John Le Carre's spy stories are very much in right now.
Deadline are reporting that after the success of the Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie starring The Night Manager, Paramount TV are looking to adapt one of Le Carre's most famous books, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold into a miniseries.
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is very much of cold war setting so it's unlikely to be revised for modern day in the manner of The Night Manager but The Ink Factory who produced the latter are not giving away any details as to their plans thus yet.
What we do know is that Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire) will be on scripting duties. The story follows a disenchanted MI6 spymaster, Alec Leamas, in Berlin as he watches more and more of his agents get killed. Leamas is given a stark choice: a revenge mission or retirement.
There's been no official casting announcements yet but there are strong rumours that Aidan Gillen has been earmarked for the role of Leamas. After playing Littlefinger in Game of Thrones and former Taoiseach, Charles Haughey in Charlie we reckon he'll have plenty of experience in the kind of political manoeuvrings and shenanigans involved in the role.
Another intriguing detail is that The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is set in the same universe as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, with both Control (John Hurt) and George Smiley (Gary Oldman) featuring as key players.
While we won't hold our breaths for the announcement that Hurt and Oldman will be reprising their roles can we just take a minute to imagine how brilliant that would be? While promoting the movie, Oldman spoke about how much he loved playing the part after spending a decade mostly making blockbusters so maybe he could be tempted to appear in the series?
And hopefully he'll end up getting an Emmy nomination to make up for his Oscars snub.
