Chris McQuarrie (“The Usual Suspects”)is hard at work on bringing the classic '60’s show “The Prisoner” to the big screen. Okay, we’ve known that for a while. The good news is that he is not updating it - it will be set in the '60’s and he intends to keep the original premise intact. After seeing the mess they made of “The Avengers”, “The Wild, Wild West” and “Mission: Impossible”, this is great news indeed.
If moviemakers feel it necessary to do big-screen remakes of classic TV, why do they try to fix what’s not broken? Most of these work only in the period and paradigm they were originally set in, and updating them spoils the whole mix. More guns & explosions don’t make up for poor scripting and an almost total reliance on a familiar title and hot actor in the lead to sell the film. I’ve thought a return to the early '60’s cold-war James Bond could really revive a tired movie series.
Woo hoo!!! I didn’t know about this big screen project. No one ever knows what I’m talking about when I mention The Prisoner. I miss it so much! When I was in college the SciFi channel showed a marathon of every single episode. That was a little piece of heaven.
*In some place, at some time, all of you held positions of a secret nature, and had knowledge that was invaluable to an enemy. Like me, you are here to have that knowledge protected or extracted. Unlike me, many of you have accepted the situation of your imprisonment and will die here, like rotten cabbages. The rest of you have gone over to the side of our keepers. Which is which? How many of each? Who’s standing beside you now?
No word on casting yet. It is still in pre-production, but wiht McQuarrie writing & directing, they should be able to get a pretty high quality group. I think Patrick McGoohan as No. 2 would be a great choice. Maybe Tim Roth as #6.
How 'bout Gary Oldman, with McGoohan as Number 2? Both have a certain penchant for… energetically acting.
Hell, while we’re at it, why don’t we let them co-direct?
Seriously, though, I think one could easily take “The Schizoid Man,” pad it with an introduction, and leave it wide open for a sequel by simply keeping the last line: “Number 12 didn’t have a wife.” Or whatever it was.
Why is this a good thing? Don’t get me wrong, I am a fan of The Prisoner, but I’m not a fan of Hollywood’s treatment of TV show’s. Examples, The Wild, Wild West and Lost in Space, both were entertaining TV shows (not great, but entertaining) and both sucked donkeys as movies. I don’t have any faith that a big budget feature won’t be fowled up to the point of absuridty.
I’m with Adam. The TV show was just about the coolest thing ever – creepy, paranoid and so murky we thought it was deep. If they had had Emma Peele in a leather jumpsuit it would have been perfect.
Blow that up to a big-budget, big-screen production and it will be unwatchable.
Think Mission Impossible on TV versus the movie versions.
Okay, I’m no fan of these big-screen remakes of classic shows (see the second part of my OP), but since they are going to do it, there are better ways to go about it than the way they are normally filmed. That’s what I was getting at. As long as they are going to make “The Prisoner”, I’d rather have Chris McQuarrie in charge, and to have them keeping it in period and close to the original setup, rather than making it cool, hip, and cutting(yawn)-edge. That was what I meant about “good news”.
I’m just waiting to see when they put “Gilligan’s Island” up there with a budget of $110 million and Will Smith as Gilligan.
I was in portmerion a while back, its falling to bits, they will need to give it one hell of a makeover. Its about time somebody resurrected this supberb show, one of my alltime favourites, up there with twin peeks & noggin the nog. I would not be surprised to see it given an american slant though.
