful adaptation. What I'm guessing we won't get is a period piece. I doubt Clark will serve in Vietnam in this version; I suspect they'll make it contemporary. (This was the plan back when Tom Hardy was supposed to play Clark in a series intended to cross over with Chris Pine's intended Jack Ryan franchise.) Paramount are very eager to launch a new film franchise with this movie, already eyeing Clancy's Rainbow Six as a follow-up. Also unclear is whether there will be any crossover with Amazon's Jack Ryan TV series, which hails from the same producers. The Clark character has been kept out of that series so far because of the percolating film franchise, but that doesn't necessarily preclude a cameo from John Krasinski in Without Remorse....

Without Remorse is slated to open September 18, 2020.

Trailer for EON's New Spy Movie THE RHYTHM SECTION

On Friday Paramount dropped the trailer for the second most anticipated EON Production of 2020, The Rhythm Section! The Rhythm Section has been delayed several times (first when star Blake Lively suffered an on-set injury), but here's proof that it's finally really coming... and it looks great! While an adaptation of Mark Burnell's 1999 spy novel would be something for spy fans to be seriously excited about anyway, it's even more exciting because it hails from Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson's EON Productions, the producers behind the James Bond movies. While EON has been venturing outside the realm of 007 lately, this marks their first new foray into the genre that defined them—and that they defined, under the auspices of first-generation Bond producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman. And it's not only a new EON spy movie; it's potentially the start of a new, female-fronted EON spy series! (Burnell wrote four Stephanie Patrick thrillers.) Will Lively end up being the Sean Connery of a long lasting Stephanie Patrick film series?

The books are quite good, and remind me of a female Callan. Like Callan, Stephanie ends up working as an assassin for a particularly unpleasant boss in an ultra-secret branch of British Intelligence. And like Callan, she doesn't do this work by choice. Instead she's forced into it by that unpleasant boss. But she's also got very personal motivations (motivations he ruthlessly manipulates) for her initial mission: an opportunity to get revenge on the terrorists responsible for the death of her parents and siblings. Burnell's book is very dark and very serious, and judging from this trailer the movie will be true to that tone. In fact, the movie (directed by Reed Morano and scripted by Burnell himself) looks quite faithful to the book overall, though it's obvious that the ending has been changed, which was pretty much a given. (The villains' plot in the '99 book had eerie similarities to 9/11, which simply wouldn't play in today's world.) And it looks great!

The first of two major EON spy movies coming out next year, The Rhythm Section opens on January 31, 2020. It stars Blake Lively (The Age of Adaline), Jude Law (Spy), Raza Jaffrey (Spooks/MI-5), and Sterling K. Brown (Black Panther).

Bourne and Treadstone Live On in New Robert Ludlum Continuation Novels

After ten Bourne continuation novels (compared to just three by the character's creator), Eric Van Lustbader chose to hang up his proverbial holster last year, abandoning his previously announced eleventh series entry. But at the time I mused that probably wouldn't be the last we'd see of Robert Ludlum's bestselling character in print. And sure enough, it's not. The Ludlum estate isn't going to let that particular cash cow rest. In fact, they're doubling down! Not only will Bourne continuation novels resume next year under the stewardship of a new author, Brian Freeman (not to be confused with Charlie Muffin creator Brian Freemantle), but this fall will see the first book in a new series spun off from Ludlum's original Bourne trilogy, based on the Treadstone 71 program that first gave rise to the deadly Bourne identity. According to the Associated Press, Joshua Hood's The Treadstone Resurrection is due out September 17 as the first of the estate's new four-book deal with Putnam. It will be followed in 2020 by The Bourne Conspiracy by Brian Freeman. (If that title sounds familiar, it was also used for a Sierra videogame in 2008.) Hood is a veteran of the 82nd Airborne Division and author of two military thrillers with good ratings on Amazon. Freeman is the author of multiple psychological thrillers, with three different series characters. Jason Bourne (aka David Webb) was created by Robert Ludlum and first appeared in his seminal 1980 novel The Bourne Identity (review here).

According to the publisher's blurb for The Treadstone Resurrection:

The first novel in an explosive new series inspired by Robert Ludlum's Bourne universe, The Treadstone Resurrection introduces an unforgettable hero and the shadowy world that forged him...

Treadstone made Jason Bourne an unstoppable force, but he's not the only one.

Operation Treadstone has nearly ruined Adam Hayes. The top-secret CIA Black Ops program trained him to be an all but invincible assassin, but it also cost him his family and any chance at a normal life. Which is why he was determined to get out. Working as a carpenter in rural Washington state, Adam thinks he has left Treadstone in the past, until he receives a mysterious email from a former colleague, and soon after is attacked by an unknown hit team at his job site.

Adam must regain the skills that Treadstone taught him--lightning reflexes and a cold conscience--in order to discover who the would-be killers are and why they have come after him now. Are his pursuers enemies from a long-ago mission? Rival intelligence agents? Or, perhaps, forces inside Treadstone? His search will unearth secrets in the highest levels of government and pull him back into the shadowy world he worked so hard to forget.

Hm. I have to admit, I'm a little dubious.... First, this version of Treadstone seems closer akin to the version in the popular Matt Damon movies than the one established by Ludlum in The Bourne Identity novel. Which makes sense, I suppose, since more people today probably know the character and the organization from the films, but personally I would hope for the author's estate to hew closer to his books. Second, I worry that this book may fall into the same traps that ensnared the Jeremy Renner Bourne spinoff movie, The Bourne Legacy (review here). Namely, why do the same exact thing that we've seen with the actual Bourne—namely, putting another former agent on the run from his own people? Why not try something different and show an active agent working successfully with and for the program? At least that would be a fresh take. But we'll see! Maybe this book will prove completely fresh.

Treadstone will also be resurfacing soon as a new USA TV series spun off from the films. I'm sure that's the reason for the Treadstone books, but I have no idea if they'll actually tie into the show at all or not. I would guess not. Van Lustbader's continuation novels were completely separate from the movies (even if they were clearly more inspired by Damon's virile take on the character than Ludlum's aging, reluctant assassin last seen in The Bourne Ultimatum—a very decisive conclusion to the series and fitting swan song for the literary chracter), despite both sharing the title The Bourne Legacy. My guess is that will be the case with Treadstone as well.

Tradecraft: KOLYMSKY HEIGHTS Miniseries in the Works

Interior artwork from the U.S. paperback

Deadline reports that the BBC Studios-backed production company Moonage Pictures has optioned Lionel Davidson's legendary final novel, Kolymsky Heights (1994) to adapt as a miniseries. As the trade puts it, the novel "tells the story of an Oxford Professor, who receives an envelope containing nothing but two cigarette papers, which begins a chain of events that will change the course of history. Set just after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the story follows Johnny Porter’s attempt to infiltrate the most secret research facility in Russia – a laboratory buried deep underground, a place nobody has ever left alive. Porter’s quest takes him over the Arctic Ocean and into deepest Siberia – constantly switching identities as he goes."

Davidson rose to prominence as a writer of spy thrillers in the 1960s, debuting with The Night of Wenceslas, which was adapted as the immensely entertaining 1964 movie Hot Enough For June (aka Agent 8 3/4) starring Dirk Bogarde, Sylva Koscina, and Leo McKern. He wrote spy novels for adults and, under the pseudonym David Line, for children fairly consistently throughout the Sixties and Seventies before going dormant in the early Eighties. He then re-emerged in the Nineties to great acclaim with Kolymsky Heights, and then never published another novel, dying in 2009. The book had gone out of print and Davidson had faded into relative obscurity until bestselling The Golden Compass author Philip Pullman talked it up, calling it "the best thriller I've ever read." The subsequent demand prompted Faber & Faber to issue a new edition in 2015.

According to Deadline, Moonage Pictures was "set up by a handful of Peaky Blinders execs," including "veteran Tiger Aspect exec Will Gould, former BBC Drama Commissioner Matthew Read and Tiger Drama’s Frith Tiplady." They've produced the Sean Bean action drama Curfew for Sky One, and are currently in production on the new sci-fi show Intergalactic. Read has a real passion for this project, telling the trade, "Lionel Davidson’s sensational novel has been at the top of my wish-list to adapt for a very long time. It has all the flair of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, combined with the awe of The Revenant, and in Johnny Porter it has that same elemental will to survive at its core. It’s a breath-taking adventure, and it demands the time and the ambition that only long form TV today can offer."

This will not be the first miniseries based on Davidson's work. His Cold War children's adventure Run For Your Life formed the basis for the beloved 1974 ITV miniseries Soldier and Me (available on Region 2 DVD from Network in the UK), and his 1978 novel The Chelsea Murders was adapted on Thames Television's Armchair Thriller series in 1981 (also available from Network, as, for that matter, is Hot Enough for June).

Dynamite's LIVE AND LET DIE Graphic Novel Due This Fall

While the publisher hasn't officially announced it yet, there is now an Amazon listing for Dynamite's second Ian Fleming graphic novel adaptation, Live and Let Die. According to the listing it's due out September 24, but that's probably best taken with a grain of salt considering their Casino Royale adaptation was delayed multiple times. While Denis Calero handled art chores on that book, Kewber Baal takes over for the second title. Baal is an old hand in the Dynamite stable, having contributed to volumes of their ongoing Army of Darkness, KISS, Jennifer Blood, and Green Hornet comics, among others. Van Jensen again pens the adaptation. The very cool cover art (which may not be final) nods to the famous poster for the Roger Moore movie, while remaining true to the content of the novel. It's unclear whether it's by Fay Dalton, who created the cover for Casino Royale along with the art for those beautiful Folio Society Fleming editions. It's not in quite the same style we're used to from her, but it is gorgeous! The 168-page hardcover will retail for $24.99 and can be pre-ordered now. Here's Dynamite's description:

In this second adaptation of the Fleming novels, Bond is sent to New York City to investigate "Mr. Big", an agent of SMERSH and a criminal voodoo leader. With no time for superstition―and with the help of his colleague in the CIA, Felix Leiter, Bond tracks "Mr. Big" through the jazz joints of Harlem, to the everglades and on to the Caribbean, knowing that this criminal heavy hitter is a real threat. No-one, not even the mysterious Solitaire, can be sure how their battle of wills is going to end… 

Thanks to Jack for the heads-up!

AGENT RUNNING IN THE FIELD: New John le Carré Novel Coming in 2019!

John le Carré announced a new novel today, coming in 2019! He may be in the second half of his Eighties now, but, happily, the undisputed master of the spy genre keeps going strong. While either a personal memoir (2016's The Pigeon Tunnel) or a novel revisiting his most famous character, George Smiley, one last(?) time (2017's A Legacy of Spies) both seemed like they might be fitting moments to retire, le Carré clearly still has more to say. Agent Running in the Field will be released by Penguin/Viking on October 17, 2019 in the UK, and October 22, 2019 in the U.S. UK bookseller Waterstones and Amazon UK already has it available to pre-order. Here's the publisher's blurb on the new thriller:

Set in London in 2018, Agent Running in the Field follows a twenty-six year old solitary figure who, in a desperate attempt to resist the political turbulence swirling around him, makes connections that will take him down a very dangerous path. In his plot and characterisation le Carré is as thrilling as ever and in the way he writes about our times he proves himself, once again, to be the greatest chronicler of our age.

Agent Running in the Field will be the author's 25th novel. His first, Call for the Dead (review here) was published in 1961. Le Carré's work continues to be popular in other mediums as well. There have been recent feature film adaptations of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, A Most Wanted Man, and Our Kind of Traitor, and television miniseries versions of The Night Manager and, most recently, The Little Drummer Girl, based on his 1983 novel. Park Chan-Wook's visually stunning six-part adaptation recently aired on AMC in America and the BBC in Britain.

Tradecraft: Paramount Picks SICARIO Sequel Director Sollima to Direct Michael B. Jordan in Tom Clancy's WITHOUT REMORSE

Deadline reports that Sicario: Day of the Soldado director Stefano Sollima is in talks to direct Michael B. Jordan in Paramount's next Tom Clancy movie, Without Remorse.

After a couple of underperforming movies, Clancy's famous CIA analyst Jack Ryan has finally found success on TV thanks to Amazon. Now Paramount hopes to build a new feature franchise around Clancy's other main hero, covert warrior John Clark. In September, Deadline reported that the studio has tapped Michael B. Jordan (Black Panther, Fruitvale Station) to star.

Clark, who became known as "Jack Ryan's dark side," was first introduced in Clancy's third Ryan novel, The Cardinal of the Kremlin in 1987, but retconned in Clear and Present Danger (when field man Clark and analyst Ryan finally meet face to face) to have also played an important role in the events of Patriot Games. He went on to take center stage in the Clancy novels Without Remorse (which goes back to Vietnam) and Rainbow Six. Clark is a former Navy Seal and off-books CIA field operator. In the films, he's been played by Willem Dafoe (in Clear and Present Danger opposite Harrison Ford as Ryan) and Liev Schrieber (in The Sum of All Fears opposite Ben Affleck).

Paramount hopes, of course, to launch a franchise. The plan is to start with Without Remorse, then do Rainbow Six. This is the reason that Clark has, sadly, not appeared on Amazon's TV show Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan. Because the studio was planning a film, they didn't allow the show's producers to use Clark. That's really too bad, as both characters work better together. In the books, they compliment each other, as Ryan is frequently deskbound, and Clark is always up to his neck in action. There was a plan a few years ago to (re-)introduce Clark and Ryan individually in two feature films, Without Remorse and Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, respectively, with This Means War co-stars Tom Hardy and Chris Pine playing Clark and Ryan (again, respectively), then team them up, Marvel-style, in a third film. (At that point Mission: Impossible - Fallout director Christopher McQuarrie was attached to Without Remorse.) Sadly, Shadow Recruit bombed and those plans never came to fruition. (Hardy has also been linked to another Clancy franchise, Splinter Cell.)

Italian director Sollima, who first achieved international acclaim for his mob drama Gomorra, is a good choice to launch a potential Clancy franchise. His Sicario sequel was more than a tad Clancy-esque, playing at first like an unofficial adaptation of Clear and Present Danger before going a different direction in its second half. Sollima did a good job blending compelling characterizations with military hardware fetishism, a crucial skill set for tackling Clancy material. Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind) will produce alongside Jordan and screenwriting duo Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec (Alias, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol).

It's unclear whether Sollima's Without Remorse will be a Vietnam-era period piece like the book (which would be fantastic!), or updated to a contemporary setting. Sadly, I suspect the latter. (Though if I were the president of Paramount, I would seriously consider the franchise prospects of a historical setting, which could ultimately follow Clark through three decades of CIA covert actions across multiple films....)

Eric Van Lustbader Quits as Bourne Continuation Author

Bestselling author Eric Van Lustbader announced today in an exclusive interview with The Real Book Spy that he is stepping down as the official author of the Jason Bourne continuation novels. Lustbader was hired by Robert Ludlum's estate in the early 2000s to continue the adventures of Ludlum's famous amnesiac assassin character following the success of the Matt Damon movies, despite Ludlum's own Bourne trilogy having reached a pretty definitive conclusion. From 2004 to 2016, Lustbader wrote ten Jason Bourne novels, far outpacing the character's creator. Furthermore, the author's previously announced eleventh Bourne novel, The Bourne Nemesis, will likely never see completion.

"What I found," he told the website,"when I started to go back and work on polishing the draft, was that I just didn’t want to do it. Every time I would sit down to do it, I would start writing something else and that made me realize, finally, that I just didn’t want to do it anymore." He elaborated, "I had pretty much said everything that I wanted to say with Bourne, and . . . I wanted to do something different. Something more."

Lustbader has maintained a grueling schedule over this past decade, most years producing both a Bourne continuation novel and an original novel featuring his own characters. He's not the first continuation author to become fatigued. John Gardner also grew weary balancing a James Bond novel every year during the 1980s and early '90s with his own (considerably lengthier) spy fiction (the excellent Herbie Kruger novels and the Secret Generations epic). Writing schedules like that can't be easy!

This likely isn't the last of Jason Bourne on the printed page. The Ian Fleming estate (operating first as Glidrose Publications, and later Ian Fleming Publications) commissioned Raymond Benson to continue the Bond series, and later settled on a strategy of appointing different authors for different books, with Anthony Horowitz recently becoming the first writer since Benson to pen more than one novel in the main series. The Ludlum Estate has followed a similar strategy with other series created by the late novelist. Numerous writers have tried their hands at Covert-One novels (a series which was handed off to other writers even in Ludlum's lifetime, and indeed created with that strategy in mind), and at least two writers have continued the adventures of Paul Janson, hero of one of Ludlum's final novels, The Janson Directive (review here). I strongly suspect we'll see another new Bourne novel sooner or later with a new name on the cover.

Meanwhile, head over to The Real Book Spy to read the entire, in-depth interview with Lustbader including his future plans.

Trailer for Park Chan-Wook's John le Carré Miniseries THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL

AMC has released the first full trailer for their latest BBC co-production, a follow-up to the hugely successful 2016 John le Carré adaptation The Night Manager. This time the same producers at The Ink Factory (including le Carré and his sons Simon and Stephen Cornwell) chose to tackle the author's 1983 tome The Little Drummer Girl, and they brought on the great Park Chan-Wook (Oldboy, The Handmaiden) to direct. The imagery in this trailer is as haunting and awesome as I expected from him! The Little Drummer Girl follows Charlie, a naive young English actress recruited by Israeli Intelligence into the "theater of the real"– to infiltrate a Palestinian terror organization. She soon finds herself seduced by both sides and caught in the middle. Florence Pugh (King Lear) stars as Charlie, Alexander Skarsgård (Big Little Lies) plays Becker, the enigmatic stranger who seduces, recruits, and eventually handles her, and Michael Shannon (The Shape of Water) plays a ruthlessly clever, masterfully manipulative, somewhat Smiley-like Mossad spymaster, Kurtz. The miniseries will air on AMC over three consecutive nights in two-hour episodes, premiering November 19 at 9 PM ET/PT. Additional episodes will air at 9 ET/PT on November 20 and November 21. It's expected to play on BBC in the UK around the same time.

Tradecraft: Sony Brings Teenage Superspy Alex Rider to Television

Teenage superspy Alex Rider is plotting a return to the screen. But it will be the small screen this time. Deadline reports that Sony has boarded Eleventh Hour Films' 8-episode miniseries adaptation of Anthony Horowitz's second Alex Rider novel, Point Blanc. (In America it was published as Point Blank, effectively crushing Horowitz's titular pun... probably on the same insulting assumption that Americans can't pronounce French words that led to Casino Royale initially being published in paperback here as You Asked For It.) The first Rider novel, Stormbreaker, was adapted into the 2006 feature film Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker (review here), starring Alex Pettyfer, which fizzled at the U.S. box office after being terminally mishandled by The Weinstein Company. Eleventh Hour (Foyle's War) is Horowitz's wife's production company, and they've been trying to jumpstart new screen adventures for the hero of Horowitz's immensely popular YA spy series for a while now. Last year, ITV (home of wildly successful Horowitz-created dramas like Foyle's War and Midsummer Murders) had been in talks to produce an Alex Rider TV series, but they are no longer involved. According to the trade,  Eleventh Hour developed the new project on spec, and Sony will fully fund and look for broadcast or platform partners. Guy Burt (The Bletchley Circle) will pen the adaptation. Horowitz, who adapted Stormbreaker himself for the 2006 film, will executive produce.

Anthony Horowitz is one of Britain's most prolific and successful writers, straddling multiple mediums and somehow always hitting a home run. He created the excellent wartime mystery drama Foyle's War (starring GoldenEye's Michael Kitchen), which frequently featured espionage plots before morphing into a full-fledged spy drama as WWII ended in its timeline and the Cold War dawned. In a stroke of genius, Horowitz had the bright idea to combine James Bond with Harry Potter to create a YA sensation in the Alex Rider series, often turning to Ian Fleming for inspiration. Stormbreaker was largely modeled on Fleming's Moonraker plot (a wise idea, since kids were unlikely to be familiar with that since the movie was so different), and Point Blanc was a loose reworking of On Her Majesty's Secret Service (another safe bet since it's the film kids would be least likely to have seen). This approach evidently caught the eye of Ian Fleming Publications, who not only sought to create their own YA series with Charlie Higson's Young Bond books, but also eventually hired Horowitz to pen two official, adult James Bond continuation novels, Trigger Mortis and Forever And a Day. (I hope there will be more!) Horowitz has also produced bestselling Sherlock Holmes continuation novels as well as original adult mystery novels like Magpie Murders and The Word is Murder.

I really hope this new television take on Alex Rider proves successful and leads to adaptations of all the books!

Podcast: Reviews of RED SPARROW and THE KREMLIN'S CANDIDATE

I've participated in another episode of Shane Whaley's excellent spy-themed podcast Spybrary, one that went live last week. (We recorded it in the spring, shortly after the release of the Red Sparrow film.) In it, Spy Write blogger Jeff Quest and I discuss Jason Matthews' Red Sparrow trilogy, and the Jennifer Lawrence film adaptation. Matthews' Red Sparrow is one of my favorite spy novels of this century, but my feelings about the sequels are more complex, as are Jeff's. Listen to the podcast to hear them!

Also be sure to check out all the previous episodes of Spybrary that I've been on:

Episode 6: John le Carré's Call for the Dead
Episode 18: John le Carré's A Legacy of Spies
Episode 19: Desmond Bagley's Running Blind
Episode 49: Donald Hamilton's The Interlopers

From those links, you'll find all episodes available on iTunes, Google Play, and all your favorite Podcast listening apps. You can also download them. And if you really like Spybrary, consider backing it on Patreon!

Trailer: DAMASCUS COVER

We've been waiting for this one for a long time! Now, finally, Damascus Cover, the movie version of Howard Kaplan's 1977 Syria-set spy novel starring Jonathan Rhys-Meyers (Mission: Impossible III) and, in his final role, John Hurt (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) that we first heard about way back in early 2015 is finally opening in the United States.. today! Check out the trailer below and check out the movie in select theaters. Or pre-order the DVD, due out September 4, from Amazon.

Easton Press Publishes Signed, Leatherbound Limited Edition of THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD

Connecticut-based publisher Easton Press, renowned for their beautiful, leatherbound editions, have announced a new release sure to interest all spy fans. John le Carré's seminal 1964 masterpiece The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, still inevitably cited as a touchstone every time a new, twisty, brooding, serious spy novel comes out, is the latest le Carré title to receive the Easton treatment. In addition to each copy being hand-signed by the author, according to the publisher, "this Easton Press exclusive edition features premium leather binding, a hubbed spine accented with true 22kt gold, gilded page ends, moiré endsheets, and a satin bookmark." Dimensions of the 256-page book are 5 1/2” x 8 1/2”. Easton's signed edition of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy came with a certificate of authenticity that was itself signed not only as le Carré (a pen name), but also as David Cornwell (the author's real name)... which I found quite neat! I would expect that to be the case once again with this book.

Easton doesn't report the limitations of their books, but they are limited. Once the signed stock sells out, it's gone, and the books become collectors' items inevitably commanding high prices on Ebay. Their last le Carré release, for example, a 3-volume set of the Karla Trilogy with the first, the aforementioned Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, signed by the author, is now all sold out. For now, however, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold can be ordered directly from the publisher for 4 monthly installments of $32.

While other le Carré books (including Tinker, Tailor) have had previous leather editions in the past, this edition surprisingly marks the first ever time that what is arguably the author's most famous work has been published in leather. (It did, however, receive an excellent illustrated, slipcased treatment from The Folio Society last year, which is still available--and highly recommended!)

Other notable Easton Press spy titles over the years include leather editions of le Carré's A Perfect Spy (this is a really cool book, with a "secret code"-themed pattern on the cover), William F. Buckley, Jr.'s Saving the Queen, Robert Ludlum's The Parsifal Mosaic, James Grady's Six Days of the Condor, the entire run of Ian Fleming James Bond titles (From Russia With Love actually got the Easton treatment twice), and Anthony Horowitz's first Bond novel, Trigger Mortis. All together, they make for a very impressive shelf or two in any good spy library!

Full Trailer: CONDOR (2018)

Following up on March's teaser trailer, The Audience Network (yeah, that's a thing) has released the full trailer for their TV reimagining of 3 Days of the Condor entitled Condor. James Grady's novel Six Days of the Condor is one of the genre's all-time classics. Sydney Pollack then made it into one of the all-time classic spy films, Three Days of the Condor. Can lightning strike thrice? Can the same story now be successfully adapted once again, into a different medium? Well, it worked for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, so I suppose it's just possible... but obviously a long shot. Still, this full trailer looks pretty good, even if it seems clear that they've ditched the brilliant purpose of the CIA department Condor works for in both original versions.

As we first learned over a year ago, the series protagonist played by Max Irons (Crooked House) will be named Joe Turner, like Robert Redford's character in the film, and not Ronald Malcolm, as in the book. But the movie was close enough to its source material (despite a few key differences) that if the TV series is at all faithful to either, it should at least resemble both. Katherine Cunningham (The Playboy Club) takes on the Faye Dunaway role of Kathy Hale (again using the character's movie name rather than book name), and 20-year-old Israeli Arab actress Leem Lubany (Rock the Casbah) plays Gabrielle Joubert, a variation on the iconic role of the professional killer played so memorably by Max Von Sydow in the film. William Hurt, Mira Sorvino, Brendan Fraser, and Bob Balaban also star.

Condor premieres June 1 on The Audience network. My understanding is that the Audience Network was previously only available to DirecTV satellite subscribers, but now there is an app, DirecTV Now (similar to HBO Go, I think), that allows users to stream it on various set-top devices. I haven't done this myself, and can't vouch for it. But come June, I will have to figure out how to see it, and this seems the easiest way.

Tradecraft: John Cena Replaces Dwayne Johnson in Ludlum Movie THE JANSON DIRECTIVE

It's been a while since we've heard about any movement on the Robert Ludlum film front. After the success of the Bourne franchise, there were all sorts of reports of new adaptations of Ludlum bestsellers like The Chancellor Manuscript (at one point Martin Scorsese was supposed to direct Leonard DiCaprio), The Matarese Circle (once set to team Tom Cruise and Denzel Washington before the Cruise-run United Artists imploded), The Osterman Weekend (a remake once set to be Simon Kinberg's directorial debut, and later a vehicle for RED director Robert Schwetke), The Sigma Protocol (long in development with producer Irwin Winkle), The Parsifal Mosaic (Ron Howard and, tantalizingly, Zhang Yimou had both kicked the tires as potential directors), and The Janson Directive. That last one seemed the most likely to move forward, as the world's biggest star Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was attached to topline, and because the Ludlum estate has kept a Janson book franchise going along the lines of the Bourne series, hiring other authors to pen continuation novels about Ludlum's sniper hero. (Even Ludlum's original Janson tale, The Janson Directive, was finished by another author, and published posthumously.) But it had been quite a while since we'd heard anything about this film, and I'd assumed it had gone the way of so many other projects (like Shane Black's Doc Savage) that Johnson attaches himself to but ultimately doesn't have room for on his busy slate. Apparently, that's not the case! Johnson must believe in the property, because he remains involved as a producer. But he's tapped a protege to take over starring duties on the Universal film.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, fellow wrestler-turned-actor John Cena will step in to star. Cena is hot right now, coming off of a major comedic success in Blockers after steadily building a mainstream comedy career with smaller roles in movies like Trainwreck, Sisters, and Daddy's Home 2 after first fizzling by following the typical wrestler path of paint-by-numbers action vehicles like The Marine (2006) and 12 Rounds (2009). He has, however, maintained his dramatic chops by appearing in Doug Liman's experimental Iraq horror movie The Wall. But most of all, he's proven himself to be an immensely charming and likable screen presence, much like Johnson. So it makes sense for the latter to anoint the former his successor. (Johnson first made the announcement on social media.)

In The Wall, Cena played a spotter for a sniper; in The Janson Directive he'll play a sniper himself - a former SEAL who now runs a private security firm and ends up taking on a younger female apprentice. The Ludlum novel (review here) saw Janson lead a team on a disastrous rescue mission that left him on the run from governments and terrorists alike. As he trotted the globe in an effort to clear his name, he ended up uncovering a conspiracy with ties to his own past military service and reaching (thrillingly) all the way to the highest levels of the U.S. government. Of course, in the post-Bourne Identity world there is no guarantee whatsoever that a Ludlum-based movie will actually follow much of the master plotter's plot. One key divergence is obvious already. The Janson of the book is the proverbial old gunslinger, a Vietnam vet now well past his prime and running form his past. That Janson would have been a great role for Liam Neeson. If any of Ludlum's plot is retained, presumably Janson's military service and the horrific incident that still haunts him will now take place in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The trade reports that James Vanderbilt (The Losers, White House Down) will pen the script from a story he and Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind) adapted together. (John Hlavin penned a previous draft for Universal.) The pair will also produce, along with Ludlum rights holders Captivate Entertainment's Ben Smith and Jeffrey Weiner and Johnson's regular producing partner Hiram Garcia. Johnson and Dany Garcia will executive produce. No director has yet been named.

With Cena set to star, I'm a lot more hopeful that this movie will actually happen! (His dance card isn't nearly as full as The Rock's, and he's at the perfect stage of his career to launch a new spy franchise.) And I always welcome any new Robert Ludlum based movies.

Read my review of Ludlum's novel The Janson Directive here.
Purchase The Janson Directive on Amazon here.

Tradecraft: Amma Assante to Direct Tolkachev Movie BILLION DOLLAR SPY

Variety reports that British director Amma Asante (Belle) will helm a movie about legendary Cold War spy Adolf Tolkachev, based on David E. Hoffman’s book The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal. Tolkachev was the chief designer at the USSR’s Research Institute of Radio Engineering and became one of the CIA's top assets, delivering to the Agency tens of thousands of pages of highly classified documents about Soviet radar and other technologies between 1979 and 1985. Asante's most recent film, A United Kingdom, starred David Olyelowo (Spooks/MI-5) and Rosamund Pike (Die Another Day). Benjamin August, who penned Atom Egoyan's 2015 holocaust revenge drama Remember, starring Christopher Plummer and Martin Landau, will write the script. Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind) will produce with Walden Media and Weed Road Pictures.

Tradecraft: James Gray to Direct I AM PILGRIM

MGM is moving forward with their feature version of Terry Hayes' bestselling spy novel I am Pilgrim. Deadline reports that James Gray (The Lost City of Z, We Own the Night) has closed a deal to direct. Kingsman helmer Matthew Vaughn was previously attached, but opted to focus on the Kingsman sequel instead. Hayes, who was a prolific screenwriter before turning novelist, has adapted his book himself. I Am Pilgrim follows a Nicolai Hel- or Derek Flint-like perfect super-agent, code-named "Pilgrim," who comes out of retirement to solve an engrossing locked room mystery (where the killer has used Pilgrim's own obscure book on forensic science to create the perfect crime), and simultaneously save America from a terrorist threat of astronomical proportions and a terrorist mastermind, "Saracen," capable of carrying it out. It's an exciting, globe-hopping adventure in the Ludlum vein with the action mainly taking place in New York, Turkey, and the Middle East. According to the trade, the James Bond studio is interested in launching another spy franchise, though so far, there have been no sequels to the book. (Follow-ups have been rumored, but not confirmed. Hayes' next book is apparently unrelated.) I suppose the implication could be that the studio plans to turn the existing book into more than one movie. It's long enough, and packed with enough subplots, that you could probably get three movies out of I Am Pilgrim alone. In fact, it's difficult to imagine how the entire book could be packed into just one feature without losing a whole lot. (And I fear the first to be jettisoned would be the second locked room mystery, in Turkey, which was actually my favorite part.) Whatever route they choose, however, this book certainly has potential to launch a major spy franchise. This is definitely a project to keep an eye on!

First Teaser Trailer: CONDOR TV Series

It was just over three years ago that we first heard Three Days of the Condor would be remade as a TV series. Last week AT&T's Audience Network released the first trailer for their upcoming series, Condor (a simplified title that, while lacking some coolness, conveniently avoids the potentially limiting question of a specified number of days altogether), a reimagining of one of the spy genre's cornerstone stories, based on James Grady's classic 1974 novel Six Days of the Condor and Sydney Pollack's iconic 1975 film of it, Three Days of the Condor. While the trailer doesn't look very familiar to fans of the movie or the novel, the description on the show's official website does:

Joe Turner has always been conflicted about his work for the CIA. But when something he’s discovered gets his entire office killed, leaving Joe as the only survivor and forcing him to go on the run, the theoretical reservations he’s always harbored turn into all-too-real moral dilemmas. Under life or death pressure, Joe will be forced to redefine who he is and what he’s capable of in order to discover who’s behind this far-reaching conspiracy, and stop them from completing their deadly objective that threatens the lives of millions. Inspired by Paramount’s Sydney Pollack 1975 political thriller Three Days of the Condor. Condor stars Max Irons, William Hurt, Leem Lubany, Mira Sorvino, Brendan Fraser, and Bob Balaban.

So, as we first learned a year ago, the series protagonist played by Max Irons (Crooked House) will be named Joe Turner, like Robert Redford's character in the film, and not Ronald Malcolm, as in the book. But the movie was close enough to its source material (despite a few key differences) that if the TV series is at all faithful to either, it should at least resemble both. Katherine Cunningham (The Playboy Club) takes on the Faye Dunaway role of Kathy Hale (again using the character's movie name rather than book name), and 20-year-old Israeli Arab actress Leem Lubany (Rock the Casbah) plays Gabrielle Joubert, a variation on the iconic role of the professional killer played so memorably by Max Von Sydow in the film.

When it was first announced, the project was described as a limited series (what we used to call miniseries). But that's changed, and now it's just referred to as a series. Should we get subsequent seasons, I would love to see them based on some of Grady's later Condor novels--especially the overlooked second one, Shadow of the Condor. I kind of doubt that will happen, but it would be cool.

My understanding is that the Audience Network was previously only available to DirecTV satellite subscribers, but now there is an app, DirecTV Now (similar to HBO Go, I think), that allows users to stream it on various set-top devices. I haven't done this myself, and can't vouch for it. But when Condor premieres this June, I will have to figure out how to see it, and this seems the easiest way.

Ridley Scott to Direct QUEEN & COUNTRY?

Every couple of years we Queen & Country fans get another little nugget that maybe Greg Rucka is planning another comics series, or maybe something's happening with the forever stuck in development movie. Last week was time for the latest movie rumors. The Wrap reports that powerhouse director Ridley Scott (Body of Lies, Adam Adamant Lives!) is in talks to direct it for Fox. The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed the story.

For those who don't know, Queen & Country is a multi-media spy series by Greg Rucka, spanning a comic book series (handily collected now in four omnibus editions) and three novels. It's heavily inspired by the incredible Seventies TV series The Sandbaggers, but also distinctive in its own right with a cast of terrific, believable, flawed characters. Foremost among them are SIS field agent Tara Chace and her boss, spymaster Paul Crocker, representing, respectively, the field and desk sides of the story. As with The Sandbaggers, Crocker's bureaucratic and political entanglements back at HQ are equally compelling (if not more so) to Tara's life-and-death struggles in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Georgia, Uzbekistan, and other international hotspots. Queen & Country was one of the main inspirations for me in starting this blog, and the subject of my fourth ever post on the blog's first day of existence nearly twelve years ago, in which I called the series "the best current, ongoing spy saga in any medium." Sadly it hasn't been current for years (the last novel was published in 2011, and only a few more comic issues trickled out after that), but it remains one of the genre's all-time high water marks. And I would love to see Tara and her cohorts on the screen. Yet we've heard enough sporadic updates on that adaptation before over the years that I can't help remain skeptical until the cameras actually start to roll--or at least until the studio sets a start date.

Originally, Leverage creator John Rogers penned the script, and at one point Nicole Kidman was attached to star. Later, Ryan Condal (creator of the TV series Colony) came on board to write a draft. In 2013, Ellen Page was attached to star, hot off of Inception and Juno. A few years ago, Seth Meyers (a vocal fan of Queen & Country, who has also discussed the comic with fellow enthusiast Rachel Maddow when she was a guest) asked her if she was still attached and she said yes, but apparently that's now changed. In 2014 commercial director Craig Viveiros came aboard, but now The Wrap reports that "neither [Page nor Viveiros] is still connected to the project." According to their story, Scott, fresh off of All the Money in the World (a gritty 1970s period piece in which Mark Wahlberg plays a former CIA officer), is in talks to direct and produce. It's unclear from the story who the writer of note is at the moment, but their description makes it seem like his version would be based on Rucka's first Queen & Country novel, A Gentleman's Game. Previous drafts appeared to be based on the first two arcs of the comic book (again, just based on capsule descriptions in trades).

I really hope this comes to pass! Scott has the clout to finally get this movie made (though he is fickle and has abandoned other spy projects in the past, like a feature version of The Prisoner), and to attract a big star to play the plum role of Tara. In a 2007 post I chose my own fantasy cast and picked Kelly Macdonald (Trainspotting, Boardwalk Empire) as my ideal Tara, but she probably doesn't have the star wattage to get the film greenlit, and Scott may wish to cast younger. I think either Emily Blunt (Charlie Wilson's War) or Saorise Ronan (Hanna, Lady Bird) would be great choices. I still see Hugh Laurie (The Night Manager) as the only possible Crocker!

Read my review of the third Queen & Country novel, The Last Run, here.
Order Queen & Country: The Definitive Edition - Volume 1 here.
Order Queen & Country: A Gentleman's Game here.