Christopher Nolan Officially Breaks Free From THE PRISONER

Back in 2006 a film called “The Prisoner” was rumored to be the film that Christopher Nolan would tackle once “The Dark Knight” was behind him.  Based on the presence of articles with “Inception” in the title currently our site, however, I’m thinking that that didn’t work out.  But if you are anxious about the fate of “Batman 3″ and have been worrying that Nolan may move to “The Prisoner” before getting busy in Gotham, fear not.  Nolan has officially backed off of the adaptation according to producer Barry Mendel.  More after the jump.

Mendel told CineFOOLS last week at the Sydney Film Festival that “Chris Nolan has dropped out of” his big screen version of “The Prisoner”.
Based on the 1967 British TV series starring (and co-created by) the great Patrick McGoohan, “The Prisoner” follows a former secret agent being held prisoner (get it?) in a seaside villa.  It only ran for 17 episodes but its influence has been felt all over pop culture ever since – from “Austin Powers” to Ron Moore’s “Battlestar Galactica”.
Despite losing his director, Mendel is not willing to set “The Prisoner” free, saying “we have a first draft by David and Janet Peoples, who wrote ‘Twelve Monkeys’, and David wrote ‘Unforgiven’ and it’s a good draft and we’re working on the script right now.”
Of course, there’s also the little issue of the new TV version of “The Prisoner” which is set to debut this fall on AMC this November.  Mendel didn’t seem to feel that AMC’s version, which stars Ian McKellan and Jim Cavieziel, would hamper his plans for a big screen version of “The Prisoner” saying:
“The execution of it [the film] is so different that I think it is unrecognizable, whereas the TV show is a well-done, modernly shot updated version of the original show, but much more faithful to the original show.”
He also references the film version of “The Avengers” to make his point… which cannot portend anything good.