Warner Brothers has tapped writer/director Christopher McQuarrie to head up their planned new adaptation of Alistair McLean‘s Cold War thriller Ice Station Zebra.
This would throw McQuarie’s rumored participation in the in-development Mission: Impossible 5 into question, depending how soon the two studios want to have their respective projects in theaters. Yesterday it was announced that Mission: Impossible franchise star Tom Cruise had re-upped for the fifth installment.
McLean’s novel was previously brought to the screen in 1968 by MGM with Rock Hudson, Ernest Borgnine, Patrick McGoohan and Jim Brown starring in the story of US submarine racing the Soviets to retrieve sensitive information gathered by a crashed spy satellite. Their mission is complicated by saboteurs and double-agents. The trailer for the original film is below.
It is not known what take McQuarrie will go with the material, but I suspect that he will keep the film in its original Cold War setting. I don’t think that the geopolitical landscape of today can really offer an advesary as formidable as the Soviet Union of old.
Via Hollywood Reporter’s Heat Vision.
I love that movie