The Saint is coming back to the big screen, and Dexter Fletcher is set to direct, with Chris Pine taking the lead role.
True story. Last November, we did an interview with director Dexter Fletcher for the Film Stories podcast (that you can find here), and he said afterwards he was off to meet producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura. Curious, we though. The films Fletcher has been attached to of late have been Sherlock Holmes 3 and Renfield, a Universal classic monster story, neither of those he was producting.
But turns out that his meeting with Di Bonaventura bore fruit. Specifically, a fresh big screen outing for The Saint, over at Paramount Pictures. The last time Paramount did this is was in 1997, with Val Kilmer in the lead role. Of course, the character of Simon Templar was made famous by Roger Moore on the small screen first.
However, for the new big screen outing, it’s now been revealed that Chris Pine will be taking on the title role. He’s already played Captain Kirk and Jack Ryan in terms of franchise roles, and the idea with The Saint is that it should be the start of a new franchise.
The new film will take the original novel series by Leslie Charteris as its basis, with Seth Grahame-Smith penning the screenplay this time around.
Quite what order Fletcher makes the assorted films on his docket remains to be seen. Given that Paramount brought The Saint to Fletcher though, it’s not unreasonable to suggest the project may be high priority. We’ll keep you posted…
Variety
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