…and the (007) world goes round and round…

Image for the official James Bond feed on Twitter

There’s a scene in The Dark Knight where the Joker performs his “magic pencil trick” and kills a thug by ramming a pencil into his eye. For many James Bond fans, it feels that way over the past week.

Radar Online, an entertainment and gossip site, kicked off the festivities on Sept. 3 with a story saying 1) Daniel Craig had been offered $150 million to do two more James Bond movies by Sony Pictures and 2) that Sony “should be announcing any day that the studio is re-upping the distribution rights for the Bond series.”

The immediate response among some Bond fans on social media was this was GREAT NEWS and Sony would be foolish not to offer the actor such a princely sum. Such fans didn’t want to hear why such an offer wouldn’t make economic sense.

It took a few days, but a number of sites moved to debunk the $150 million offer part of the Radar story, including FORBES.COM, HITFIX.COM and VANITY FAIR. While those sites went over the $150 million portion, they didn’t reference the second part. Each cited how Sony’s contract to distribute 007 movies ended with SPECTRE, without directly saying how Radar reported Sony (supposedly) had a new deal.

From HitFix: “Will they re-sign with Sony? Unlikely, but possible.” From Forbes.com: “The short (Radar) post makes four references to Sony, a studio that no longer has distribution rights to the 007 films.” From Vanity Fair: “(T)he decision to pay Craig such an astronomical fee would not unilaterally fall to Sony—which spearheaded the wide-release roll-out of the last four Double-0 films—even if the studio re-ups its distribution rights for the franchise, which expired with the release of Spectre.”

Admittedly, Radar waited until the seventh of eight paragraphs to reference how Sony (supposedly) has a new deal. Still, it was part of the story.

Is this post an endorsement of Radar’s story? No way. In our very first post, on the subject, also on Sept. 3, we slapped on the Caveat Emptor tag. That’s even more true now. Radar said Sony “should be announcing any day” it has a new 007 movie distribution deal.

The clock is ticking. If an announcement doesn’t materialize, say, in another week, Radar’s story may officially be dead.

Anyway, on Sept. 10, Radar Online was at it again. Its newest story proclaims actor Tom Hiddleston “could be canned from the James Bond movie he has been gunning for” because of his “split” from Taylor Swift.

Of course, a lot of people were skeptical the two were a legitimate couple in the first place. Regardless, despite being criticized by other news sites, Radar is still at it. The gossip site acts as if it was totally unaware prominent outlets were saying its original 007 story was crap.

Magic pencil trick, indeed.