Brad Pitt almost starred in The Night Manager

It's hard to imagine anyone but Tom Hiddleston nailing the part of Jonathan Pine in The Night Manager - but it was very nearly Brad Pitt who played the role.

The project had a long and complicated history before it hit our TV screens earlier this year - with Paramount snapping up the rights to John le Carré's novel back in 1993.

Back then, Mission: Impossible writer Robert Towne was hired to adapt the book into a feature film, with Oscar winner Sydney Pollack set for the director's chair.

"It went into a big Hollywood development process," Simon Cornwell - producer of the TV version - revealed at The Night Manager: Anatomy of a Hit, a Royal Television Society event.

"But at the end of the day, they just ended up with a script that didn't quite fly - and perhaps that wasn't surprising, because it's a 600-page book which is not easy to distill into a 90-minute feature."

The project sat on the shelf until Pitt picked it up, planning to produce and star in a new film version.

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"That suffered the same fate," said Cornwell. "It's actually a solid script, but it just didn't give you the depth of character."

Of course, back in 1993, Hugh Laurie - who'd go on to star as villain Richard Roper in the BBC / AMC series - had tried to option the book.

"Surprisingly enough he was outbid by Paramount," joked Cornwell, with writer David Farr quipping: "Which he wouldn't be today!"

Laurie had previously admitted that he'd "rather arrogantly dreamed of the possibility of playing the character of Pine" - "I have had to sit back now and watch Tom Hiddleston be virile and charming - and it's f**king galling to watch," he quipped.