Thomas Kell writer thrilled at deal with Colin Firth for Night Manager-style TV series

EVENING STANDARD
MARTIN BENTHAM 23 hours  ago



A London spy writer whose new thriller describes the race to stop an Islamist attack has revealed his excitement at plans to turn his books into a TV series similar to The Night Manager with Colin Firth as the star.



“It’s fantastic” said Charles Cumming, the author of the award-winning Thomas Kell espionage novels who has been hailed as a new John Le Carré. “The idea is to do the Kell books — A Foreign Country, Colder War, A Divided Spy — as television,” he said. “So six hours of A Foreign Country along the lines of The Night Manager, a similar type of series, with Colin Firth playing Kell. I’m just about to start the script.”

Cumming, a father of two from Brook Green in west London, began his spy-writing career after being turned down for a job with MI6. As well as the TV plans — formed with Firth after the actor’s film company bought the screen rights to the Kell novels — Cumming’s latest thriller, A Divided Spy, is about to be published. Set largely in London, it tells of Kell’s mission to recruit a Russian spy and thwart a terror attack by a British extremist.

Cumming, 45, said the book was “a London novel” which will provide readers with suspense and insights into terrorism, at the same time as portraying the vitality of the capital.

“A Divided Spy is the most London-centric of the Kell books,” he added. “There’s a lot of business in Somerset House, there’s Westfield and White City, an incident in Brook Green, it dances around a lot. It starts in a casino in Knightsbridge. That’s a whole other world. There’s also an extended anti-surveillance section so it’s moving around on the Tube, buses and taxis.

http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/books/thomas-kell-writer-thrilled-at-deal-with-colin-firth-for-night-managerstyle-tv-series-a3253396.html

Colin Firth To Star In & Produce Spy Flick 'A Foreign Country' NEWS BY BEN BROCK (INDIEWIRE)

Not content with signing for Matthew Vaughn's “The Secret Service” (guess what it's about), Colin Firth has just been cast in another spy flick, “A Foreign Country”, based on Charles Cumming's so-named novel and produced by Silver Reel and Raindog (who are also behind another of Firth's upcoming pictures, “The Railway Man”). Handily, Raindog is Firth's own company, run with former Sony exec Ged Doherty. So that probably explains how he got the part...

This is all coming off the back of Firth's turn as one part of an astonishing ensemble in “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”, Tomas Alfredson's elegant and absorbing version of the John Le Carre novel. “A Foreign Country” offers a lot of similar elements: an agent returning to British intelligence for the spying equivalent of a heist movie's “one last job”, the rooting out of a conspiracy within the service itself, a Mediterranean episode (Tunisia and Egypt, in this case), and, no doubt, relentlessly stiff upper lips. 

READ MORE: http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/colin-firth-to-star-in-produce-spy-flick-a-foreign-country-20130517#

COLIN FIRTH: Move over Bond: Colin Firth bags role as the next big screen spy (LONDON EVENING STANDARD)

Oscar-winning actor Colin Firth has just bought the option to a new spy series, with the intention of becoming the latest fictional member of MI6.

Firth, who has started the Raindog film production company with former Sony UK chairman Ged Doherty, acquired the rights to the best-selling A Foreign Country. It’s the first instalment of a trilogy written by Charlie Cumming — Raindog has taken rights on all three — about a disgraced spook, Tom Kell, brought back to track down the woman appointed head of MI6 but who has vanished in mysterious circumstances. The second book is called A Colder War, due out next year, a molehunt story set in Greece and Turkey, and Cumming is already being hailed as the new John le Carré.

Firth played Bill Haydon in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy but this would see him in the lead role. Cumming is thrilled to have him as Kell. “He would be perfect for the part because he is an actor who can convey both great passion and great dignity, as well as superior intelligence, all characteristics in Tom Kell,” he tells the Londoner. But will he oust Bond?

READ MORE:  http://www.standard.co.uk/news/londoners-diary/move-over-bond-colin-firth-bags-role-as-the-next-big-screen-spy-8582946.html