Mirror says Bond 25 to be based on Benson novel

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UPDATE (July 30): Raymond Benson today told the Commander Bond website via Twitter that, “I know nothing; haven’t spoken with any Mirror journalists, can only assume the article is fabrication. Would be wonderful if it were true.” He made similar comments on Facebook.

ORIGINAL POST (July 29): Consider this Caveat Emptor. No room for that in the headline

The tabloid Mirror said Saturday night that Bond 25 will be based on the Raymond Benson 007 continuation novel Never Dream of Dying.

According to the tabloid, the movie has a working title of Shatterhand, the alias Ernst Stavro Blofeld used in the novel You Only Live Twice.

However, the Mirror said the movie is based on “Never Dream Of Dying by US author Raymond Benson” which “sees Daniel Craig’s spy battle a blind supervillain” who is “behind an evil organisation called the Union.”

The tabloid quoted an unidentified “insider” as saying the movie may be filmed in Croatia.

Benson wrote six Bond continuation novels published from 1997 to 2002 as well as novelizations of three 007 films.

Never Dream of Dying was published in 2001 while the Mirror refers to it as a “1999 thriller.”

Eon Productions, which produces the Bond films, has avoided adapting continuation novels published by Ian Fleming Publications.

That changed with 2015’s SPECTRE, which adapted a torture sequence from Kingsley Amis’s 1968 Colonel Sun continuation novel. Amis’s estate received a special thanks credit in SPECTRE’s end titles.

Eon said July 24 that Bond 25 will have a release date of Nov. 8, 2019 in the United States and that the film is being written by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade. The New York Times reported the same day that Craig is returning for a fifth turn as Bond.