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The IMDB.COM ENTRY for The Man From U.N.C.L.E. lists a new name on the list of writers: Jeffrey Hatcher, a playwright with a list of a dozen television, video and movie credits.
It’s hard to consider him a “new” writer on the project given it completed production in December. Presumably, Hatcher performed his work before production commenced, but there’s simply no additional information. Also, given how entries in IMDB can change based on member input, it’s unclear the source of the information..
It’s certainly possible the final writing credit will change before the final release because of Writer’s Guild rules. For example, it’s not known whether Sam Rolfe, who developed the original show, will get a credit the way, say, Bruce Geller, creator of Mission: Impossible, receives on M:I movies.
Hatcher’s list of IMDB credits begins with a 1998 Columbo made-for-television movie. His IMDB entry lists some of his plays.
Meanwhile, a (pretty breathless) video showed up on YouTube that provides a primer about the movie. Not a lot new, but given how the film won’t be out until January 2015, it’s presented here.
Thanks to Sam Mendes, the accuracy of some additional Bond 24 reports can be evaluated.
Bond 24 and Bond 25 originally were to comprise a two-part story but the plan was jettisoned: The DEADLINE HOLLYWOOD site said in October 2012 that Bond 24 and Bond 25 were to be a two-movie story arc.
Mendes, in his April 10 interview on the PBS Charlie Rose show confirmed pretty much all of this. The move away from the two-part approach was part of the reason why the Skyfall director agreed to come back for Bond 24, he told the host starting around the 18:00 mark of the show.
Unfortunately, Mendes was in the middle of explaining that when Rose interrupted him with a question and no more was said on the subject. Check
What follows is text of a previous post with appropriate updating.
John Logan hired to write Bond 24: reported by the U.K. Daily Mail on OCT. 25, 2012.
John Logan hired to write both Bond 24 *and* Bond 25: Reported by the Deadline Hollywood Web site on OCT. 26, 2012.
WHAT HAPPENED? Barbara Broccoli in an interview on the Crave Online Web site published NOV. 12, 2012 denied it.
Congratulations on signing John Logan for two more scripts.
Barbara Broccoli: Well, we are working on another film in the future but we actually haven’t announced that we’re going to do two. We don’t know what we’re going to be doing.
Oh, so what was the news that he had a two-story arc?
Barbara Broccoli: That was a Hollywood announcement, not from us if you notice.
However, the same week, Gary Barber, the CEO of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, said on a conference call with investors that Logan had been hired to write the next two Bond films. Check.
Sam Mendes, after saying he wouldn’t direct Bond 24, is considering doing just that: reported by Deadline Hollywood in a story on May 28, 2013.
WHAT HAPPENED. Mendes, in an interview on the Stage News Web site published June 12, 2013 confirms that’s happening.
Mendes, whose Bond debut as director of Skyfall last year turned out to the most commercially successful of all the 007 films, grossing more than £100 million at the domestic UK box office alone and over $1 billion globally, added that he is in discussions to direct the next Bond film.
“But nothing is going to be determined until Charlie and the Chocolate Factory [now previewing at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane] has opened,” he said. “I’m literally here from 8.30am to midnight every day, and it occupies every inch of my attention. So we’ll make decisions about that once Charlie has opened.”
Mendes ended up signing on for the project and an announcement of that, along with a fall 2015 release date for Bond 24 was announced last year. Check.
The Daily Mail was the first to report (also in a 2012 story linked above) that the writing team of Neal Purvis and Robert Wade were departing the Bond film series. The writers confirmed that development with on Collider.com. Check.
All of this is a reminder that news about Bond 24 is likely to leak out before any official announcements, similar to WHAT HAPPENED WITH SKYFALL. The trick — as stated before — will be to figure which reports are on target (despite denials) and which aren’t.
Skyfall director Sam Mendes this month said his 007 film was the first Bond adventure “where characters were allowed to age.” But was it really?
In 2000, author James Chapman made an observation about the opening of 1981’s For Your Eyes Only. At the start of the film, Roger Moore’s Bond visits the grave of his late wife, Tracy. Her headstone gives her year of death as 1969, the year On Her Majesty’s Secret Service came out.
What is unusual, however is not that the film refers back to Bond’s wife…but that it should do so in such a temporally precise way. The dates on the gravestone place the Bond of For Your Eyes Only as being twelve years older than the Bond of OHMSS. Assuming that Bond is usually taken to be in his late thirties, then the Bond of For Your Eyes Only would therefore be approaching fifty. In this sense, the film brings Bond roughly in line with Roger Moore’s own age (he was fifty-three when the film was released) and works better for Moore than it would likely have done for a younger, incoming actor.
Licence to Thrill, Columbia University Press, page 207
Chapman, interacting with fellow 007 fans on Facebook, also mentioned how Desmond Llewelyn’s Q aged. In The World Is Not Enough, he refers to his upcoming retirement and gives Bond a piece of advice before the agent departs on his mission. It would be the last time Llewelyn’s Q would be seen. The actor died after the film was released in the fall of 1999.
This wasn’t the first time such a notion had been considered. In Bruce Feirstein’s first draft script for what would become Tomorrow Never Dies, Q is retired. He has been succeeded by a man named Malcolm Saunders. Q even got a retirement gift from the CIA.
However, later in the Feirstein draft, Q interrupts his retirement to help Bond out. In the final version of Tomorrow Never Dies, there is no hint about a Q retirement.
Finally, while it’s not part of the Eon Productions series, 1983’s Never Say Never Again, with Sean Connery returning as Bond, embraced the older Bond concept.
Arguably, though, Mendes’ Bond film addressed the aging issue the most of a 007 story.
Variations of the line sometimes, the old ways are best were repeated. Mendes, in various interviews, quoted himself as telling Daniel Craig before production started that “you’ll have to play this at close to your own age.” Also, Roger Deakins, the movie’s director of photography, seemed to highlight every wrinkle on Judi Dench’s face in some closeups.
UPDATE: Some other examples of aging in the pre-Mendes Bond universe:
–Connery, in a 1971 article in True magazine, indicated he wanted to play an older Bond in Diamonds are Forever. He said how immortality “isn’t anyone’s, not yours, not mine and not James Bond’s.” The article also referenced how Connery would have preferred to portray a balding Bond.
–Lois Maxwell’s Moneypenny, in Octopussy, says “as I used to be?” when Moore’s Bond talks about how lovely her new assistant is. Of course, this changed when the part was recast in The Living Daylights.
–In Licence to Kill, David Hedison tells his wife that Bond had been married “a long time ago,” in a reference that’s not as specific as the one in For Your Eyes Only.
Sam Mendes did an April 11 interview on the PBS Charlie Rose show. He eventually got around to discussing Bond 24 and said the following:
–He came back to direct Bond 24 after Skyfall because “I started a number of stories that were incomplete. I cast the new M, I cast the new Moneypenny, I cast the new Q, I cast the new Tanner…There was a missing piece now. I felt there was a way to create the second part of a two-part story.” Bond 24 will be connected to Skyfall with the evolution of the characters but not “the actual narrative.”
–In Skyfall, “for the first time characters were allowed to age” in the Bond film series.
–A contributing factor to his returning for Bond 24 was that the producers were “willing to wait” and changed plans to do two films at once. John Logan was hired to write Bond 24 and Bond 25, with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer announcing the news in November. MGM and Sony last year announced an October 2015 release date in the U.K. and November 2015 for the U.S.
Mendes misspoke a bit. Rory Kinnear had been cast as Bill Tanner in 2008’s Quantum of Solace. In Skyfall, Ralph Fiennes’ Mallory took over as the new M and Naomie Harris’ Eve was revealed to be Moneypenny.
The director didn’t comment much beyond that, with much of the interview centering on a new stage production of Cabaret. You can see for yourself here:
Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer during filming in Italy
Jared Harris, in A RECENT INTERVIEW provided a detail about his part in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. movie: he plays Napoleon Solo’s CIA superior.
The interview is a reminder about how the movie is going to play up the Cold War angle whereupon the original 1964-68 television series downplayed it.
Harris participated in one of the first sequences filmed, where Solo and Illya Kuryakin (here a KGB operative) meet at an outdoor cafe. (CLICK HERE to see a photo on the Henry Cavill Fan website.)
The movie’s story will, in part, depict the beginnings of U.N.C.L.E., a multi-national security agency, in the early 1960s.
In the series, U.N.C.L.E. had been well-established. The Odd Man Affair, the final episode for season one, implies U.N.C.L.E. has been around for a couple of decades, or roughly the end of World War II. The Survival School Affair, in the fourth season, establishes that Solo and Kuryakin graduated from the agency’s training facility in the 1950s.
Both the makers of the series and the network that carried it (NBC) wanted to avoid a lot of specific Cold War references. Something similar happened in the James Bond film series. In the Ian Fleming novels Dr. No and From Russia With Love, the villains worked for the Soviet Union. In the film versions, they work for SPECTRE. The film Rosa Klebb, for example, has just recently defected to SPECTRE in the From Russia With Love film.
There’s also the matter of doing a movie as a period piece. Compare Murder, My Sweet with Farewell My Lovely. Both are adaptations of a 1940 Raymond Chandler novel. The former was released in 1944. The latter debuted in 1975. Philip Marlowe (Robert Mitchum) is constantly musing about Joe DiMaggio and his 56-game hitting streak in the 1975 film, which establishes a firm time.
By making U.N.C.L.E. a period piece, the Cold War becomes a device, along with vintage cars, of helping to establish the mood for the story. In the original show, it was revolutionary enough in 1964 to have an American and Russian together. The series, with Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, debuted only 23 months after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Meanwhile, the cinematic Bond wouldn’t be paired with a Russian ally until 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me. For a movie to be released in 2015, the thinking appears to be you have to remind everyone about the Cold War to show why the Solo-Kuryakin team is unusual.
Apparently, director of photography John Mathieson did some things to also give the movie a 1960s look. Here’s an excerpt from THE INDEPENDENT:
John added: “We filmed in London on a digital camera but we were trying to give it more of a sixties feel.
“It’s a very good looking film, it’s set in the sixties, it’s very chic.
“So in some ways we were using old lenses and things to deteriorate the image. However what we did has a certain flavour to it, and that has to be screened so the cinema goer or viewer at home can see what we were trying to do.” (emphasis added)
The movie, starring Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer, is scheduled to be released in January 2015.
The HenryCavill.org site published a bit of news: Henry Cavill, while in the Detroit area working on a Superman-Batman movie, did some post-production sound work for next year’s movie version of The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
According to sound engineer Marty Peters, Henry Cavill stopped today into Ozone Music and Sound, a creative audio boutique in Royal Oak, Michigan, to do some ADR work for The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
ADR is when additional dialogue is recorded by an actor to “fix” lines that may have had audio issues during the original recording on set.
There isn’t much additional information about U.N.C.L.E. Ozone Music and Sound put out the news VIA ITS TWITTER ACCOUNT.
Production on the Batman-Superman film is gearing up, with a scheduled release date of May 2016. Royal Oak is a suburb north of Detroit. Ozone Music and Sound HAS A FACEBOOK PAGE.
Thanks to @LaneyBoggs2001 on Twitter for the heads up.
Actor Jared Harris gave an an interview to the Latino Review website where, at the very end, he provided a tiny bit of information about his role in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. movie.
Latino-Review: And just real quick, who are you playing in “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.?”
Jared Harris: I play a CIA agent who is initially involved in training and running Napoleon Solo. So it’s running him as a spy as you would like. It’s set in the 60s and it’s a Guy Ritchie film. It has a great mixture of action and comedy. And there’s fantastic plotting.
That’s all there is. Harris did his filming in September with both Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer, who play Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin in the film, which will be released in January 2015.
Warner Bros. has previously specified that in the movie Solo is a CIA agent who becomes involved in a joint operation with KGB operative Kuryakin. The original 1964-68 series played down such Cold War references. A first-season episode, The Neptune Affair, included a brief scene where David McCallum’s Kuryakin is seen in a military uniform in the Soviet Union.
Such scenes were more the exception than the rule. Other references were more subtle. Another first-season episode, The Love Affair, depicted Kuryakin telling Robert Vaughn’s Solo, “Suddenly, I feel very Russian” as the two approach a mansion on Long Island.
Beverly Hills 90210, the Backstreet Boys, the fall of Communism, Claudia Schiffer everywhere, the rise of the Nintendo and Sega videogames, Windows, Internet… so much stuff to make us all feel a little nostalgic and perhaps a bit old, too.
Now we can watch once again on YouTube, in that standard VHS quality, we might now consider bad footage of a long haired and beardy man in a dark suit being surrounded by thousands of cameras and photographers, next to producers Michael G. Wilson, Barbara Broccoli and a director called Martin Campbell.
It was 20 years ago. The man was Pierce Brosnan. And this moment was the return of James Bond.
The franchise had its weak moments before, but in the longest gap in the franchise history between 1989 and 1994, Bond seemed really dead, without a chance to survive the post Cold War era or the legal troubles surrounding Danjaq and MGM.
Even with the necessary reboot in 2006 with Casino Royale after the somewhat exaggerated Die Another Day, there was probably no bigger buzz about Bond being outdated than in these five years, for many reasons: (a) Agent 007 was a product of the Cold War, and there was no more Cold War, (b) Licence to Kill was a commercial failure and had weak reviews, and (c) too many years were passing without Bond.
By no means was the return of 007 in the form of Daniel Craig unimportant. It certainly was, but it was expected James Bond would return. By the early 1990s, with only the TV cartoon James Bond Jr. and some telefilm Ian Fleming biopics, the “man on the street” would have many doubts of watching our hero back in the silver screen. Some headlines even called Licence to Kill “007’s final mission.”
This is why June 8, 1994, will be remembered as one of the greatest days in the history of the cinematic agent 007.
With a thousand journalists and photographers from all over the world, Brosnan promised to show us “what is beneath the surface of this man, what makes him a killer,” but also maintain the elements that made him famous: “He’s still a ladies man, yes.”
(Essay continues below the videos)
From that day on, the name of James Bond, sentenced to be part of a retro club subject of conversations years before, was being heard again everywhere, including in Papua New Guinea, where Brosnan, shooting Robinson Crusoe, was recognized by a group of children as the secret agent.
The Brosnan era firmly represented the ‘90s, in the humor, the costumes, the music and the scripts.
GoldenEye (1995) offered us a classic story with some twists. The old Communists were back –- in jokes included –- but also with explicit sex scenes; a metallic and modern score by Eric Serra; and, of course, the inclusion of something that was starting to change our lives, the Internet (Natalya asks for an IBM Computer with 650 MB hard drive, basically one-sixteenth the capacity of our iPad;), the 007 vs 006 rivalty, first time a 00 agent –- a friend of Bond — goes rogue.
Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) opted for a more pragmatic and less brainy idea by having media tycoon Elliott Carver using his empire to make a war between China and Britain (action, action, action everywhere).
The World Is Not Enough (1999), being the last Bond of the 20th century, provided a twist by having as a villain a woman he fell for, with Sophie Marceau having the distinction of being the first female mastermind in a 007 film.
The 40th anniversary adventure, 2002’s Die Another Day, might have been a weak film in many aspects, but it also had its dosage of drama and violence (i.e. a depiction of torture as part of the main titles).
Even when nowadays Pierce says his Bond wasn’t “good enough” and that he doesn’t dare to watch his own Bond movies, his contribution to the franchise was more than memorable and needed.
Brosnan not only resurrected Bond but also brought a new generation of fans. The end of Cold War couldn’t kill James Bond.
MI Confidential is out with A NEW ISSUE that, among things, includes features on stuntman/second unit director Vic Armstrong and former United Artists executive David V. Picker.
Armstrong worked on the 007 film series in such films as You Only Live Twice and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. He was interviewed for John Cork-directed documentaries about those movies, providing some behind-the-scenes perspective about how stunts were performed. From 1997-2002, Armstrong assumed the helm as stunt coordinator and second unit director for three Bond films starring Pierce Brosnan.
Picker was among the UA executives who reached a deal in 1961 with producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman to get the 007 film series started. His memoirs were published last year, including A CHAPTER ON THE BOND FILM SERIES.
Also included in the issue are stories about Lana Wood and her experiences filming Diamonds Are Forever and Ian Fleming’s taste in cars.
The price for MI Confidential No. 25 is 7 British pounds, $11 or 8.50 euros. For more information about the contents or to order, CLICK HERE.
The man who photographed next year’s movie version of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. has made public comments about Henry Cavill’s version of Napoleon Solo, according to THE INDEPENDENT IN IRELAND.
John Mathieson, the movie’s director of photography, commented about Cavill’s performance and Guy Ritchie’s work as director.
Here’s an excerpt:
Speaking at the launch of the new Samsung Curved UHD screen TV in London he said: “I thought Henry was terrific.
“He plays it quite humorously, everything’s slightly quirky, slightly sharp. It was very comic strip in some ways, I mean that in a good way.
“He plays it very differently [to Superman], this is much more earthbound. He’s a peacock, and he’s very funny. I thought he was great.”
(snip)
(I)t’s got a very British feel….We filmed in London on a digital camera but we were trying to give it more of a sixties feel.
“It’s a very good looking film, it’s set in the sixties, it’s very chic.”
Mathieson also said that Ritchie is “still cutting, he’s very close to finishing….We’ve got to do some post production to get that sixties look really right.”
None of this is startling. Crew members rarely talk down on a movie before it’s released. But there hasn’t been much U.N.C.L.E. publicity since the film completed shooting in early December.
The movie has been given a January 2015 release date by Warner Bros. Ritchie’s version, which he co-wrote with Lionel Wigram, is set in the early 1960s and depicts the origin of U.N.C.L.E. The original Warners’ press release said that Solo was a CIA agent and Illya Kuryakin a KGB operative involved in a joint operation. Armie Hammer has the Kuryakin role in the movie.
The original 1964-68 series, starring Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, downplayed Cold War references.
Earlier this week, some reshoots were filmed of a car chase, something that @laneyboggs2001 at Twitter had sniffed out. The main actors weren’t involved. Cavill is currently in Michigan for production of a Superman-Batman movie scheduled for release in May 2016.
The Spy Command 