Our Ian Fleming U.N.C.L.E. primer

Ian Fleming

Less than a month from now, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. movie will be in theaters. The point of this post is to keep everything concerning Ian Fleming’s connection to the original television series in perspective.

1962: There is interest in developing Ian Fleming’s non-fiction book Thrilling Cities into a television series. (For specific dates, as compiled by Craig Henderson’s For Your Eyes Only website, CLICK HERE.)

Late October 1962: Television producer Norman Felton meets with Ian Fleming in New York City. The duo eventually hash out some ideas for a television series.

Late May 1963: Fleming, under pressure from 007 film producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, sends a message on his 55th birthday that he intends to exit the television project.

June 1963: Fleming signs away his U.N.C.L.E. rights for 1 British pound.

November 1963: The pilot for The Man From U.N.C.L.E. begins filming. The script is written by Sam Rolfe (1924-1993).

1964: Broccoli and Saltzman try to stop U.N.C.L.E. from going into production. There’s a settlement where the lead character in U.N.C.L.E. keeps the name Napoleon Solo (a Fleming suggestion) For specific dates, check out Craig Henderson’s website by CLICKING HERE.

Sept. 22, 1964: The pilot episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. airs on NBC.

Nov. 26, 1965: NBC pre-empts The Man From U.N.C.L.E. to show the special The Incredible World of James Bond. Originally, Sean Connery was to be the narrator but pulls out at the last minute. Character actor Alexander Scourby takes over the narration duties. Many U.N.C.L.E. fans discover the world of 007 as a result.

Ant-Man’s move away from 007 pays off

A Jack Kirby cover featuring Ant Man

Ant-Man, the newest Marvel movie, came in at No. 1 in the U.S. movie box office this weekend, according to BOX OFFICE MOJO.

The film had estimated ticket sales of $58 million. (UPDATE, July 20: final, actual figure was $57.2 million.) Ant-Man was originally scheduled for Nov. 6, but was moved up to July when SPECTRE (then just titled Bond 24), also got scheduled for Nov. 6 in the United States.

Ant-Man features one of Marvel’s oldest — but most obscure to the general public — characters.

The lead character, Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), was actually the second version of Ant-Man, introduced in comic books in the late 1970s. Michael Douglas plays Hank Pym, the original version, who made his debut in 1962.

The new movie has been in development since 2006, before Marvel began making its own films with 2008’s Iron Man. The project’s original director-writer, Edgar Wright, departed the project. The new movie establishes connections with previous Marvel films.

In any case, Ant-Man had been seen as a relatively risky project for Marvel. It’s not a blockbuster on the scale of other Marvel films, but it has gotten off to a good start at the box office. Avoiding 007 as competition appears to be a wise move.

1998: the Purvis & Wade era begins

The World Is Not Enough poster

Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, at six movies and counting, are No. 2 among credited 007 screenwriters, behind only Richard Maibaum at 13. Their tenure began with a first draft script for The World Is Not Enough, submitted June 15, 1998.

The copy this blog got from Bond collector Gary Firuta.

The script weighs in at 109 pages. The rule-of-thumb for scripts is they average out at one minute of running time per page. The final movie, released in November 1999, was 128 minutes. The first draft would eventually be rewritten separately by Dana Stevens and Bruce Feirstein. Feirstein would share the screenplay credit with Purvis and Wade.

Overall, the 1998 first draft is closer to the final product than either Michael France’s first draft for GoldenEye or Feirstein’s first draft for Tomorrow Never Dies. There are still significant differences, but the basic plot and many set pieces are present in the initial effort by Purvis and Wade.

The pre-credits sequence of the first draft is similar to the final movie with a couple of major differences. It opens in Havana, instead of Bilbao, Spain. Later, in London, Bond takes off after the woman assassin with a jet pack instead of the gadget-laden Q boat.

Bond uses the jet pack to get ahead of the woman assassin in her boat. She spots him “minus jet pack, standing at the front of a moored ship, feet apart, poised to start firing.” The two fire at each other. She’s hit and “crashes into the side of the ship.”

This sets up a bit of a cliffhanger as an explosion ensues “lighting up the evening sky, enveloping James Bond and burning us into our….TITLES.”

Of course, Bond survives (it’d be a short movie it he didn’t), but after the titles we see a funeral. It takes an exchange between M and Bill Tanner to establish it’s the funeral for businessman Robert King (thus establishing it’s not 007’s funeral). We don’t actually see Bond until the next scene.

In this draft, Q is around for a bit longer than in the final film, which would be actor Desmond Llewelwyn’s final appearance in the role. There’s no “R,” the Q deputy John Cleese would play. There’s also no sign of Robinson, the aide to M who debuted in Tomorrow Never Dies. As a result, Tanner gets more dialogue.

The woman doctor Bond gets to clear him for duty is named Greatrex instead of Molly Warmflash.

The character of Christmas Jones is present, but there’s a bit of a difference. Here, she’s  a “BEAUTIFUL FRENCH POLYNESIAN GIRL,” and “is a mid-twenties, shortish hair, hot right now.”  She also speaks with a French accent.

Her entrance is much like the final movie. When she gets out of protective suit she has “a khaki sports bra, similar shorts, heavy duty boots. Deep tan, incredible figure. Totally unselfconscious.” The part ended up going to American actress Denise Richards.

The biggest structural difference in this draft compared with the movie is that M stays put and doesn’t go out into the field. Thus, M is never kidnapped and put into peril. Later versions of the script added that element, which would be the start of the trend where Judi Dench’s M leaves the office a lot to deal with Bond away from MI6 headquarters. That became a way for the series to provide more screen time for the Oscar-winning actress.

Finally, the first draft — similar to Bruce Feirstein’s first draft for Tomorrow Never Dies — makes occasional references to earlier 007 films.

Besides the jet pack (a nod to Thunderball) in the pre-titles sequence, Bond initially travels to see Elektra King posing as David Somerset (an alias Bond used in From Russia With Love). Here, the David Somerset cover is supposed to be a public relations expert in crisis communications.

Anyway, for Purvis and Wade this was just the start. The duo have made five 007 encores, including SPECTRE, the 24th 007 film that comes out this fall. With SPECTRE, the duo revised drafts by John Logan.