Gary Oldman loves acting in literary adaptations.
Yes, the Oscar-winning English star of that garbage Winston Churchill movie I hate-watched one dreary winter night last year, has, over the course of his illustrious thirty-five-year career, appeared in no less than fourteen literary adaptations (Henry & June, JFK, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, The Scarlet Letter, Hannibal, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Lawless, A Christmas Carol, and Child 44, as well as four Harry Potters) and, based on today’s news, he ain’t done yet.
This morning, Deadline reported that Oldman (aka Sid Vicious aka Sirius Black aka Commissioner Jim Gordon aka the evil peacock from Kung Fu Panda 2) is all set to star in in spy drama Slow Horses for Apple with Justified’s Graham Yost executive producing.
Slow Horses is based on Mick Herron’s 2010 spy novel Slough House, which features Jackson Lamb, “a brilliant but irascible leader of a group of spies, who end up in MI5’s Slough House, having been exiled from the mainstream for their mistakes.” Oldman, whose performance as world-weary le Carré spy George Smiley in Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy earned him rave reviews back in 2011, will of course be laying Lamb.
Will this latest project finally quench Oldman’s unslakable thirst for book-bestowed gravitas? We wait with bated breath.
