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.

As hinted by Nel­son on Michael Bay’s Shoot for the Edit blog, Empire and USA Today do indeed have the first offi­cial pic­tures from Trans­form­ers 2 along with some juicy scoops and rumor con­fir­ma­tions — SPOILERS herein: Dev­as­ta­tor con­firmed. Dev­as­ta­tor made up of mul­ti­ple robots con­firmed. Sound­wave con­firmed. Jet­fire crossover confirmed.

USA Today

Arti­cle 1: LaBoeuf, Fox Really under fire in Trans­form­ers 2

Juicy spoil­ers and plot synopsis…

This time, the story finds Sam and Mikaela under attack by the evil Decep­ti­cons because of some­thing Sam has learned about the ori­gins of the Trans­form­ers and their ancient his­tory on Earth.

To acquire this knowl­edge, the invad­ing Decep­ti­cons need to cap­ture Sam instead of kill him. Mean­while, the U.S. mil­i­tary and an inter­na­tional coali­tion has united with the good-guy Auto­bots to fight back the vil­lains’ attack.

Some of the most impor­tant new­com­ers are in the robot cast: Decep­ti­cons Sound­wave, a fear­some com­mu­ni­ca­tions expert, and Dev­as­ta­tor, whose arms and legs are built out of other Trans­form­ers. And on the Auto­bots’ side is Jet­fire, a vil­lain whose age and broken-down phys­i­cal­ity leads him to help the Auto­bots [see scratched out decep­ti­con logo on Jet­fire].

Arti­cle 2: ‘Trans­form­ers’ breaks out the big guns for sequel

The U.S. Depart­ment of Defense gave its offi­cial stamp of approval to the Michael Bay-directed film, not only allow­ing pro­duc­tion amid the pris­tine dunes of the Army’s New Mex­ico mis­sile range, but also let­ting film­mak­ers fol­low jets and fighter planes through the sky from nearby Hol­lo­man Air Force Base. More scenes were shot on the Navy’s air­craft car­rier USS John C. Sten­nis, and Marines fill the ranks of the strike team bat­tling the invad­ing Transformers.

Among the equip­ment the movie is using in this desert sequence alone: two A-10 Thun­der­bolt II “Warthog” tank-killing jets; six F-16 Fight­ing Fal­cons; 10 armored Humvees; the Army’s Golden Knights para­chute team; two Abrams tanks; two Bradley tanks; two missile-launcher vehi­cles; two armored per­son­nel car­ri­ers; and a quarter-mile of the mis­sile test­ing range, cleared of unex­ploded ord­nance and built into an Egypt­ian town and tem­ple. (Signs warn not to cross a perime­ter just over the gyp­sum dunes, because live bombs could be hid­den in the sand.)

The final bat­tle the mil­i­tary is help­ing Bay cre­ate is sup­posed to be an enor­mous fire­fight in Egypt, but much of it is being shot in the White Sands dunes in a town built over the roughly quarter-mile cleared span.

Empire

Spoil­ers from the Empire arti­cle pro­vided cour­tesy of Alien­bot:

- Bay and LaBeouf con­firm the Fallen is a sep­a­rate char­ac­ter.
– Egypt­ian hiero­glyph­ics …turn out to be depic­tions of Trans­form­ers who vis­ited Earth.
– Bay claims Mega­tron is not com­ing back and the tank is just a new toy.
– Around 40 robots.
– Bud­get is $200 mil­lion.
– Ramon Rodriguez is the one hold­ing on for dear life to a pole while cars are flung.
– Dev­as­ta­tor appears at the pyra­mid, he’s prob­a­bly 50 feet tall because that’s the height of the cam­era crane they used on location.

Note the hand injury in this image — prov­ing it has been worked into the movie.

Pos­si­ble Fallen images

With Fallen now cited as a sep­a­rate char­ac­ter in ‘Revenge of the Fallen’, it’s a good time to point out some mys­te­ri­ous shots found on Lin­ing up TV, which claims to have on set images of The Fallen. Behind an old pic­ture? Doesn’t seem to fit inline with the Egypt­ian plot arc we are see­ing, I’ll clas­sify as fake for now.

Hello all, hope every­one had a great Christ­mas and New Years, sorry for the lack of updates dur­ing the fes­tive sea­son, things got a lit­tle bit hec­tic. In the mean time it seems that the world of Trans­form­ers: Revenge of the Fallen has exploded with rumors, names and pic­tures — offi­cially and unof­fi­cially, best to start with the upcom­ing toys, amongst other news, which will be along shortly in the next post.

Jolt & Megatron

Jolt, the recently revealed name of the Chevy Volt, is back with new close up shots of the ‘Fast Action Bat­tler’ via The Arker, along with some close up shots of the Megatron/Tank.

Jet­fire merged with Opti­mus Prime

Pic­tures of the Leg­ends Opti­mus Prime and Jet­fire toys merged together have been posted on TF08 and more recently TFW2005.

Inter­est­ingly the close up shots of the Jet­fire toy show a Decep­ti­con logo that has been scratched out. The toy has already been con­firmed as a Decep­ti­con, but this loosely sug­gests some sort of team changeover in the movie.

Roll­bar

TF08 have posted shots of the ‘Roll­bar’ toy, now with a con­firmed name. It is unlikely that this vehi­cle shall appear in the movie though.

Knock Out

Seib­ertron posted the scoop on this one, a motor­cy­cle shaped toy with the name Knock Out — could this be a con­stituent part of Arcee? It’s green col­or­ing sug­gests oth­er­wise, it’s unlikely Knock Out will appear in the movie.

“Though he is an incred­i­bly flashy and skilled fighter, KNOCK OUT is also des­per­ately inse­cure. He prac­tices awe­some com­bat maneu­vers con­stantly in pri­vate to be sure that the other AUTOBOTS will notice him on the bat­tle­field. His high­est ambi­tion is to be the leader of a spe­cial com­bat team, and to get the com­bi­na­tion retro­fit every­one has been talk­ing about.”

Dead End

Pic­tures of a red super­car auto­bot have been posted at ACToys, the name Dead End comes from a shot of the instruc­tion book­let that accom­pa­nies it. Another unlikely movie hope­ful — if this was X-men 3 I’m sure all these guys would get thrown into the mix at some point.

Leader Class Opti­mus Prime

TLAMB have also posted a pic­ture of the new Leg­ends Class Opti­mus Prime toy.

The pic­tures…

Latino Review are report­ing that Tim Rob­bins is set to play Howard Stark whilst char­ac­ters Hawk­eye and Black Widow are rumored to make an appear­ance in the Iron Man sequel:

From what I’m told, Tim Rob­bins is going to be play­ing Howard Stark in an impor­tant flash­back sequence that is going to set up the Avengers and Cap­tain Amer­ica films. Jon [Favreau] wanted to get a good actor because he didn’t think the guy who played Howard in the last film could carry such an impor­tant scene.

The scooper goes on,

I’m also told that HAWKEYE and BLACK WIDOW are def­i­nitely in Iron Man 2 and they wont be cameos either.

The nom­i­na­tions for the 15th Annual Screen Actors Guild have been announced, with Heath Ledger in the run­ning for best male actor in a sup­port­ing role. The cer­e­mony will take place on Sun­day, Jan 25th, with a simul­cast Live on TNT and TBS at 8 PM ET/PT.

Out­stand­ing Per­for­mance by a Male Actor in a Sup­port­ing Role
JOSH BROLIN / Dan White — “MILK” (Focus Fea­tures)
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR. / Kirk Lazarus — “TROPIC THUNDER” (Para­mount Pic­tures)
PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN / Father Bren­dan Flynn — “DOUBT” (Mira­max Films)
HEATH LEDGER / Joker — “THE DARK KNIGHT” (Warner Bros. Pic­tures)
DEV PATEL / Older Jamal — “SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE” (Fox Search­light Pictures)

Out­stand­ing Per­for­mance by a Stunt Ensem­ble in a Motion Pic­ture
THE DARK KNIGHT (Warner Bros. Pic­tures)
HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY (Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures)
INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL (Para­mount Pic­tures)
IRON MAN (Para­mount Pic­tures)
WANTED (Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures)

Seems like the tabloids are at it again, this time with rumors that Rachel Weisz will be play­ing Cat Woman, Shia LaBoeuf to play Robin and Eddie Mur­phy as The Rid­dler — where do they get this crap? Suf­fice to say, it’s all made up drivel.

Time to get some real voices on the sequel to The Dark Knight; Alan Horn, pres­i­dent of Warner Bros. has recently spo­ken with Col­lider:

We’ve been talk­ing to Chris Nolan and what we have to do is get him in the right place and have him tell us what he thinks the notion might be for a great story, but Chris did a great job and we’d love to have him come back and do another one.”

As far as the tim­ing of the project, he went onto say: “The story is every­thing and we are very respect­ful of Chris. We have a won­der­ful rela­tion­ship with him and we are going to be respect­ful of his tim­ing and we want to get it right. Also, I think the fans expect that – they want us to make a ter­rific movie – we have to give them another great movie.”

UGO caught up with Justin Ther­oux recently and quizzed him about the progress of the Iron Man 2 script and the ongo­ing development:

JT: We’ve kind of got a first draft around. You know what I mean? I just got back from Lon­don where I was work­ing with Robert and Kevin Feige. He was out there. We were talk­ing with Robert, who’s out there doing Sher­lock Holmes, he was giv­ing his input and his notes. We’re sort of there. It’s just sort of chug­ging along. The crews, I think, are now start­ing to see what they need to make, and the places that we might be going and all the rest within the story. That’s sort of one of the more excit­ing times.

UGO: So you weren’t involved in the whole Don Cheadle/Terrence Howard…or were and you want to tell me something…

JT: No, I wasn’t. I gen­uinely wasn’t. (laughs)

UGO: There have been reports that the role of War Machine was scaled back and then beefed up.

JT: No, that’s all non­sense. What­ever their rea­son is, I’ll leave that up to Mar­vel. We’re writ­ing the thing, vir­tu­ally the same for Rhodey that we would for any actor. We’re really tak­ing what’s going to be the most inter­est­ing story for the fans, and what are they going to enjoy watch­ing. And who ever’s in that part is going to have to play that part and make it work for Jon (Favreau) and the fans who are watch­ing the movie.

UGO: So the size of the role wasn’t ever changed?

JT: No. God, no.

UGO: So did you have to, or did you try to accom­mo­date Don Cheadle’s act­ing style?

JT: I think that will prob­a­bly be some­thing that comes up…I haven’t met Don, and I think I’m going to in a lit­tle bit and I think once I get a bet­ter sense of his voice and also hear what he has to say about what he likes about the char­ac­ter and just pick his brain a lit­tle bit, then we’ll obvi­ously start to tai­lor it to him. Once he sort of gets more involved in the process then we’ll start taper­ing the length of his character…making it fit just right.

UGO: Everyone’s spec­u­lat­ing about the vil­lain. Are we talk­ing Man­darin? Or Evil DJ?

JT: (laughs) I think it’s Evil DJ. He could be the vil­lain in this movie. I don’t know. I mean, I do know but I’m not going to let that cat out. I’ll let Jon start dis­cussing when he thinks it’s the right time.

UGO: Con­sid­er­ing that everyone’s com­ing together for the Avengers movie, were you ever told that cer­tain things had to be in the story or that things had to go a cer­tain way?

JT: No. I mean, I think we’re all sort of con­scious of the fact that all these people…it is the Mar­vel uni­verse, but that’s really about as far as we’ve been made…they haven’t given us any instruc­tion as far as we want you to do this or we want you to do that. And really it’s not really a they/us kind of envi­ron­ment, the way they work. It’s just a bunch of guys and girls sit­ting in a room, try­ing to come up with stuff and doing what’s right for the movie and what, at the end of the day, is going to be the most inter­est­ing film that can be made. Kind of a fun film. I think once we’re sort of locked on that we’ll be able to think about how we can thread things through. There’s a cou­ple lit­tle things that we’ve been work­ing on, but it’s not that we’ve been tak­ing meet­ings with Avengers peo­ple. It’s not like we’re six screen­writ­ers sit­ting in a room from each movie and think­ing about how we’re gonna work on each other’s things.

UGO: Have you writ­ten Stan Lee’s cameo yet?

JT: No, I don’t think so. (laughs) I don’t know, I don’t know. Jon will anoint him with that cameo, I’m sure.

UGO: Gwyneth Pal­trow is still listed as “rumored”. Is she confirmed?

JT: I don’t know. I don’t know if she’s con­firmed or not…I’m plan­ning like she is there but I have no idea.

UGO: Finally, what voice do you think you bring to the script, to make it dif­fer­ent from the last one?

JT: I’m not really try­ing to bring a dif­fer­ent voice. I’m try­ing to mimic and sing in the same key as the script that was there before. If any­thing, I think I bring a knowl­edge of the way Robert’s mind works. I’ve worked with him once before. Hope­fully I’ve proven I have some mod­icum of cre­ative rela­tion­ship with Jon and Mar­vel. So I really think my job is to work with them and not try and strike any new chords. Of course we want to make the story dif­fer­ent and inter­est­ing. We want the action to be really good. But I think my job is really just to…serve the ulti­mate guy, which is Iron Man.

The Syd­ney Morn­ing Her­ald are cur­rently report­ing that New South Wales and Vic­to­ria are in a bid­ding bat­tle to attract the busi­ness of The Green Lantern movie production.

The film­mak­ers have been scout­ing loca­tions and inter­view­ing key crew in Syd­ney for a movie with an esti­mated bud­get of more than $150 mil­lion. Cen­tring on a test pilot who uses a magic ring to become a crime-fighting superhero.