Here at Empire, we love it when a plan comes together. (We also love it when a flan comes together, but that�s an entirely different story.) So you can imagine our delight when it was announced today that the long-awaited movie version of The A-Team has bagged itself a screenwriter.

Bruce Feirstein, an American writer who penned three of the four Pierce Brosnan Bond movies, including Goldeneye, has signed up to the project with a view to making the big-screen debut of Hannibal, Howling Mad Murdock, Face, and B.A. Baracus less cartoony than the 80s TV show, and more serious in the vein of a Die Hard or a Lethal Weapon (we presume this means the first two, and not Lethal Weapon 4 which made an average episode of The A-Team look like Pinter).

The premise of the show will also be updated, so the Vietnam War is gone, probably to be replaced by the Gulf War, but no plot details are known as yet.

All of which sounds vaguely disturbing, for if there was one secret behind the show�s success (it ran from 1983-1987), it was the complete lack of gritty realism in a show that, to put it frankly, was about four escaped Vietnam veteran convicts (admittedly on the run for a crime they didn�t commit). Instead of being a serious examination of the mental problems that many Vets faced upon their return to America, The A-Team simply had Murdock bark and howl a lot � and we loved it for that.

On the other hand, any news of an A-Team movie is good news. And since Stephen J. Cannell, the guy who created the original series, is producing (along with the wonderfully named Spike Seldin), we�re hopeful that the end product will be closer in tone to the seminal show.

George Peppard (Hannibal) died in 1994, but Cannell has already set aside a cameo for surviving A-Team member Mr. T (B.A.), and it can only be a matter of time for Dirk Benedict (Face) and Dwight Schultz (Murdock), who�ll have to suffer the indignity of watching more famous actors play the roles they once inhabited. But hey, as long as it retains the theme tune, we�ll be happy.

Now, if you�ll excuse us, we�re off to build an unstoppable tank out of some rubber bands, an iPod battery, a can of old air freshener and a pair of James� pants. Clean, of course.