So, at first glance it appears that the death knell has been sounded and MGM’s financial woes have done what a thousand bowler hat wearing, knife-in-the-shoe assassins with silly names couldn’t – Bond is dead.
Or is it? A nicely sensational piece from the UK Mirror puts it in no uncertain terms that the new James Bond film has been axed, going so far to quote a ‘glum insider’, and they quote this statement released from the production company EON,
We do not know when development will resume and cannot comment further at this stage.
But hold on – we knew this already, and EON’s previous statement (which you can see at that last link) amounted to the same thing – that Bond 23 had been put on hold and the development of the film suspended. The rumoured director Sam Mendes has already moved on, and is said to be preparing the ground for his adaptation of Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach, and Daniel Craig has been working on Cowboys & Aliens and is said to be circling the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo remake so he’s clearly not hanging around.
But in honesty this seems to be an exercise in sensationalism, and until we hear anything official about MGM it’s safe to assume, based on the critical and commercial success of the previous two outings, that this we’ve not seen the last of Daniel Craig’s Bond.
It says a lot about the endurance and popularity of James Bond (and Craig’s Bond in particular) that this news is sweeping around tonight, and while we’re no nearer to finding out what end MGM will have, that The Hobbit and James Bond are stalled by the financial climate is certainly bad news as the cast and crew associated will be jumping ship if they haven’t already.
