Questions about a (possible) Nolan-directed 007 film

Logo of Syncopy, Christopher Nolan’s production company

WARNING: This is very much putting the cart before the horse. Nobody has said Christopher Nolan *will* direct Bond 24. The U.K. Daily Mail has reported only that the director has been *approached* about the job. Bear all that in mind before reading the following.

This week, the Daily Mail newspaper in the U.K. reported that Christopher Nolan, director of three Batman movies from 2005 through 2012, had been “approached” about directing Bond 24.

The writer, Baz Bagimboye, had a number of scoops about Skyfall, the most recent 007 movie, that proved to be correct. So, it got the attention of a lot of fans. If Nolan eventually signs on the dotted line, it raises a number of questions about Bond 24. Among them:

1. What happens to writer John Logan? Logan was brought in by director Sam Mendes to rewrite Skyfall. Eon Productions originally announced that Peter Morgan would collaborate with scribes Neal Purvis and Robert Wade. Eventually, Morgan left without getting a screen credit. But Logan evidently impressed somebody because he was hired to write Bond 24 and Bond 25 while Purvis and Wade departed the series.

But things can change, as Morgan can attest. Christopher Nolan is fond of writing his own movies, either by himself (Inception) or collaborating with his brother Jonathan Nolan and David S. Goyer (the three Batman movies or the upcoming Man of Steel, which was produced by Nolan). If Nolan comes aboard, will Logan stay or go?

2. Do other members of Nolan’s posse also participate? Nolan has a production company, Syncopy. That logo ended up being featured at the start of the third Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises, along with the logos of Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures. Ditto for Man of Steel. The Syncopy group includes Emma Thomas, a producer who’s married to Nolan, and Charles Rovan, another producer. Also, Nolan frequently collaborates with Wally Pfister as director of photography. Pfister is directing Transcendence a movie scheduled for a 2014 release.

While Eon may be interested in Nolan’s services as a director, would it also hire Nolan-affiliated producers such as Thomas and Rovan? Eon, led by Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, has its own group of supporting producers, including Gregg Wilson, the son of Michael. On the other hand, Eon has probably would be open to hiring Pfister. That would be similar to Skyfall, where Roger Deakins was brought on as director of photography because Mendes wanted him.

3. Would Hans Zimmer be the newest 007 composer? Zimmer also works frequently with Nolan. Again, that’s a situation similar to Skyfall, where Thomas Newman was hired as composer because of his relationship with Mendes. A Zimmer-scored Bond 24 might be similar to Skyfall in other ways. Mendes said that Nolan’s The Dark Knight from 2008 influenced the 2012 007 movie. Some tracks of Newman’s score (particularly the Shanghai sequences and the action sequences at the Macao casino) sounded similar to Zimmer’s music for Nolan’s Batman films.

4. What would the running time of a Nolan-directed Bond 24 be? Probably not short. Batman Begins was 140 minutes, The Dark Knight was 152 minutes, Inception was 148 minutes and The Dark Knight Rises was a whopping 165 minutes.

More (belated) HMSS reviews of Skyfall part I

Skyfall’s poster image

First in a series of reviews intended for a never-published issue of Her Majesty’s Secret Servant.

By Peredur Glyn Davies

Skyfall is the worst Bond film in a long time.

The standard pattern of the Bond film plots, characters and narrative arcs that have sustained Eon’s 007 franchise for 50 years has been largely eschewed by director Sam Mendes and scriptwriters Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan, in favour of a film that goes places and does things that anyone familiar with classic Bond films will find unusual and even alien.

Just look at it. The gunbarrel sequence is in the wrong place. Bond is actively refused an exploding gadget by Q –and this Q is barely out of short trousers. The main Bond girl is a septuagenarian. The final act, which should involve Bond infiltrating the villain’s lair, is the exact opposite of that.

The climactic sequence takes place, not in a tropical locale, but in a wintery Scotland (even the funeral sequence in The World is not Enough was more glitzy). James Bond (Daniel Craig) in Skyfall is, rather than the superhuman quipmeister audiences are accustomed to, a frail, dejected shell of his former cinematic self, a man who can hardly do pull-ups and misses a stationary paper target five yards away. For goodness’ sake, he can’t even be bothered to shave.

What kind of a Bond film is that?

I could go on — and will. Scarcely recognisable, here, are the stock characters we are all familiar with: the expository boss, the comic relief gadget-master, the doomed beauty with a cute name, the burly henchman with no dialogue, the main villain who wants to blow up the world (and it doesn’t really matter why he does).

All right, Mendes has made some effort to include something close to them, but he too often goes wide of the mark and, instead of the two-dimensional characters that we are used to in a Bond film, characters who fulfil a role and help propel the film to its classic denouement with Bond and Girl 3 aboard a stranded boat in the middle of the sea (it is usually a stranded boat in the middle of the sea), Mendes and the writers give us a bevy of characters who actually develop and change over the course of the film. Our opinion of them changes and matures during the course of our time with them, and they end up as characters we actually care about.

What kind of a Bond film is that?

Take Gareth Mallory (Ralph Fiennes). He is surely meant to be the Admiral Godfrey character — the stuffy bureaucrat who stands in Bond’s way and who will get his red-faced comeuppance when Bond proves he can save the day just fine without any help from Whitehall, thank you very much. But Mallory, in relatively little screen time, subverts our expectations, makes us realise that he is not just some suit but a savvy war veteran with a compassionate heart and, I’d warrant, damnably clear grey eyes. When he takes his seat behind the mahogany desk at the end, it actually makes sense—we understand why he is there.

Or look at Severine (Berenice Marlohe). The sacrificial lamb character — Jill from Goldfinger, Aki from You Only Live Twice, Plenty from Diamonds Are Forever, Solange from Casino Royale — who is supposed to turn up, shag Bond, and pay the piper so that we the audience know how very naughty the villain is, that he would engineer the death of even his beautiful concubine if she stood between him and his villainous scheme.

But Severine, in her brief scenes, reflects an inner torment and depth of character that makes us understand why she behaves the way she does. Of course, Severine meets the end that her type always do, and perhaps it was not warranted here, given Bond’s promise to her to save her—but remember that our man Bond is a cold bastard and that what he does is get the job done, regardless of the price.

And then there’s good old Miss Moneypenny (Naomie Harris), whom we first meet, not behind her desk á la Maxwell, Bliss or (Samantha) Bond, but out in the field being efficient and lethal, wielding guns and driving cars as if women can somehow be Bond’s equal in this universe.

They even call her Eve to pull the wool most cruelly over the audience’s eyes. When she finally takes her expected place in our little jigsaw in the final scene, I suppose we do now know why she’s there, why she prefers to work behind the scenes rather than in front of them, and why she and Bond have the flirtatious relationship that we know they do. By the final scene, all our players are in their appropriate positions, the green light above the oak door flickers on and we know we are back in familiar 007 territory. But it takes a hell of a time to get there.

And what kind of a Bond film is that?

As noted, M’s Judi Dench screen time is greatly increased in Skyfall over previous iterations (even more so than in The World is not Enough), so that her role becomes more than just the exposition that viewers expect. She certainly holds the leading female role over Eve or Severine. So instead of Bond and his lady sharing body warmth in a remote chalet in front of a roaring fire, we find Bond and M skulking in a dusty Scottish manor with the threat of doom hanging over their heads. There is little romance in this film.

What’s all that about, Mendes? Bond is shown to respect and perhaps even (after a fashion) love his boss, and we are shown how this urge to protect her leads him to risk everything in an almost hopeless gambit of luring his enemy to him.

Ah yes, the enemy. Silva (Javier Bardem) is certainly camp enough for a classic Bond villain, but again he almost ruins the Bondness of the film by making us sympathise with his point of view.

Silva is indeed Bond from a parallel universe, a Bond that might have been, an agent gone wrong through the fault of others. His deformity — he has been hideously scarred by hydrogen cyanide which he administered himself — makes him appropriately vile for the rogue’s gallery, but rather than monopolising on this deformity, Mendes and the writers don’t use it as the sole character prop for the villain, which is what one might often expect.

Instead, we are allowed to focus on what makes this man tick, and are given the chance to consider why he would do the things he does. Mr. Silva is truly a criminal genius. He almost makes succeeds in making Bond look foolish: he is ahead of him almost throughout the film, revealing that Bond too can fail. Do we want a James Bond who can fail? Bond in Skyfall’s latter half is frantic, desperately trying to stop a dozen threats happening at once, and the coolness and calmness that we expect of the world’s greatest secret agent is hardly there. He even needs help from Mallory and Moneypenny in shooting baddies during an attempt on M’s life!

A fleshed-out villain? A genuine relationship between 007 and M? A Bond whom we think might actually not succeed this time?

What kind of a Bond film is this? It is a long time since we have seen a James Bond film that subverts the expectations of what one presumes a James Bond film should be. Really, only in a film like From Russia with Love do we see a movie where Mr. Bond can be his own character and where we cannot predict where the next scene or sequence will take us. Of course, that film was made before the template was truly set out. That 1963 film was made before the expectations of what makes a Bond film were seared onto an international consciousness, before the scriptwriters felt shackled by convention.

Hundreds of wannabe 007s have splayed over cinema screens since Bob Simmons (doubling for Sean Connery’s Bond) first turned and fired into a bleeding gunbarrel in 1962. Some of the wannabes even outbonded Bond, and perhaps, in doing so, the template that Eon constructed has become stale, the expectations of audiences have been being met rather than shaken and stirred, the endless repetitions satisfactory only in a clinical, functional way.

Perhaps it really was time to take Bond out of Bond, and make, not a Bond film, but a film with James Bond in it. Start at the core, trim the excess.

Ian Fleming gave the world a character and the world played around with it. Strip away the expensive suits, the ludicrous cocktails, the funny gadgets and the wisecracks, and you can then start afresh. You can start from the beginning with James Bond and remake his world.

“Into the past,” Bond says to M, and, as they leave behind them the trappings of the 21st Century world and head north for the misty fells of Bond’s homeland. So too the filmmakers can leave behind the gilt-edged excesses of 50 years and wipe the slate clean. Build a new template by challenging the old one. Maybe if you did that you would end up with a film like Skyfall.

So, yes, I would call Skyfall the worst of all the Bond films.

But, on the other hand, would I call it the best film in the canon?

Yes, I would. With pleasure. GRADE: A+

(C) 2013, Peredur Glyn Davies

John Logan’s (brief) comments about 007′s film future

Bond 24 writer John Logan

The Financial Times on March 8 published A FEATURE STORY ABOUT WRITER JOHN LOGAN. The story is mostly about Peter and Alice, a new play he wrote with Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw. But the co-writer of Skyfall does have a brief comment about 007′s film future.

The FT’s Sarah Hemming writes that Logan, hired to pen the scripts for Bond 24 and Bond 25, in her words “hopes to build on Skyfall in examining the complexities of Bond’s character.”

“Fleming’s courage in showing Bond’s fear and vulnerability and depression was really interesting and something that a modern audience can accept,” Hemming quotes Logan as saying. “I think Skyfall demonstrated that they want more layers to that character. And those are the layers that Fleming wrote.”

To view the entire FT article (headlined “After Bond, Peter meets Alice”), just CLICK HERE.

Logan was brought into Skyfall by director Sam Mendes to rewrite a script by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade. All three scribes shared the final writing credit. Mendes said this week he won’t direct Bond 24.

Also, here’s a quick note of appreciation to The James Bond Dossier, where we found out about the FT story. You can read that Web site’s post on the subject by CLICKING HERE.

MI6 Confidential’s new issue looks at Skyfall

MI6 Confidential’s new issue with a look at Skyfall that includes an interviews with two of its screenwriters as well as the son of Eon Productions co-boss Michael G. Wilson.

Here’s an excerpt from the magazine’s WEB SITE:

Whilst pundits’ predictions of Skyfall’s success definitely rang true, the 23rd Bond adventure surely surpassed even the most optimistic auspices, both in terms of substance, and box office success. This issue celebrates that success, with a look at the global promotion and Royal World Premiere, and we turn back the clock to pre-production as screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade describe the genesis of the Skyfall screenplay in an exclusive interview.

Purvis and Wade, after a five-film 007 run, have said they’re departing the series. From The World Is Not Enough through Skyfall, they’ve done the early drafts of Bond scripts with (for the most part) other writers revising their work.

Also interviewed is Gregg Wilson, whose first name matches his father’s middle name. The younger Wilson has been working his way up the Eon chain. His named appeared as a byline of a magazine story that Pierce Brosnan’s Bond is reading about Gustav Graves in 2002′s Die Another Day. By Quantum of Solace, he had a real credit in the main titles as assistant producer. For Skyfall, he carried the title of associate producer.

The new issue also has a story about Judi Dench, who concluded a 17-year as M and a feature about Naomie Harris, whose agent Eve turned out to be the new Miss Moneypenny at the end of Skyfall.

For more information about contents and ordering, CLICK HERE. The price is 7 British pounds, $11 or 8.50 euros depending on where you live.

Skyfall’s Oscar campaign and its quirks

Skyfall’s Oscar campaign puts forth Daniel Craig “for your consideration” to Oscar voters.

Sony Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer definitely are pressing to secure Oscar nominations for Skyfall, the 23rd James Bond movie. The studios are buying ads on entertainment news sites such as Deadline Hollywood, with rotating banner ads listing possible Oscar-worthy performers and crew “for your consideration.”

Perhaps the most detailed list in the Skyfall Oscar campaign is a list of suggested nominees on THE FILM’S OFFICIAL WEB SITE. It urges that Skyfall be considered for:

Best Picture (Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli; producers receive the Best Picture Oscar)

Best Director (Sam Mendes)

Best Adapted Screenplay (emphasis added, which we’ll discuss in a moment, Neal Purvis & Robert Wade and John Logan)

Best Actor (Daniel Craig); Best Supporting Actor (Javier Bardem, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw and Albert Finney); Best Supporting Actress (Judi Dench, Berenice Marlohe and Naomie Harris)

Various crew categories including cinematography (Roger Deakins), editing (Stuart Baird), original score (Thomas Newman) and song (Adele and Paul Epworth).

A few questions:

Adapted screenplay? Adapted from what? The on-screen credit reads, “Written by Neal Purvis & Robert Wade and John Logan.” Generally, you use “written by” for an original screenplay, i.e. one not based on an existing novel, play, short story, etc.

It’s pretty well known that the writing crew took parts of Ian Fleming’s You Only Live Twice and The Man With the Golden Gun novels as a starting point, in particular Twice’s Chapter 21, an obituary of Bond written by M. But the movie’s credits don’t acknowledge this. It’s “Daniel Craig as Ian Fleming’s James Bond 007″ in the main titles, but there’s no mention of other Fleming source material, unlike 2006′s Casino Royale, which mentioned Fleming twice, including the Casino Royale novel.

In the “old days,” the titles said “Ian Fleming’s From Russia With Love,” or Goldfinger, Thunderball, etc. which implied it was based on a Fleming story. That was true even when chunks were thrown out, such as 1967′s You Only Live Twice or 1979′s Moonraker. This would be followed by a “Screenplay by” credit, which often implies adapting other source material.

“Screenplay by” can also be used for an original story that has been rewritten substantially such as “Screenplay by Neal Purvis & Robert Wade and Bruce Feirstein, Story by Neal Purvis & Robert Wade,” as in 1999′s The World Is Not Enough. Purvis and Wade did the original screenplay, with Feirstein doing the final rewrite. (Dana Stevens also did drafts in-between but didn’t get a credit.)

Something similar happened with Skyfall: Purvis and Wade wrote the early drafts, then Logan was brought in to rewrite. But Skyfall’s writing credit is relatively streamlined compared with TWINE’s.

UPDATE: We went to the Web site of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and the SPECIAL RULES FOR THE WRITING AWARDS but that wasn’t much help. It reads:

1.An award shall be given for the best achievement in each of two categories:

Adapted Screenplay

Original Screenplay

2.A Reminder List of all pictures eligible in each category shall be made available along with nominations ballots to all members of the Writers Branch, who shall vote in the order of their preference for not more than five productions in each category.
3.The five productions in each category receiving the highest number of votes shall become the nominations for final voting for the Writing awards.
4.Final voting for the Writing awards shall be restricted to active and life Academy members.

One possibility: even though Skyfall has an original story, the character of James Bond is adapted from another medium, so therefore Skyfall’s script is considered “adapted” by the academy.

UPDATE II: The writer’s branch of the academy is also known for being prickly about what’s eligible for an original screenplay award, sometimes ruling what seem like original scripts are adapted. CLICK HERE to view a story in The Wrap Web site about a 2010 example.

Berenice Marlohe or Berenice Lim Marlohe? The Oscar push again highlights the oddity of how the actress was billed one way in ads and another in the movie’s titles.

One editor or two? As we’ve noted before, Stuart Baird was listed as sole editor in Skyfall ads, but in the main titles it listed Baird and Kate Baird as editors, with Kate Baird’s name in smaller letters. Also (which we only caught on a subsequent viewing), Kate Baird is also listed as first assistant editor in the end titles.

Purvis & Wade: who loves ya, baby?

Robert Wade, left, and Neal Purvis, going from Walther PPKs to lollipops.

Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, having concluding a run of working on five James Bond movies, have been hired to script a Kojak film starring Vin Diesel, according to the Deadline entertainment news Web site.

Here’s an excerpt:

EXCLUSIVE: Universal Pictures is getting serious about Kojak, hiring the scribe team of Neal Purvis & Robert Wade to script a movie around the tough-talking, smooth scalped cop played by Telly Savalas on the CBS series. Vin Diesel, who just wrapped Fast And Furious 6 for the studio, will play the chrome-domed cop in the film, which he’s producing with Samantha Vincent for their Universal-based One Race Films.

The original 1973-78 series originated with a made-for-TV movie called The Marcus-Nelson Murders that first aired in March 1973. That original project was scripted by Abby Mann, an Oscar winning screenwriter, and directed by Joseph Sargent. It gave Telly Savalas, normally cast as villains (including 1969′s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service), a chance to play a sympathetic role. The story was based on the Wylie-Hoffert murders, also known as the Career Girls Murders, which led to to Miranda warnings.

Director Sargent won an Emmy and a Directors Guild of America award for The Marcus-Nelson Murders while Mann was nominated for an Emmy.

The CBS series made Savalas a big star and, for a time, a sex symbol (starting in the second season he doffed neckties a lot and didn’t button the first button or two of his dress shirts). Kojak’s catchphrase was, “Who loves ya, baby?” Kojak, trying to quit smoking, frequently sucked lollipops. The cast included the star’s brother George as one of the New York City detectives that worked with Kojak. The first season of the series included Christopher Walken and Harvey Keitel as guest stars. Richard Donner directed some episodes.

Savalas reprised the role in a some TV movies on ABC (part of a Mystery Movie revival that included Peter Falk as Columbo). There was also a brief revival series on cable television in 2005, starring Ving Rhames as Kojak.

To read the entire Deadline story, just CLICK HERE.

Purvis & Wade, an appreciation

Robert Wade, left, and Neal Purvis

Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, 007 screenwriters in residence for 15 years, confirmed this week to Collider.com that THEY’RE DEPARTING THE 007 FRANCHISE. That ends a run of five films, tying them for second among credited screenwriters in the 23-film series produced by Eon Productions.

The writing duo stir mixed reactions among fans. The thing is, it’s difficult to exactly measure the contributions they made to their five Bond films. They shared the screenplay credit with other writers on four of their five films. Some of those other scribes (in particular, Paul Haggis on Casino Royale) won praise. Stories SUCH AS THIS ONE mentioned Haggis and his Oscars without mentioning Purvis and Wade who wrote the early drafts of the script. Meanwhile, late drafts referred to Haggis’ contributions as revisions of Purvis and Wade’s work.

It does appear Purvis and Wade worked hard to evoke Ian Fleming without always having a lot of Ian Fleming material to work with aside from Casino Royale. They managed to rework story elements from Moonraker that had been dropped while the 11th 007 movie was being developed for 2002′s Die Another Day. For Skyfall, they used parts of the You Only Live Twice and The Man With the Golden Gun novels as a springboard for the story.

Writing a James Bond movie is undoubtedly a lot harder than it looks, something Paul Haggis found out when he returned to write a second 007 film, Quantum of Solace. Still, Eon kept bringing the duo back, even if they hired others to revamp their work.

We noted Purvis and Wade are tied for second among credited Eon-Bond screenwriters. The person they’re tied with is Michael G. Wilson, Eon’s co-boss who had a bit of inside track to co-write his five 007 movies from 1981 through 1989 given that Albert R. Broccoli was his stepfather. No. 1, of course, is Richard Maibaum, whose 13 Bond script credits between 1962 and 1989 aren’t likely to be surpassed.

Purvis and Wade can say they’re going out on a high. Skyfall, their finale, is now the No. 1 movie in 007 ticket sales unadjusted for inflation. John Logan, the latest scribe hired to revamp a Purvis-Wade script with Skyfall, has been hired to write Bond 24 and Bond 25.

You can CLICK HERE to view the Collider.com story on Purvis and Wade. You can CLICK HERE to read a 2002 interview HMSS’s Tom Zielinski had with the writers. You can CLICK HERE to view a 2007 interview HMSS had with Purvis and Wade.

John Logan hired to write Bond 24, Daily Mail says

Skyfall co-scripter John Logan

And so it begins. Skyfall, the 23rd James Bond film, opens in the U.K. on Oct. 26 (Nov. 9 in the U.S.) and we’ve already had the first major report about Bond 24. The Daily Mail in a story you can read BY CLICKING HERE says Eon Productions has hired John Logan to write Bond 24.

An excerpt:

Bond 24 is already in pre-pre-production and the plan is for it to start shooting at Pinewood Studios around this time next year and be ready for cinemas in the autumn of 2014.

Screenwriter John Logan has been hired to write Bond 24…(snip) On Skyfall, he was brought in by director Sam Mendes and producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli to re-write the existing Skyfall screenplay that had been created by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade.

The writer is Baz Bamigboye, who has had a number of scoops about Skyfall that panned out. The Daily Mail has a trashy reputation in general but Bamigboye had a decent track record for accuracy for Skyfall. We’ll see if it’s true.

If the Daily Mail writer is accurate, that would indicate there is a serious effort to get Bond 24 out in two years’ time. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer wants it (the studio said in court papers filed during a 2010 bankruptcy it wanted to get the 007 series back on an every-other-year schedule). Sony Pictures wants it (an executive has already told theater executives it plans to release Bond 24 in 2014). Eon Productions co-boss Barbara Broccoli hasn’t publicly committed to it.

Meanwhile, 007 movies have a bit of mixed history with screenwriters delivering late drafts who won acclaim along the way.

Bruce Feirstein did the final drafts of 1995′s Goldeneye but had a rough time with 1997′s Tomorrow Never Dies. Feirstein was the only credited writer on Tomorrow but his first draft was drastically revamped by a number of other writers before Feirstein was brought back. Feirstein’s final 007 film credit was 1998′s The World Is Not Enough, where he rewrote the initial Purvis-Wade effort.

Paul Haggis got a lot of good press for 2006′s Casino Royale, where he revised a Purvis-Wade script. Haggis’s follow up effort for 2008′s Quantum of Solace (where he shared credit with Purvis and Wade) weren’t nearly as well received.

Meanwhile, if you CLICK HERE you can read a 2002 interview Purvis and Wade gave to HMSS about Die Another Day, one of the five 007 movies they’ve worked on.

Quick reactions to the new Skyfall trailers

SEMI-SPOILERS. We’ve had a chance to look over the new international and U.S. trailers for Skyfall. While each is only about two-and-a-half minutes long, they’re the most revealing glimpse yet. We’ll call these observations semi-spoilers. Anybody who has read certain key writings by Ian Fleming won’t be surprised but many 007 film fans haven’t read the books.

“You were expecting somebody else?”

So if you don’t want to know *anything at all*, stop reading now. Without further ado:

More Ian Fleming content this time out: There have been signs for a while that director Sam Mendes and his writers Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan had tapped into Chapter 21 of Ian Fleming’s 1964 novel, You Only Live Twice. The chapter is Bond’s obituary as published in The Times of London, written by M.

First, pictures taken by a nature photographer surfaced in March of an outdoor Skyfall set, that included tombstones for Bond’s parents, whose names are referenced in the obituary in Fleming’s novel. Now, in the new trailers, we briefly see Judi Dench’s M writing 007′s obituary and are shown why the world thinks Bond is dead.

This raises the question whether Mendes & Co. are also dipping into Fleming’s final 007 novel, The Man With the Golden Gun. In that story, a brainwashed Bond, turns up in London and tries to kill M. We’re NOT predicting Skyfall goes that far, but in the trailers Bond surprises M after his “death.”

During the November Skyfall press conference, the principals said the new movie had no connections to an Ian Fleming stories (That occurs around the 15:00 mark if you check out the video embedded in that link). Then, in late April, Mendes & Co. emphasized how Skyfall was true to Fleming.

Evidently, there was some “misdirection” going on in November. We’re intrigued by the apparent renewed emphasis on Fleming material. So we’ll leave it at that.

Question No. 2: Could Javier Bardem’s Silva be a revamped version of Fleming’s Francisco Scaramanga? Bardem, with his blonde wig doesn’t have “hair reddish in a crew cut” like Scaramanga did, so he’s not a physical twin.

In 1974′s The Man With the Golden Gun, very little of the novel was actually used. Christopher Lee’s Scaramanga was more sophisticated chap than his literary counterpart while retaining the basic back story (which Lee briefly recites in a scene with Roger Moore).

Still, could Bardem’s Silva be possibly channeling the literary Scaramanga? Skyfall could end up, in terms of amount of Fleming content, being like 2002′s Die Another Day. The first half of that movie was a de facto adaptation of Fleming’s 1955 Moonraker novel. Both Moonraker and You Only Live Twice were cases where the movie of the same name used little of the source material.

More homages in Skyfall to previous 007 films: We had the same reaction to seeing a bootleg copy of a Skyfall trailer last week (evidently a pirated copy of a special Imax trailer for Skyfall). In the new trailers, Q (Ben Whishaw) gives Bond (Daniel Craig) a new Walther that can only be fired by 007 and nobody else. Desmond Llewelyn provided Timothy Dalton’s Bond a gun with similar technology in Licence to Kill.

We’re hoping Skyfall doesn’t go too far overboard with the homages. Die Another Day, the 40th anniversary Bond film, did so and it turned into a game of “Where’s Waldo?” that got distracting. In the new trailers, there’s a shot of a helicopter turning that looks much like a similar shot in Die Another Day’s pre-credit sequence. *IF* that’s an intended homage (and not a coincidence), we’re not sure you have to go that far.

Wilson and Broccoli’s plans for a non-007 horror project

Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, co-bosses of Eon Productions, want to do a non-007 horror project. In fact, this project has kicked around for a few years and would be based on a story that generated a 1957 movie and multiple radio adaptations.

The 1957 movie based on an M.R. James story

Background: The official Web site of the Broadway musical Once, based on a 2006 movie,which picked up a number of Tony awards, had THIS REFERENCE about creative personnel responsible for the show.

John Carney (Writer and Director of the Film, Once)

John Carney is a Dublin-based writer director who came to the world’s attention following the box office hit and critically acclaimed musical feature film Once, which garnered multiple Independent Spirit, Sundance and Raindance awards. Previously, John was a bassist in the Irish rock band the Frames, where he met Glen Hansard. These musical roots continue to be evident in John’s work with his latest production, Can a Song Save Your Life?, heading into production in NYC in 2012. Other upcoming projects include Dogs of Babel for David Heyman and Nathan Kahane starring Steve Carell and a feature adaptation of M.R. James’s Casting the Runes for Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson. (emphasis added)

Wilson and Broccoli (not to mention Frederick Zollo, Broccoli’s husband) are among a group of producers for Once, the Broadway show. So this isn’t something that came from a U.K. tabloid newspaper. Anyway, Casting the Runes is a story by M.R. James (1862-1936), a writer of ghost stories. It was adapted in 1947, 1974 and 1981 for radio. It also was the basis of a 1957 movie titled Night of the Demon in the U.K. and Curse of the Demon in the U.S.

The movie starred Dana Andrews and involved a demonic cult. You can read a detailed summary BY CLICKING HERE. By coincidence, the crew includes two people who’d have an impact on 007: writer Charles Bennett (co-scripter of the 1954 CBS version of Casino Royale) and production designer Ken Adam, who’d design the sets of seven Bond films.

The Once Web site isn’t the first time Broccoli and Wilson signaled their interest in the project. In 2009, there was a program at the University of Southern California about James Bond in the 21st Century that included a number of panelists involved with 007 movies. Speakers included Wilson, Broccoli and 007 screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade. The PROGRAM DESCRIPTION included this reference to Purvis and Wade:

After delivering their screenplay for Quantum of Solace, they wrote Barbarella for director Robert Rodriguez, to be produced in 2009 by Dino DeLaurentiis, and have adapted John Le Carre’s latest novel, The Mission Song, for producers Simon Channing-Williams and Gail Egan. Their most recent collaboration is with director John Carney, on an adaptation of an M.R. James horror story, Casting the Runes.

Is Casting the Runes still an active project? Hard to say. Potential movies can kick around for years (just ask fans of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. who’ve waited for decades to see if a movie version would develop). But it would appear it’s still of interest to the co-chiefs of Eon.