Jeff Sneider follows up on 007 universe rumor

Image for the official James Bond feed on Twitter

Jeff Sneider, editor in chief of The Tracking Board website, has weighed in with his opinions about the 007 film franchise.

Sneider last week wrote a post on Twitter saying there were rumors that Eon Productions wanted a 007 film universe. It was widely picked up by entertainment news websites.

Sneider is part of an online show, Meet the Movie Press. In the newest edition, posted June 30, the website editor expanded upon his tweet.

“Let’s start with that pesky, little tweet of mine. Was this even a big thing?” Sneider said. “I tweeted something to the effect I heard the Broccolis were planning a Bond unvierse and potentially juggling multiple movies simultaneously.

“To me, to have a Bond movie once, I don’t know, once every three or four years in this kind of competitive landscape, you can’t really do that anymore. You have to keep the well going. I don’t know if Bond thinks it’s special.”

However, Sneider didn’t demonstrate a detailed knowledge of Bond.

“I heard Daniel Craig is coming back but I heard he could be passing the reins to another 007. James Bond is a code name, right? His name actually isn’t James Bond, right?”

007 film scribes Neal Purvis and Robert Wade have said in the past (including a 2007 interview at the former Her Majesty’s Secret Servant website that’s no longer online) that James Bond is not a code name.

“We don’t believe Bond is just a transferable codename – and don’t like the idea at all,” Purvis and Wade said in that interview. “Bond is a character, a special individual, who happens to have been played by different actors.”

You can read that quote in the comments section of this 2015 post on the Cinelinx website. The comment was posted by Tom Zielinski, who did the 2007 HMSS interview.

Meanwhile, on The Meet the Movie Press, Sneider also suggested the Bond franchise could also make a Jane Bond film and then have a “James and Jane pair-up.”

“I just think there’s a lot more that you can do with that franchise,” Snider said. “I just think this franchise is at a crossroads. If it’s not at a crossroads now, it will be at a crossroads in a few years.”

Finally, he said: “As a reporter, one of the most fun things to speculate about I feel like Bond news breaks overseas anyway, it’s always Baz Bamigboye (of the Daily Mail). You can say anything you want. It’s open season.”

You can view the whole thing here. The Bond discussion begins around the 2:12 mark.