Director Neil Marshall joins up with The Professionals

Filmmaker Neil Marshall’s checklist: Werewolves. Subterranean subhumans. Post-apocalyptic cannibals. Roman soldiers on the run. But where’s the espionage?

Ah, it’s coming. According to Empire, Marshall (THE DESCENT, DOG SOLDIERS) is attached to an adaptation of the 70s UK telly show THE PROFESSIONALS. The action/crime series came from Brian Clemens (who was behind the cheeky spy show “The Avengers”) and followed three top agents in the British law enforcement department CI5, tackling terrorists, assassinations and random political intrigue.

“The slogan, or kind of the tagline for the film, is ‘Fight fire with fire’ and that was their whole thing,” Marshall says. “Primarily it’s going to be an exciting movie, but there’s an inherent political angle on the story.”

Marshall also plans to make a contemporary “wham-bam rip-roaring adventure movie” and a “British buddy movie” (presumably a touch more serious than the wonderfully sardonic HOT FUZZ).

Marshall, whose CENTURION opens in the UK this week and the US in July, is also working on a snowbound 3D supernatural horror movie for Sam Raimi’s Ghost House company.