The Rock will Get Smart

While Steve Carell has been busy burning the comedy candle at both ends, starring in TV’s The Office and apocalyptic Bruce Almighty follow-up Evan Almighty, one of his other pending acting jobs has quietly been developing.

And now Get Smart – which will update the 1965 spy sitcom created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry – is scheduled to start filming next month.

Carell will play Agent 86, a bumbling secret agent who nonetheless manages to save the world on a regular basis thanks to his much more competent sidekick, Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway).

As the cameras prepare to crank, director Peter Segal has tracked down another agent and a villain to add to this new movie version. The Rock will get another chance to stretch his comic muscles as Agent 23, a fellow agent, while Terence Stamp will no doubt be subsisting on a diet of scenery to play an evil mastermind. It sounds ace already.

According to Segal, the film will apply the modernising brush to many elements of the show, but maintain fan favourite elements such as the “cone of silence” and Smart’s shoe phone. "What made the original unique was it took place in the Cold War era and skewered the political landscape," Segal told Variety. "We're trying to embrace that spirit, and there is certainly a lot to skewer politically today." Cue the George W Bush jokes!