Next week Sony will be hoping to launch the next Bourne franchise with Angelina Jolie in Salt, but of course, there's plenty of room in the spy-on-the-run pool, and Hyde Park Entertainment is trying to jump in as well. According to Pajiba and their omnipresent source The Hollywood Cog, Hyde Park is setting Eric Bana to star in their adaptation of Firewall, the first in Andy McNab's 12-book spy series starring ex-SAS agent Nick Stone.
SAS stands for Special Air Service and is the prime special forces arm of the British military, most famous for rescuing the hostages during the 1980 Iranian Embassy hostage crisis. In the Firewall adaptation, which will be retitled Echelon probably thanks to that crappy Harrison Ford thriller, Bana will attempt to keep a large terrorist organization away from "the world's largest computer intelligence database." You know, like you do.
McNab is actually a pseudonym, as the author of the Stone series is an ex-SAS officer himself who was held and tortured by the Iraqi military for six weeks and therefore must keep his identity secret. Clearly these books come with a lot of first-hand knowledge attached, and with James Bond on ice for the time being, it's probably a good time to bring out another British super-soldier. And, as in all things, the more Bana, the better. I'm in.
