EXCLUSIVE: Producer and former Baywatch star Alexandra Paul and Meyers Media Group (MMG) have announced the casting on the spoof spy in the run-up to Cannes.

MMG represents world rights to The B Team and makes its production debut. The company is working with Joseph Cohen of American Entertainment to arrange financing.

UK filmmaker Chris Cottam will direct the fictitious romp about TV actors from a cancelled show who reunite to take down an arch-criminal.

Years after the show was used by the CIA to gather intelligence during promotional tours at the end of the Cold War, the Agency is blackmailed by a villain and discovers he loved the old show.

The Agency summons the actors to get close to the evil-doer and take him down. The conceit of the film, styled in the vein of Austin Powers and Johnny English, is that the show was Baywatch. The B Team will feature original cast members playing their real-life selves.

Cleese, who prepares to reunite with his Monty Python collaborators this summer for a series of live UK shows, will portray the dastardly Vachon.

Paul developed the screenplay with fellow former Baywatch cast member Jaason Simmons. Michael Brody wrote the screenplay.

Production is scheduled to begin in Europe on September 22. Interiors will shoot at the Origo Studios in Budapest and exterior locales are to be determined. Further casting is expected to be announced in Cannes.

“We enjoy representing third-party pictures but we want to control more of our destiny,” said Lawrence Steven Meyers, who is producing with Paul and MMG’s Randy Dannenberg. Jonathan Tybel is the co-producer.