Speaking from the Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah, Guy Ritchie revealed Friday that his thriller “The Interpreter” is now titled “The Covenant.”
“Names, as it transpires, are about the most challenging aspect of filmmaking,” Ritchie told Variety. “The last few films I’ve done, the trickiest decision to make has been the name of the movie. As of today, it’s called ‘The Covenant.’”
The thriller sees Jake Gyllenhaal’s army sergeant in Afghanistan rescued by his Afghan interpreter, played by Fahim Fazli, and having to traverse hostile territory towards safety. Written by Ritchie and his regular collaborators Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies, the film was completed “literally in the last few days,” said Ritchie.
It is only one of a packed lineup of projects for the “Sherlock Holmes” director. Next to shoot in February is “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre” is also completed and will be released early in the new year. Ritchie is currently filming “The Gentlemen,” a TV spin-off of the hit movie, which sees the director re-team with Vinnie Jones, the soccer player who made the move to acting in Ritchie’s feature debut “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.”
“I adore Vinnie Jones. We’re in the middle of that. It’s great. It’s just like making a movie. And it was particularly good to see Vinnie Jones again. He was in particularly good form,” he said.
And that’s all without noting the mooted live action remake of the Disney animated movie “Hercules” as well as a sequel to Ritchie’s previous Disney collaboration, “Aladdin.”
“The idea is to be quite busy for the next few years,” Ritchie laughed.
Ritchie said of Will Smith, who played the genie in “Aladdin,” in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter Friday: “I’ve never met a more lovely man, and working with him was one of the most wonderful, great experiences I’ve ever had. I never saw anything other than the consummate, generous gentleman.”
He would consider casting Smith again. “I wouldn’t have any issue casting Will Smith in anything, because, as I say, he was just the fucking perfect gentleman.” (Variety)
Talking of the excellent TV series SAS Rogue Heroes (and even Ungentlemanly Warfare), by now most of us have read Ben Macintyre’s SAS Rogue Heroes and Giles Milton’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. However, there existed a less renowned but SAS related clique of maverick and patriotic British reprobates in British Intelligence called Pemberton’s People who worked for Colonel Alan Brooke Pemberton CVO MBE.
During the Malayan Emergency (really a war) British Intelligence and covert units such as the Special Air Service worked closely together under the eagle eyes of Field Marshal Sir Gerald Walter Robert Templer and his ADC Alan Pemberton who in 1952 in Malaya oversaw the establishment of 22 SAS Regiment. Since then its home has been in Hereford, England. Malaya proved to be an exquisite training ground for all involved in the dark arts of modern warfare.
Even the notorious spy Philby tried to get in on the act to support the communist backed insurgents and later some of Pemberton’s People starred in the real Clockwork Orange Plot as to be depicted in Samuel Martin’s The Ghost of Harold Wilson.
If you are interested in this and more besides do check it out at TheBurlingtonFiles website and see the News Article dated 31 October 2022 … Pemberton’s People, Ungentlemanly Officers & Rogue Heroes.