Could Rupert Wyatt And Michael Fassbender Team With Warners For ‘Londongrad’?
By Russ Fischer/Nov. 7, 2011 10:00 am EST
Deadline announces the possible deal, but doesn’t have many more details. There was a point where Mike Newell was going to make the movie (it had the title The Terminal Spy at one point) and the David Scarpa script that Wyatt would work from has been set up at Warner Bros. for almost two years. That script is based on Alan Cowell’s book The Terminal Spy: A True Story of Espionage Betrayal and Murder. The long synopsis posted below will give you a good idea of why this story seems ripe for the screen, but also suggests why it might have taken so much time to get there.
The question will be whether or not Wyatt and WB can get Fassbender to do the film, given that he is just about the most popular actor going at the moment, with an uncommon ability to straddle very serious fare (Shame, Hunger) and popcorn material like X-Men and Prometheus. Fassbender is already set to work once more with Shame and Hunger director Steve McQueen on Twelve Years a Slave, and he’s got a role in the new Jim Jarmusch film. But neither movie is likely to take up a big chunk of his calendar, so WB might be able to sign him to play Litvinenko.
There’s another Litvinenko movie in development, too, as John Sayles recently told The Playlist he was writing a script about spy. Granted, Sayles has done a lot of rewrite work in his time, so there’s always the chance that he’s done a pass on the Scarpa script that is in use here.
