After many others have tried, Batman Begins director Christopher Nolan will attempt to condense the cerebral 17-episode series The Prisoner into a coherent feature film.
Some time after he’s done telling the next chapter in the saga of The Dark Knight (which I still say should be titled Batman Persists or Batman Keeps On Keepin’ On), Nolan will become the latest in a long line of Hollywood people striving to bring the goddamn brilliant 60s BBC TV show to theaters. Nolan, who already imparted a cinematic mindjob with Memento, has writers David and Janet Peoples (12 Monkeys) assisting with this new version for Universal.
For those who haven’t seen the ingenious original show (and shame on you), it starred the sublimely brusque Patrick McGoohan as a secret agent who, upon handing in his resignation, is abducted and relocated to a strange isolated township known as "the Village". Referred to only as "Number 6", he’s given a house and some smart threads, and then gets chased by big white bouncing spheres as he tries to figure out just what the hell he’s doing there, never receiving any satisfactory answers.
Usual Suspects writer Christopher McQuarrie, actor Russell Crowe and Simon West all previously tried to take up residence in the Village. The UK channel Sky One recently announced their own six-episode “reinvention” of the classic show, with the last Dr. Who Christopher Eccleston in the lead role.