No plot spoilers for the actual movie. If you think nothing should be written based on the Sony hack, stop reading now. No further warnings.
Now that WikiLeaks has set up a searchable index of hacked Sony documents, pretty much anybody with patience and an Internet connection can check out the pre-production of SPECTRE.
The Bleeding Cool website PUBLISHED A LONG POST based on the WiliLeaks material that contained a lot of spoilers and ideas considered, but rejected, for the movie. There have been other stories, SUCH AS THIS ONE concerning details of product placement deals.
The following doesn’t concern what’s in the movie — but could have had things gone differently.
October 2013, a SPECTRE outline arrives: Sony executives are mostly enthusiastic. There are multiple references to “love” this or “great hook” are among the responses.
“Love the idea that their is a mole in MI-6 and it turns out to be Tanner,” reads one of the reactions from the Sony camp.
Hard-core Bond fans — especially those who like Ian Fleming’s novels — might beg to differ. Bill Tanner, M’s chief of staff, was a friend to Bond in Fleming’s novels. In The Man With The Golden Gun book, Tanner asks M if he plans to bring charges against a brainwashed Bond for trying to kill him.
In the Golden Gun novel, when M informs Tanner he plans to send Bond on a suicide mission — to take out the novel’s title character — the chief of staff responds, “You coldhearted bastard!”
March 2014, first draft is delivered: There’s a more mixed reaction. Executives comment at events on various pages, while some visuals get praised.
Tanner is still a traitor. The villain, at this point, is an African, Joseph Ki-Embu, who uses a familiar Bond villain name as an alias. Felix Leiter, Bond’s CIA agent friend, also is in the mix.
May 2014: Amy Pascal, at the time one of Sony’s top movie executives, types up some reactions, including page-by-page notes.
Highlights: Bond is “rejected by two women by page 30.” Bond lets Tanner commit suicide on page 91. On page 122, Leiter calls Moneypenny a “foxy lady.”
Late June 2014: BAZ BAMIGBOYE OF THE DAILY MAIL reports that veteran 007 screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade have been brought back to rewrite the script by John Logan.
Jonathan Glickman, an executive of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which controls half of the 007 franchise, sends an e-mail to Sony executives. “Who spills the beans on this? P and W’s agents?” He’s also not happy with some John Cleese quotes in the Daily Mail story.
August 2014: There’s a debate because SPECTRE director “Sam Mendes is thinking about shooting 3 sequences in IMAX, a la (director Christopher) Nolan on Batman and Interstellar.” This will add $7 million to the movie’s budget. The same month, it’s decided that won’t happen. The three sequences will be shot “with full aperture, spherical lenses v. the rest of the pic which is anamorphic.”
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Baz Bamigboye, Daily Mail, Imax, James Bond Films, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Neal Purivs, Robert Wade, Sam Mendes, Sony hack, Sony Pictures, SPECTRE, The Man with the Golden Gun, Wikileaks |
The Spy Command 
There is absolutely no positive resonating element from this article. And it IS a spoiler-ish article. It is a huge spoiler, especially concerning Tanner! Saying that you should not read further if you “disagree with publication of those leaks” is a rather false warning if you ask me. They are full-blown spoilers. Everything that has been published from those illegal Leaks so far are really damaging for the film I think. The “fun” of the entire pre-production process and the magic and curiosity about it goes up in smoke.
I’m also quite annoyed that most other articles about other spy franchises in here are actually quite insightful, really good, whereas the news on here about “SPECTRE” seem to be mostly “delicate counter-balancing acts” so that news related to other spy movies in essence look better and more positive.
[…] process. The first writer was John Logan. Because of the Sony hacking, it’s now known Logan’s initial efforts contained some questionable […]
there is no spoiler contained in the article. The article is perfectly reasonable. Some commenters just need to grow up.
[…] At the time, there was no script. A treatment arrived in the fall of 2013. Logan didn’t deliver a first draft until March 2014. Because of the hacking of Sony Pictures, it’s now known that studio executives were less than thrilled with what Logan (who always said he was working closely with Mendes) delivered. […]
[…] If that’s case, however, perhaps instead of trying to fool people about the title song performer, more attention should have been paid to the SPECTRE scripting process and avoided wasting time on questionable ideas that became public because of the Sony hacking. […]