Surprise, surprise: P&W working on Bond 25, Baz reports

Robert Wade, left, and Neal Purvis. (Paul Baack illustration)

Veteran 007 film scribes Neal Purvis and Robert Wade are — again — working on Bond 25, Baz Bamigboye of the Daily Mail reported.

The duo “have had their licence renewed and have bonded with Bond again,” Bamigboye wrote. It is their 007th Bond film writing assignment.

P&W were hired last year to write Bond 25, which was referenced in a July 24, 2017 announcement. However, in 2018, director Danny Boyle and his writer, John Hodge, pitched an idea. Boyle confirmed that in March. And a May 25, 2018 announcement only referenced Boyle directing with Hodge scripting and no mention of Purvis and Wade whatsoever.

Boyle and Hodge exited the project last month. So, P&W are “back in action again,” to evoke an old 007 film poster.

Here’s the key excerpt from Bamigboye’s new story:

‘The Purvis and Wade treatment they wrote earlier was already signed off before the bromance with Danny Boyle and John Hodge began,’ a Hollywood executive close to the production explained.

Purvis and Wade, working on their seventh 007 thriller, will develop their ‘treatment’ into a script.

However (and, by this stage of the soap opera, you knew there had to be a “however”), more changes likely are in store once a Bond 25 director is selected, Bamigboye wrote.

Bamigboye, since 2011, has had a series of scoops proven correct (including that Purvis and Wade had been hired to write Bond 25 in the first place, something he reported in March 2017).

Meanwhile, Bamigboye also had this line about Bond 25: “The whole thing’s a hot mess and (Eon Productions’s Barbara) Broccoli has been in Los Angeles meeting a variety of film-makers who might take over directing duties.”