The A-Team film directed by Ridley Scott to hit cinemas in 2010

A long-awaited big-screen version of the cult 1980s television series The A-Team produced by Blade Runner director Sir Ridley Scott is reportedly set to hit theaters next year.

The production will be a “fast-paced action movie” that avoids the campy tone of the original and replaces Vietnam with the Middle East as the place the do-gooder soldiers of fortune served before escaping to the “Los Angeles underground”, Hollywood newspaper Variety has reported.

Sir Ridley is lined up to produce the 20th Century Fox project alongside his brother, Tony Scott, while Joe Carnahan, who wrote and directed 2006’s Smokin’ Aces, will direct. The film is due out in June 2010.

Co-creator of the original series Stephen J Cannell is also on board as a producer.

The show, which ran for five series from 1983 to 1986 on American television network NBC, featured George Peppard, Mr T, Dirk Benedict and Dwight Schultz as the mismatched band of mercenaries on the run from the government “for a crime they didn’t commit”.

It spawned a host of catchphrases including Peppard’s character Hannibal’s oft repeated line “I love it when a plan comes together”.

A film version has spent years in development with a number of different names previously attached to the project.

Sir Ridley told Variety the newly assembled team aimed for “a fast-paced, exciting franchise – one we hope will be around for years to come.”

Carnahan said he hoped to make “a classic summer popcorn film” that “reflects the real world” and said it would stick to the original’s premise, in which the army veterans escape from a military prison after being wrongly convicted of armed robbery.

”This was a coveted property, and re-imagining a show that I remembered as a kid was tough to turn down,” Carnahan said. “Fox hired me to make it as emotional, real and accessible as possible without cheesing it up.”