Emmy winner Matthew Macfadyen (Succession) is attached to star as George Smiley in Legacy Of Spies, a TV series project based on John le Carré’s series of novels featuring the career intelligence officer character.
The Ink Factory, which owns the rights to le Carré’s work, is producing and Fifth Season is distributing the drama, which has been shopped on both sides of the Atlantic, drawing interest from potential buyers, sources said.
The pitch comes with multiple scripts written by Ink Factory co-founder Stephen Cornwell and Clarissa Ingram. Silo creator Graham Yost is executive producing the potential series, based on le Carré’s series of novels featuring the character George Smiley, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honorable Schoolboy and several others, as well as some unpublished materials.
Macfadyen follows a long line of actors who have previously portrayed the character on-screen including Rupert Davies in 1965’s The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, Gary Oldman in 2011’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Alex Guinness in the 1979 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy TV miniseries, among others.
Macfadyen won two Emmys and two BAFTA awards for his scene-stealing role of Shiv Roy’s husband, Tom, on HBO’s Emmy-winning series Succession. Also known for his roles in films such as 2005’s Pride and Prejudice and Death at a Funeral, he was most recently seen in Deadpool & Wolverine and upcoming in Holland, opposite Nicole Kidman, which just premiered March 9 at SXSW. He’s repped by UTA, Hamilton Hodell in the UK and Johnson Shapiro Slewett & Kole.
The Ink Factory’s series and film adaptations of le Carre novels include British television series The Little Drummer Girl, directed by Park Chan-wook; Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning The Night Manager, directed by Susanne Bier; and the Anton Corbijn-directed A Most Wanted Man starring Philip Seymour Hoffmann, in partnership with Amusement Park. The company is also developing a series based on le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, and contemporary series adaptations of The Constant Gardener (in English) and A Most Wanted Man (in German).
