“I’ll never know the mystery”: the movie Gary Oldman was banned from making
As a master of disguise, Gary Oldman has been called upon to give some of the most famous figures in pop culture the Hollywood treatment.
As well as playing some notable real people, the Englishman has also applied his skills to the realm of literature: Harry Potter fans will know him as the tragically underestimated Sirius Black, while he was chosen by Francis Ford Coppola as his version of Count Dracula, and these are just some of the iconic figures that Oldman has translated from page to screen.
Devotees of John le Carré will be quick to celebrate his performance in the 2011 film version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, where Oldman portrayed legendary espionage agent George Smiley in the tense Cold War thriller. The movie was a big hit, heralded as not just one of the finest le Carré adaptations of all time, but as one of the finest examples in the entire spy movie genre, and while Oldman was also praised, his performance earning him his first-ever Oscar nomination, an accolade that was long overdue, he described Smiley as his most “painful” role.
Smiley is le Carré’s most prominent character, appearing in nine of the acclaimed author’s novels, and hence the stage was seemingly set for a sequel, with the most obvious options being The Honourable Schoolboy or Smiley’s People, which were direct sequels to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. However, despite the financial and critical success of the initial offering, a follow-up has yet to appear.
If you’re looking for a reason behind this odd omission, then you’re going to be disappointed, as Douglas Urbanski, Oldman’s long-time manager and producing partner, spoke to the Radio Times in 2024 about the sequel situation, but he was just as confused as everybody else.
“That’s an odd story,” he said. “I’ll never know the mystery. We loved Tinker, and we started to do prep for Gary to do Smiley’s People, and suddenly there was an unexpected rights issue… We’ve reached out, including again recently, to le Carré’s sons and, the damnedest thing, they have no interest in Gary playing Smiley again. I don’t know why.”
Le Carré passed in 2020 at 89, and control of his estate presumably passed to his four children, with his son, Simon, the head of The Ink Factory, the company that oversees all of his father’s works. In 2021, Tinker director Thomas Alfredson speculated that the company was planning to reboot Smiley with a new TV show, but as of 2026, that has yet to materialise.
In fact, there has been a significant decline in le Carré adaptations since 2020, apart from the second season of the BBC version of The Night Manager, a stage version of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, and a documentary about the author called The Pigeon Tunnel, but none of these projects included Smiley.
While there is every chance that Oldman could return to the role someday, it feels like the moment has passed, and while we might never know the reason why the le Carré estate said no, it is quite fitting for a character who is constantly shrouded in mystery.
