It was announced yesterday that Benedict Cumberbatch intends to star in an adaptation of Geoffrey Household‘s “Rogue Male” (published in 1939). A simpler way of putting it is that Cumberbatch intends to play the great grandson of Cpt. Alan Thorndike (Walter Pidgeon) in a remake of Fritz Lang‘s Man Hunt (’41).
I like the idea personally but it sounds like an HBO or Netflix movie, at best.
If it’s theatrical do Cumberbatch and his producing pallies really intend to stick to the Household plot? Because 95% of the 21st Century audience would probably feel it’s too old-world, too slow and solitary, too lean and not crazy-GG enough. The only way to make it even half-palatable to today’s audience is to (a) set it in the present and (b) make the target of Thorndike’s stalking game not Adolf Hitler but Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS. If they did that, maybe.