Speculation has been swirling for months about ITV making a new version of classic series The Prisoner. But there’s a new project on the starting grid – a movie based on the series, to be directed by The Prestige’s Chris Nolan.
Voted Most Confusing Plotting 1967, The Prisoner was dreamt up by writer/star Patrick McGoohan, who hatched the idea of a government spy who resigns, and who is then kidnapped and packed off to a bizarre island community known as The Village. Given the identity Number Six, he’s then probed for information as to why he decided to quit his job, all the while taking in the oddball behaviour of those around him. Existentialist telly at its most obscure, it only managed to stay on the screen for 17 episodes.
Now Nolan looks like the man to be bringing it to the masses, with Universal close to signing him up. He’ll be working from a script by David and Janet Peoples (who have experience with bizarre plots after writing 12 Monkeys) and – once the ink is dry on the contracts – will probably make this the film he shoots after Batman: The Dark Knight.