Weren’t we just saying the pretty and talented Swedish actress Alicia Vikander was on the rise and would soon be leaving the period-piece ghetto? Frankly, we’ve had our eye on the actress for a while. We called her one of the actresses to watch in early 2012 and she’s fulfilled her promise with excellent turns in “A Royal Affair” and “Anna Karenina.” She can act and it hasn’t gone unnoticed. She was up for the lead role in “Cinderella,” and while she didn’t land the part, she’s scored another plum role, the lead role in Warner Bros.’ “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.”
Directed by Guy Ritchie, the cast boasts a guy named Tom Cruise and another up and coming sidekick extraordinaire Armie Hammer, playing Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin, respectively. An adaptation of the ‘60s spy show, ‘U.N.C.L.E’ almost came to be last year in an iteration that had George Clooney as the lead, Steven Soderbergh in the director’s chair and a script written by Scott Z. Burns. When Clooney’s back problems prevented him from taking the lead in the action-heavy Burns draft, Soderbergh spent the entire fall of 2011 trying to figure out casting options for WB, but, frustrated, he eventually left.
THR says Vikander will play a British agent with an affinity for automobiles. It’s not a character from the TV series nor the short-lived spin-off, “The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.,” but there was a female lead in Burns’ draft (inspired by this very show; WB are apparently not using his screenplay). A name like Emily Blunt was thrown around a lot for that version, so we wonder if the female part is an element they lifted from his script. No word on when shooting begins, but we assume WB aims to put this one in theaters sometime in 2014.
