Henry Cavill’s Ian Fleming milestone

Henry Cavill

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. movie began filming in London on Sept. 6, and a photo of Henry Cavill as Napoleon Solo surfaced, including AT THE HENRY CAVILL NEWS SITE. Cavill, and what appears to be co-star Armie Hammer, have their backs to the cameras but the image spread on the Internet, nevertheless.

As a result, Cavill has now reached an Ian Fleming milestone — portraying two Ian Fleming-related characters, Solo and James Bond.

The latter occurred in 2005 when Cavill, then 22, DID A SCREEN TEST AS BOND for Casino Royale director Martin Campbell.

That’s a performance with an asterisk — screen tests aren’t intended for the public. But a lot was riding for Cavill with his test. If Cavill was going to show what he had as 007, the screen test was his last chance to demonstrate it. Producer Barbara Broccoli had favored Daniel Craig but Cavill was one of the finalists. Craig got the job, which he still holds eight years later.

Now, Cavill has filmed his first scenes as Solo, the character that Ian Fleming co-created with television producer Norman Felton. In a way, Solo is (figuratively) a distant relative of Bond’s.

This is mostly happenstance. Actors haven’t had the opportunity for both roles and there hasn’t been an U.N.C.L.E. production since 1983’s The Return of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. television movie. Still, it’s a milestone of a sort for Cavill.

Meanwhile, some Cavill fans haven’t given up on the actor succeeding Craig as 007. CLICK HERE for a Facebook page.

E-book on Ben Hecht’s Casino Royale scripts available

Ben Hecht

A new e-book about screenwriter Ben Hecht’s drafts for the ill-fated 1967 Casino Royale movie is now available.

The author is Jeremy Duns, who in EARLY 2011 wrote about the scripts by Hecht, one of the best screenwriters of all time, for the U.K. newspaper The Telegraph.

Duns has now expanded his work into the 11,000-word Rogue Royale: The Lost Bond Film by the ‘Shakespeare of Hollywood.’ Hecht did a mostly faithful adaptation of Ian Fleming’s first novel. But Hecht died in 1964 and the writer’s death caused producer Charles K. Feldman to switch gears.

The eventual result was the 1967 spoof, which was expensive to make and generated a fraction of box office of the regular 007 film series produced by Eon Productions and released by United Artists.

You can check out the e-book at the U.S. VERSION OF AMAZON.COM or AMAZON U.K. Duns also has an entry on his blog about Rogue Royale that you can read by CLICKING HERE.

Earlier posts:

TELEGRAPH REPORTS ON BEN HECHT’S 1960S CASINO ROYALE SCRIPTS

CASINO ROYALE’S 45TH ANNIVERSARY: OH NO, 007!