Future Films From Steven Soderbergh & Michael Hoffman

Director Doug Liman (Go, Swingers,) seems to be turning down every job he is offered these days. Only two days ago it

was reported that Steven Soderbergh would be tackling The Man From U.N.C.L.E., a project that Liman eventually passed on. U.N.C.L.E. is an adaptation of the American spy double-act TV show of the sixties starring Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, a project they’ve been trying to make for quite some time. Interested parties have included Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass), Quentin Tarantino (Four Rooms, Reservoir Dogs) and David Dobkin (Wedding Crashers).

As reported yesterday, the film is looking to be scripted by Scott Z. Burns, the writer behind Soderbergh’s The Informant and the upcoming Contagion. Soderbergh is currently set to shoot his Liberace biopic in the summer or early fall of 2011, around the same time he’s hoping to get U.N.C.L.E. off the ground. Soderbergh is no stranger to shooting multiple films within a year, and with the possibility that Clooney may very well be putting the final touches on his directorial effort The Ides of March around the same time, we could maybe see a release for early 2012.

Now Deadline reports that The Last Station director Michael Hoffman has taken over of the Coen Brothers-scribed remake of the 1966 film Gambit, a project that was also linked to Doug Liman. The film is a remake of the Michael Caine/Shirley MacLaine crime caper about a cat burglar Harry Dean (Michael Caine) preparing to steal a priceless statue from the world’s richest man. Sounds like a project the Coen brothers could direct themselves if they were so inclined.

The script has been knocking around for years, with the likes of P.J. Hogan, Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Ben Kingsley, Sandra Bullock and Jennifer Aniston all attached at various points, but the project has now found funding via, Crime Scene Pictures, with production to start as of next May in London.