Christopher Nolan Walks Away from 'The Prisoner'

Did you know Christopher Nolan was working on a movie version of the old British TV show The Prisoner? Well, he's not, but apparently he was at one time. The show is a cult classic, about a spy who's essentially thrown in a burlap sack and dropped off in a great little resort town. If that little towen were a strange government-run prison that you couldn't leave. Great show, especially for its time, but it only lasted 17 episodes. For a show to live across the pond over 40 years after its dozen-and-a-half episodes tells you something about how much people admired The Prisoner. It would also be a great project for Christopher Nolan, as it turns out. I just didn't know he was lining that one up. According to producer Barry Mendel, who chatted to CineFools recently, "Chris Nolan has dropped out of it but we have a first draft by David and Janet Peoples who wrote Twelve Monkeys and David wrote Unforgiven." There's no new director in place but Mendel notes, "It's a good draft and we're working on the script right now." The rumor is that Nolan backed out of this project so he could get right to the next Batman film after InceptionInception and he's a guy who seems energized then drained by the process. So now that the batteries are charged, he may want to go full-bore into the next Caped Crusader movie, whatever that will be. As for The Prisoner...man, that's a really cool project for somebody to pick up.

Comments

[anybody]

Isn't remake of The Prisoner coming out on AMC in November? I think that might hurt its chances of being made into a feature.

[Sensaes]

He couldn't have made a worse job at it than AMC: http://community.livejournal.com/anti_gravitas/293134.html

[drew]

just finished watching amc's miniseries - patrick mcgoohan was right to want no part of it. not quirky or thrilling, highly mundane. As for 6, I didn't particularly care what happened to him , whereas in the original, I was rooting for number 6 from the first episode.