Ridley Scott in talks to bring classic UK series The Prisoner to the screen
Deadline is reporting that 78-year-old director Ridley Scott–at a career high point right now due to the success of The Martian–is currently in talks with Universal to helm their long-gestating feature adaptation of classic TV series The Prisoner. William Monahan, who wrote Kingdom of Heaven and Body of Lies for Scott, wrote the most recent script after a previous draft by Christopher McQuarrie. Bluegrass Films Scott Stuber and Dylan Clark will produce.
The original ITV series was broadcast in the UK from 1967 to 1968 and starred Patrick McGoohan as a government agent who resigns, is kidnapped and placed on an isolated island known as the Village. He’s given a new identity–Number Six–and interacts with an island staff trying to get him to reveal why he resigned.
Although it only lasted 17 episodes, “The Prisoner” has had a long pop culture shelf life, including an annual Festival N°6 in the show’s Welsh filming location Portmeirion, an entire Season 12 episode of “The Simpsons” titled “The Computer Wore Menace Shoes” that parodied the show (with Patrick McGoohan reprising his role as Number Six), as well as a poorly-reviewed 6-part AMC miniseries remake starring Jim Caviezel and Ian McKellen in 2009.
In 2006, Christopher Nolan began work on a contemporized feature film version of The Prisoner for Universal Pictures with Janet and David Peoples (12 Monkeys) penning the screenplay, though that clearly fell by the wayside to make way for the similarly surreal Inception.
Scott is currently prepping the prequel/sequel Alien: Covenant as his next directing project for 20th Century Fox, which will land in theaters on October 6, 2017.
