Chris Pine in talks for The Saint movie reboot from Rocketman's Dexter Fletcher

Pine would play globetrotting thief-for-hire Simon Templar in the film based on the 1920s book series by Leslie Charteris, Variety reports.

Rocketman's Dexter Fletcher was announced as director for the new Saint movie back in February, with Seth Grahame-Smith (The Lego Batman Movie) on scripting duties.

Though it's unclear when the film will go into production owing to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, it's expected that The Saint will be Fletcher's next project ahead of his planned Dracula spin-off Renfield, which was announced in November 2019.

The new Saint film will be the latest in a long series of screen adaptations, with Roger Moore famously starring as Templar in a popular television series from 1962 to 1969, and Ian Ogilvy taking on the role for Return of the Saint from 1978-1979.

Val Kilmer fronted a previous big-screen version in 1997 to a mixed response, with Adam Rayner starring in the character’s most recent screen outing, a 2013 TV pilot that was shelved but eventually released direct-to-video in 2017.

ITV was also developing a pilot for a Saint reboot in 2015 with writers Ed Whitmore (Silent Witness) and Chris Lunt (Prey), but this failed to materialise.

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