MGM are, and have been for many years, deal­ing with sig­nif­i­cant finan­cial debts, to the tune of almost $4bn. With con­cerns about the company’s sol­vency, a recent con­fer­ence call debated whether the stu­dio should file for bank­ruptcy in a bid to gain back some of the oth­er­wise lost money.

Should this hap­pen, MGM’s assets might be sold to cover the debts, includ­ing the rights to the James Bond fran­chise, the poten­tial Robo­Cop remake could never see the light of day. This would inevitably delay Bond 23, and who knows what else.

MGM’s cur­rent plan is to con­vince cred­i­tors to waiver inter­est pay­ments until Jan­u­ary 2010, with that money instead going to fund new movies. There’s a lot up in the air right now, but we’ll keep you posted.

The team at Time Out have writ­ten an open let­ter to Bond 23 writer Peter Mor­gan, with a cou­ple of Dos and Don’ts. Included are — find inter­est­ing and excit­ing loca­tions, do not copy the Bourne series, make the Bond girl a piv­otal role, give char­ac­ters room to breathe.

The let­ter openly praises Casino Royale’s approach, but is quick to point out the flaws in Quan­tum of Solace.

Dear Peter,

While we at Time Out are thrilled that you, one of our country’s most tal­ented and inquir­ing screen­writ­ers, have accepted the chal­lenge of pen­ning the next James Bond movie, there are a few salient points we feel you might like to keep in mind while writ­ing what will inevitably become one of 2011’s most impor­tant and, we hope, enjoy­able movies. We trust you accept our advice in the friendly spirit with which it’s intended…

Please give the char­ac­ters room to breathe
Per­haps the great­est stride writ­ers Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and erst­while col­league Paul Hag­gis made with ‘Casino Royale’ was giv­ing Bond and his com­pan­ions a real sense of life, depth and emo­tional con­flict. We’re used to Bond the wise­crack­ing automa­ton, but with an actor like Daniel Craig in the role this approach is a ter­ri­ble waste. ‘Quan­tum of Solace’ reduced Bond to lit­tle more than grunts and sneers – a smart thug who faces off against a loqua­cious but rather pathetic vil­lain. You’ve already proved your worth as a mas­ter of ver­bal spar­ring in your pre­vi­ous scripts, so we’re sure you’ll have the mur­der­ous ban­ter down pat. The chal­lenge will be to make us care about Bond again.

Please respect your audi­ence
There’s no doubt that the best of Bond is revealed when there’s a strong sto­ry­line packed with twists, switch­backs and dou­ble crosses: just think of Sean Bean’s decep­tion in ‘Gold­en­eye’, or Vesper’s betrayal in ‘Casino’. As long as your action sequences are grip­ping and your char­ac­ters con­vinc­ingly moti­vated, there’s no crime in keep­ing the viewer guessing.

Please don’t waste your Bond girls
Another of the great plea­sures offered by ‘Casino Royale’ was the chance to see Bond con­fronted by female char­ac­ters who could hold their own: not just Eva Green’s schem­ing Ves­per, but Judi Dench’s frac­tious, com­mand­ing M. Dench was the best thing in ‘Quan­tum’, but she was let down by Olga Kurylenko’s fiery but under­used Camille. It’s a les­son the mak­ers of Bond have been long in learn­ing: these women can be more than just eye-candy. A strong female lead doesn’t just cen­tre the film, she allows writ­ers and audi­ences a chance to get to the core of Bond himself.

Please don’t remake the Bourne series
Both ‘Casino’ and ‘Quan­tum’ were clearly inspired by the down­beat real­ism of the Bourne tril­ogy, but while the for­mer bal­anced gritty action sequences with a wry streak of self-deprecating humour, the writ­ers and direc­tor of ‘Quan­tum’ seemed con­tent with an end­less parade of repet­i­tive shaky­cam punch-ups in grimy locales. So, while action is clearly the lifeblood of the series, remem­ber that Bond always ben­e­fits from a moment of lev­ity amid the mayhem.

Please show us some­thing we haven’t seen before
It’s hard to think of any­where Bond hasn’t been (Antarc­tica? Ever­est? Leam­ing­ton Spa?), but one of ‘Quan­tum’ direc­tor Marc Forster’s bet­ter accom­plish­ments was pick­ing some stun­ning inter­na­tional loca­tions, from the seedy streets of Panama and the bar­ren Ata­cama Desert in Chile to the grandiose opera house at Lake Con­stance in Aus­tria. While the old Bonds were increas­ingly con­fined to traips­ing between MI6 and Moscow bat­tling the same face­less, jab­ber­ing Russkies, the global nature of the new films’ mys­te­ri­ous con­spir­acy means that Bond can now head just about any­where, and beat up just about anyone.

Finally, we await the Bond pro­duc­ers’ choice of direc­tor with bated breath. Some inter­est­ing names have been rumoured, though we under­stand Danny Boyle has offi­cially denied all knowl­edge and Christo­pher Nolan is busy with all that Bat­man busi­ness. But the Bond films have never been about the big-name direc­tors; in fact, with names like Ian Flem­ing, Roald Dahl and Paul Hag­gis, you could say it’s one of the few major film series where the choice of writer actu­ally mat­ters more than the choice of direc­tor. Which is where you come in, Mr Morgan.

Good luck!

Yours in anticipation,

Tom

MTV are report­ing, via an anony­mous source, that British born actor Michael Sheen will play Blofeld in Bond 23. The cre­ative process for Bond 23 only started very recently, pos­si­bly just this month. Any cast­ing rumors should be taken with a grain of salt, although this spec­u­la­tive cast­ing is both excit­ing and encour­ag­ing and would pre­sum­ably offer a new look for the arche­typal Ernst Stavro Blofeld villain.

Mul­ti­ple Oscar win­ner Peter Mor­gan is co-scripting the Bond movie — he and Sheen have worked together on numer­ous occa­sions, includ­ing “The Queen” and “Frost/Nixon”. This long stand­ing writer-actor rela­tion­ship gives some sig­nif­i­cant weight to the rumor; and we already know Mor­gan has the Midas touch when writ­ing for Sheen — this could be good, very good.

Blofeld por­tray­als

A very brief quote from James Bond pro­ducer Michael Wil­son, in an inter­view with The Sun, tells us that work on the 23rd Bond film is now underway.

“We have started work on the new film, which I can’t say any­thing about. Daniel Craig is very keen to get going.”

Wil­son also sug­gested that con­tenders for the next Bond theme tune could be Duffy or Amy Wine­house. I don’t think we can really take any­thing from that though:

‘I would love to get Duffy to sing the next tune,’ he said. ‘I think she is won­der­ful. Amy Wine­house would be good too.’

Speak­ing in the UK’s Metro news­pa­per, Daniel Craig briefly com­mented on the sched­ule for Bond 23:

‘[Dame Judi] is great. I’m sure she will be back when we get rolling again next year.’

When in 2010 we don’t know, not really help­ing us guess the next release date. Mean­while Michael G Wil­son com­mented at the Brad­ford Inter­na­tional Film Fes­ti­val that no fur­ther, sig­nif­i­cant work on Bond 23 has yet taken place:

The only news Wil­son broke about the next Bond film is that there is no news at all. He said there had been no sig­nif­i­cant work done on the next entry.

In speak­ing with First Show­ing, the Quan­tum of Solace direc­tor, Marc Fos­ter, revealed that he is not keen on return­ing for the 23rd James Bond movie, despite an offer:

“They offered me the next one, but at this point the pres­sure is so intense — it’s a year of not hav­ing a life. And I don’t know if I want to do that again. It’s lit­er­ally not hav­ing a life, and I mean that, it’s not exag­ger­ated. I feel like life is short, you have to find a balance.”

Who should direct the next Bond movie?

In Decem­ber 2008 Com­ing Soon had the oppor­tu­nity to catch up with Daniel Craig, quizzing him about Quan­tum of Solace’s crit­i­cal reac­tion and the future of James Bond:

CS: What more do you want to do with Bond? What other parts of him would you like to explore?
Craig: Well, I gen­uinely think we’ve got a blank page now. We’ve fin­ished this story off. “Quan­tum of Solace” was exactly the right thing to do. We started some­thing with “Casino Royale” and we wrapped it all up with “Quan­tum of Solace.” We’re ready to begin again and we can do what we want.

CS: So you think that the next one will be a throw­back to another Bond era?
Craig: Sub­marines and outer space!

CS: Are you all still look­ing at unused Ian Flem­ing story ele­ments, since that worked so well in “Casino Royale?“
Craig: Yeah, but there’s noth­ing left. It’s all done unless some­one finds a dirty man­u­script under the couch at [Fleming’s Jamaican estate] Gold­en­Eye, we’re stuffed.

Daniel Craig has also been speak­ing to Col­lider about Bond 23:

“We’ve fin­ished this story as far as I’m con­cerned. We’ve got a great set of bad guys. There is an orga­ni­za­tion that we can use when­ever we want to. The rela­tion­ship between Bond and M is secure and Felix is secure. Let’s try and find where Mon­eypenny came from and where Q comes from. Let’s do all that and have some fun with it.”

“We don’t know when we’re going to do the next Bond. Nobody’s think­ing about it at the moment. We’re giv­ing it a rest for the moment. If I can squeeze some­thing in next year I will…but I haven’t fig­ured out what that’ll be yet. But noth­ing in the cold.”

As a start­ing point for this James Bond blog I present to you the Bond 23 trivia listed on IMDB. The con­tent on IMDB for movies in pre-production is often unre­li­able and infor­ma­tion sources are very rarely cited, so take each of these with a pinch of salt. To sur­mise, it has been implied that writ­ing shall begin in Jan­u­ary 2009, with rumors sug­gest­ing that Ian Fleming’s ‘007 in New York’ short story could be the basis of the plot. Mon­eypenny and Q may be set for a return, per­haps explor­ing their pasts. A late 2010/2011 release date is cur­rently on the cards.

* There has been a sug­ges­tion that Olga Kurylenko may return in this movie or the next Bond movie after.

* Pro­ducer Michael G. Wil­son has stated that pre­lim­i­nary work will start on this movie in Jan­u­ary 2009.

* Ian Fleming’s short story “OO7 in New York” is rumored to going to be the basis for this film. It was first pub­lished in the The New York Her­ald Tri­bune in 1963 and then in the US edi­tion only of Fleming’s ‘Thrilling Cities”. It was first pub­lished in the UK in Novem­ber 1999 in The Sun­day Times mag­a­zine sup­ple­ment as a tie-in with the film release of the Bond movie The World Is Not Enough (1999). It’s work­ing title was “Reflec­tions in a Carey Cadil­lac” and it’s orig­i­nal title was “Agent 007 in New York” when pub­lished in the NY Her­ald Tri­bune. The story fea­tures a Bond Girl called Solange, a name which was used for a char­ac­ter in Casino Royale (2006). For the first time in 2002, the short-story was added to the “Octo­pussy and The Liv­ing Day­lights” com­pendium which includes these two short sto­ries plus “The Prop­erty of a Lady”. This was the first time that the short story was pub­lished along­side other Bond short sto­ries. “OO7 in New York” is the short­est and also arguably the least well-known of all the Ian Flem­ing James Bond short-stories. The story is famous for rep­re­sent­ing two story ele­ments: (1) it includes James Bond’s only lit­er­ary shop­ping expe­di­tion and (2) it includes his recipe for scram­bled eggs.

* It is likely that the crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tion QUANTUM will fea­ture in this film after being intro­duced but anony­mously in Casino Royale (2006) and also appear­ing but revealed in Quan­tum of Solace (2008). The pro­duc­ers have stated that it is their inten­tion for QUANTUM to fea­ture as a reg­u­lar foe of James Bond.

* Quan­tum of Solace (2008) direc­tor Marc Forster has men­tioned that he isn’t plan­ning on signing-on to direct this movie.

* There have been appar­ently con­flict­ing reports relat­ing to whether this movie will be released in 2010 or 2011, the stu­dio favor­ing the for­mer with pro­ducer Michael G. Wil­son men­tion­ing the latter.

* This will be the 23rd James Bond movie in the EON Pro­duc­tions offi­cial series and the 26th James Bond film overall.

* Daniel Craig is con­tracted to do three pic­tures with an option for a fourth and so this will likely be his third time play­ing James Bond. It is pos­si­bly the case that this movie could be Craig’s final play­ing James Bond. Report­edly, an Octo­ber 20, 2008 inter­view appear­ing in Hol​ly​wood​.com states “Craig could stay on for a fourth movie as well, but it’s not likely” with Craig quoted as say­ing: “I can’t see doing it beyond another movie”.

* If Judi Dench returns for this movie, it will be her 7th out­ing as M. It has been touted that this might be Dench’s last time play­ing M in the series.

* Whether this film is released in 2010 or 2011, it should be noted that 2012 is the 50th Anniver­sary of the EON Pro­duc­tions James Bond fran­chise. There will no doubt be some cel­e­bra­tions of this birth­day mile­stone as there was with the series 40th Birth­day when Die Another Day (2002) was released forty years after Dr. No (1962).

* This movie is not expected to be a direct follow-on from Quan­tum of Solace (2008) and Casino Royale (2006) which the for­mer was a direct sequel to the lat­ter. Pro­ducer Bar­bara Broc­coli has said that the series “will go on to other dif­fer­ent sto­ries from now on.” How­ever, there still is likely to be the appear­ance of the QUANTUM orga­ni­za­tion, but with dif­fer­ent vil­lains. More­over, Broc­coli has also hinted at the pos­si­bil­ity of a tril­ogy, which means a con­nec­tion with Casino Royale (2006) and Quan­tum of Solace (2008), say­ing that “I think in some way, he will go after the [Quan­tum] orga­ni­za­tion. So in that sense, it may become a tril­ogy, but we haven’t really struc­tured it that way.”

* It has been touted that this film will be shot in New York. In the pub­lished Ian Flem­ing sto­ries, James Bond goes to New York in “Live And Let Die”, “Dia­monds Are For­ever”, “Goldfin­ger” and the short story “007 in New York”. In the movies, he went there pre­vi­ously in Live and Let Die (1973).

* Report­edly, this is expected to be the first James Bond movie released after the Sony-MGM stu­dio part­ner­ship. This is allegedly due to a legal agree­ment which was made when Sony formed a con­sor­tium to buy the MGM stu­dio four years ago in 2004. Quan­tum of Solace (2008) and its pre­cur­sor Casino Royale (2006) have both been MGM / Colum­bia Pic­tures co-productions and both stu­dio logos are seen at the start of each film. For Bond 23 (2010), MGM is expected to return to being the Bond franchise’s sole exclu­sive stu­dio. How­ever, it has been touted that Sony may be stay­ing on.

* With the use Quan­tum of Solace (2008), an orig­i­nal Ian Flem­ing James Bond story title for the Bond movie made prior to this, there now remains only four unused orig­i­nal Flem­ing titles that could pos­si­bly be used as a title for this film. These are “The Prop­erty of a Lady”, “The Hilde­brand Rar­ity”, “Risico” and “007 in New York” (aka “Agent 007 in New York”).

* There has been a strong sug­ges­tion that this film may be filmed in New York. Inter­est­ingly, the 007 Mag­a­zine has reported a time when in the early days of try­ing to film what would become Never Say Never Again (1983), the fol­low­ing 1975 Bond movie New York loca­tion scout occured: “In 1975 McClory [i.e. Kevin McClory], accom­pa­nied by Sean Con­nery, trav­eled to New York in order to scout loca­tions for their new 007 project then enti­tled James Bond of the Secret Ser­vice. The script, co-written by McClory, Sean Con­nery and Len Deighton (thriller writer and cre­ator of the Harry Palmer char­ac­ter immor­talised on screen by Michael Caine) included scenes inside and out­side the Statue of Lib­erty, where the vil­lain­ous SPECTRE has a secret base from where they launch robotic sharks to keep away any pry­ing intruders.”

* The char­ac­ters of Miss Mon­eypenny and Q, who have not appeared in the last two Bond movies Casino Royale (2006) and Quan­tum of Solace (2008), are said to be return­ing in this movie. Saman­tha Bond, the last actress to play Mon­eypenny, has said that she won’t be return­ing to the role. As such, a new actress would likely be cast when/if her char­ac­ter returns to the series. Pro­ducer Michael G. Wil­son has allegedly hinted that Mon­eypenny will return but Q may/will not.

* Vari­ety colum­nist Liz Smith wrote this in her col­umn on Wednes­day 10th Sep­tem­ber 2008. The piece is about this movie being filmed in New York using its Pri­mola Restau­rant as one of it’s loca­tions: “WHO WAS that blond stun­ner who froze forks mid-air at the posh Pri­mola eatery in N.Y.? Oh yes indeed, it was Daniel Craig, 007 him­self. The studly Daniel was accom­pa­nied by his pro­ducer Bar­bara Broc­coli. (She is the daugh­ter of ‘Albert “Cubby’ Broc­coli’, who co-produced all the James Bond films until his death in 1996. Bar­bara took over and now has a “license to film.”) Daniel and Bar­bara talked about the next Bond epic, part of which will be filmed — for the very first time! — in New York [sic, Live and Let Die (1973) was par­tially filmed in New York]. Pri­mola itself will have a lit­tle cameo. Maybe Daniel just wanted to see if the restau­rant could han­dle those shoul­ders of his.”

* Writ­ers are sched­uled to begin the film script by the end of Jan­u­ary 2009.