Joel Edgerton offered Kuryakin role, New York blog says

Actor Joel Edgerton has been offered the role of Russian agent Illya Kuryakin in Steven Soderbergh’s planned movie version of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., according to A REPORT in Vulture, an entertainment blog of New York magazine.

The post also includes this passage:

This has post has been corrected to note that our sources just clarified that Bradley Cooper is still weighing the role of Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn’s old part), but is waiting to commit until seeing who WB gets to play the role of Illya. If Edgerton signs on and Cooper approves, the A-Team star may still play Solo.

David McCallum, who plays Ducky on NCIS, was Kuryakin in the original 1964-68 series. The character was created by Sam Rolfe (who got a “developed by” credit in the original), and expanded by writer Alan Caillou.

The Vulture blog earlier this year published a list of everything Soderbergh had watched at home over a year’s time. It included almost all first-season episodes of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., an indication he was researching the original pretty thoroughly.

UPDATE: If you read the comment section of the Vulture post, it originally had some errors, calling the agents Nathaniel Solo and Ilya Kuryakin. A New York magazine staffer wrote, “@duckysgirl – Yep, we got the names wrong. Tongue lashing has been appropriately self-administered and spelling corrected.”

U.N.C.L.E. movie to include 1960s real world events

The upcoming movie based on The Man From U.N.C.L.E. will be based on real-life events in the 1960s, screenwriter Scott Z. Burns told the Cinema Blend Web site.

Here’s an excerpt from the post by writer Eric Eisenberg:

then asked if the story will be based on any of the episodes from the show’s four season run or the movies that were previously made, to which Burns said that some elements will be familiar, but it will be set more in a real world context. “I think if people know the show they’ll recognize tiny little things,” Burns said. “All those shows are called, like, “The Terbuf Affair” or whatever. Our affair comes from something that was actually going on in the world at the time.”

The post doesn’t provide which real-life event will be referenced. The pilot for the original show was being filmed when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated (that was the same day as star Robert Vaughn’s 31st birthday) and it premiered 23 months after the Cuban Missile Crisis. The post also says the script is finished. To read the Cinema Blend post, JUST CLICK HERE.

The television series ran from Sept. 22, 1964 through Jan. 15, 1968, and was developed by Sam Rolfe. The lead character of Napoleon Solo was created by executive producer Norman Felton and James Bond author Ian Fleming.