Paul Mescal will lead the cast of A Spy By Nature, a thriller directed by Kevin Macdonald and written by Trainspotting writer John Hodge.
HanWay Films is launching worldwide sales on the film at next week’s American Film Market (AFM, November 1-6); CAA is co-representing US rights.
A Spy By Nature is adapted by Hodge from the first novel in Charles Cumming’s Alec Milius spy series, with the most recent draft of the script by Joseph Charlton.
Chris Clark is producing for UK outfit RedRum Films, with Quentin Curtis; with HanWay and Ingenious Media as executive producers, having developed the project alongside Clark and Curtis. The film received BFI development funding.
A Spy By Nature follows Milius, a disillusioned 20-something whose gift for deception catches the eye of MI6. He is then caught between a geopolitical UK-US war and his struggles to preserve a steady home life.
Gabrielle Stewart, CEO of HanWay Films, suggested that the film could be the first in a series adapted from Cumming’s books.
“I feel confident we will all want to revisit this young spy in his next adventure with what could be the beginning of an exciting new franchise,” said Stewart. “We love the fresh setting of millennial contemporary London and the modernity of the characters and their relationships.”
Macdonald, who won the Oscar for best documentary for One Day In September in 2000, said he has been wanting to adapt the book “for many years,” describing it as “a very modern spy story – sexy, dangerous, morally ambivalent.”
“When I met Paul, with his beguiling mixture of intelligence, skill and youth, I knew I’d found the perfect star,” he said, with Stewart adding that Mescal “feels like the actor of the moment.”
Named a Screen Star of Tomorrow in 2020 – the year of his breakout performance in BBC TV drama Normal People – Mescal has since scored string of key film roles, including in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter, Saela Davis and Anna Rose Holmer’s God’s Creatures, and leading Charlotte Wells’ awards contender Aftersun.
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