Armie Hammer to play the guy who is not Tom Cruise in The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

With Tom Cruise on board Warner Bros.’ The Man From U.N.C.L.E.—conspiring with director Guy Ritchie to give the spy film a guise of familiarity, so it can slip more stealthily into the box office as a Mission: Impossible or Sherlock Holmes clone—the position of his partner who is not Tom Cruise has been filled by Armie Hammer, Deadline reports. Hammer will assume the role of Ilya Kuryakin opposite Cruise’s Napoleon Solo, with Hammer bringing his previous Lone Ranger experience with hyper-stylized TV adaptations and agreeably not pulling focus from the bigger stars to this Guy Ritchie-directed, would-be franchise. Fittingly, on the original ‘60s series, Ilya (played by David McCallum) was the Russian-born blank slate of a man who provided a more reserved contrast to the flashier Solo. However, Ilya was also the one who became the show’s breakout, scene-stealing, Beatle mop-sporting, teen girl-riling favorite, so you can probably expect to see Hammer kidnapped and stashed in a room somewhere pretty quickly.