Steven Soderbergh is a man who doesn’t like to compromise his vision, and as his vision often involves idiosycratic or unusual approaches to subjects, that often leads to him butting heads with studios. For quite a while now he’s been attached to a big screen version of The Man From UNCLE at Warner Bros, the studio where he made the Ocean’s movies, but now he’s bailed on the movie.
However recently he’s been having a bit of casting trouble. George Clooney had to drop out as he’s having surgery and since then casting has been extremely problematic. Soderbergh wanted Michael Fassbender and Joel Kinnaman, but Warner didn’t. The studio then managed to irritate the director by working out deals with both those actors for other movies.
Various names, like Bradley Cooper, Joel Edgerton and Channing Tatum have been mooted, but it’s not known how close any of them really were to landing roles. Others, such as Johnny Depp and Matt Damon, were interested but couldn’t do the film due to scheduling issues. It appears finidng someone who was free and who was acceptable to both sides became virtually impossible if they were going to keep to the idea of shooting early next year.
Then Warner offered a budget of only $60 million, which Soderbergh felt simply wasn’t enough to do justice to the world of UNCLE, especially as the studio wants the film to be the beginning of a franchise. And so Soderbergh bailed.
Don’t worry though, the director has plenty to keep him busy, with Haywire out in January and the Liberace biopic Behind The Candelabra to prepare for.
What this means for Man From UNCLE isn’t clear, so we’ll have to wait and see whether Warner tries to find another director or just gives up on the long-gestating project.
General movie news courtesy of Movie Muser
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