That doesn't make sense. Two examples don't prove that the category is to blame, since most movies in general aren't successful so if you pick any two random films out of a given category, odds are they'll both have fared poorly. There have been many successful period pieces made over the decades, not to mention successful films set in the future.
There have been recent period pieces that have done well at the box office, including Changeling and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Meanwhile, on TV, the '60s-based Mad Men is extremely successful and well-regarded. If a period piece can be done on a TV budget several years in a row, it's clearly absurd to claim that it's prohibitively expensive for a feature film.
And where do you get the bizarre notion that a story set in the past can't relate to the present? Ever heard of analogy or metaphor? Just to cite one of countless examples, M*A*S*H was set in the Korean War but was a pointed critique of the Vietnam War that was ongoing when it premiered.
Nobody said it would be hard to do. That's not what we're talking about here. Captaindemotion pointed out that, while the concept of a Russian working with an American had considerable impact and novelty at the time of the original show, it wouldn't carry the same resonance today. It would be easier to do today, and therefore less impressive. My suggestion was that if it were done as a period piece, at least the Russian-American partnership would have impact in-story, even if it wouldn't be as startling a concept to the audience.
"Wrecking?" Odd choice of words. The Cold War was the heyday of spy fiction, because the lines were so clearly drawn and the stakes so high. If anything, a lot of post-Cold War spy stories seemed to be kind of halfhearted or directionless for a while, at least until the "War on Terror" got underway. Spy fiction is most effective in an era where there are clear-cut "bad guys," at least from the perspective of the nation the fiction is made for.
I never said it couldn't work now; I merely offered a period approach as a suggestion. Offering one suggestion is not meant to exclude all other possibilities. Obviously there are many ways the film could be approached.
But with just a little more digging and foresight, now you can. If U.N.C.L.E. can deal with current day crises in two comic book series published years apart, U.N.C.L.E. can deal with them in a big screen movie. All it takes are smarts and good writing.
