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

I think we can almost cer­tainly cast these as fake in the cat­e­gory of rumor mon­ger­ing for the sake of jump­ing on the back of another movie’s suc­cess to sell news­pa­per copies. The Sun report that Slum­dog Mil­lion­aire star Freida Pinto has been invited to screen test for James Bond 23 — pro­duc­ers were sup­pos­edly impressed by her dur­ing cast­ing for Quan­tum of Solace, but at that time she was too young to play a ‘secret agent’s lover’.

The Sun are con­tin­u­ing with their already debunked Danny Boyle to direct rumor. Maybe Dev Patel will be the next Bond?

This was a short lived rumor, and as our instincts told us, it was best not to trust the Sun’s news story how­ever plau­si­ble it seemed. Last week The Sun broke the news, amidst a flurry of Slum­dog Mil­lion­aire atten­tion, that Boyle was inline to take the helm of James Bond 23. In response, a spokesper­son for Boyle recently announced to WENN:

‘While Danny says he always has and always will enjoy the Bond movies he has no plans to direct one. Danny is nat­u­rally flat­tered to be thought of!’

Before speak­ing directly with Enter­tain­ment Weekly:

‘I enjoy the Bond movies, always have and always will, but I have no plans to direct one. I don’t know who came up with the story, but please tell them I’m very flat­tered to be thought of!’

The word from the ‘not so truth­ful’ Sun is that Danny Boyle, direc­tor of Slum­dog Mil­lion­aire, fol­low­ing his Oscar win and press atten­tion, has been offered the next James Bond gig. Pos­si­bly join­ing Cal­lum McDou­gal again, after pre­vi­ously work­ing on Boyle’s Beach adap­ta­tion together. Clas­si­fied as rumor for now.

A source said: “Danny is the man of the moment and he is being bom­barded with offers from stu­dios.
“He has been offered the chance to direct the 23rd Bond film by Bar­bara. The EON team love his vision and think that it would work per­fectly for the new look of Bond.
“Danny has always insisted he is more inter­ested in the film than the money.
“How­ever, with Daniel Craig’s involve­ment and the way the films are now struc­tured — with the empha­sis on the char­ac­ters and plot rather than gags and gad­gets — it is right up Danny’s street.
“Every­one on the EON team thinks Danny would be a fan­tas­tic addi­tion to the Bond family.”

Via /Film

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?

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.