Matthew Vaughn to Direct Terrorism Thriller 'I Am Pilgrim' for MGM (Exclusive)

The 'Kingsman: The Secret Service' helmer also will produce and co-finance through his MARV Films.Kingsman: The Secret Service helmer Matthew Vaughn is staying in the spy game.

Vaughn has signed on to direct and produce MGM’s big-screen adaptation of Terry Hayes’ espionage thriller I Am Pilgrim. The X-Men: First Class helmer also will co-finance through his MARV Films.

Based on 2014's mammoth best seller, the story follows “Pilgrim,” code name for a man who doesn’t exist. The adopted son of a wealthy American family, he once headed up a secret espionage unit for U.S. intelligence. Now in anonymous retirement, he is called upon to lend his expertise to an unusual investigation but ultimately becomes caught in a terrifying race against time to save America from a cunning terrorist. Hayes, an accomplished screenwriter whose credits include Payback, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior and Dead Calm, adapted the novel -- his first -- which MGM envisions as a franchise. (Hayes is already at work on a follow-up novel with the same protagonist).

MGM has just closed a deal for James Gray to direct I Am Pilgrim, an adaptation of the espionage novel trilogy by Terry Hayes. MGM has been mobilizing this one for several years, and it is high priority for the studio best known for 007. Hayes, whose credits include the early Road Warrior films, as well as Dead Calm, Payback and From Hell, has adapted the novel. Lloyd Braun is producing.

The intention is for Gray to make it his next film after Ad Astra, the sci-fi epic he just finished that stars Brad Pitt for New Regency and Fox.