Nolan departs The Prisoner

When we chatted to Chris Nolan for “The Dark Knight”, the fastidious filmmaker didn’t seem too confident he’d be doing the feature film version of TV classic “The Prisoner” – despite being tied to the project since it’s inception, or thereabouts.

‘’I honestly don’t know what I’ll be doing next’’, Nolan responded when asked if “The Prisoner” would be next. ‘’I mean, I finished this film last week. I’m excited to put it out, but nervous to put it out and see what audiences think, and that always informs what I’m doing next.’’

I think it’s pretty safe to say that, even then, in 2008, Nolan was shying away from the long-gestating project. His heart never seemed truly in it. Guess he had bigger fish to fry…. or stronger men to push off a Chicago skyscraper with their ankles tied together.

The producer of the film, Barry Mendel (“Funny People”), chatted to CineFools this week who confirmed Nolan has indeed exited the project.

‘’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 and it’s a good draft and we’re working on the script right now.’’

A new TV series remake of “The Prisoner”, starring Ian McKellen and Jim Caviezel, has since been completed and set to air on America’s AMC. Mendel doesn’t see why his project, and the new TV version, can’t co-exist.

“If the series was wildly popular that might effect us but the screenplay that David and Janet wrote was such a re-imagination of the series, if you think of The Avengers that wasn’t a commercially successful film but it was very much in the spirit of the original show, this is very, ah, it looks and feels so different that the tenants of the show are apparent but the execution of it is so different that I think it is unrecognizable, where as the TV show is a well done modernly shot updated version of the original show, but much more faithful to the original show.

“The Prisoner” (1968) was a short-lived (17 episodes!) television series, starring and co-created by Patrick McGoohan.

The series follows a British former secret agent who is held prisoner in a mysterious seaside village where his captors try to find out why he abruptly resigned from his job. Although sold as a thriller in the mould of McGoohan’s previous series, Danger Man (called Secret Agent in its U.S. release), the show’s combination of 1960s countercultural themes and surreal setting had a far-reaching effect on science fiction/fantasy programming, and on popular culture in general.

If Nolan’s no longer onboard because he wants to get going on “Batman 3”, then I’m all for it!