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Ian Fleming Publications, in an email, published a statement from author Kim Sherwood about her new 00-agent book, A Spy Like Me.
A few highlights:
–Plot synopsis: The book concerns “a Breguet montre à tract, otherwise known as a ‘blind man’s watch’ and the agents in my story follow it into the heart of a terrorist plot that could not only cripple the Western world but potentially spell the ruin of the Double O section.”
–Agent lineup:
Joseph Dryden, 004, is following the money, tracking the sale of rare artifactsthat funnels money to the terrorist organization. (snip)
Johanna Harwood, 003, has been sidelined following the events of her last mission. But now she has a new mission of her own: find James Bond. (snip)
Conrad Harthrop-Vane, 000, the blue-eyed boy, is dispatched to Oman to track the blind man’s watch and navigate a world of luxury and deception.
–Difference compared with Sherwood’s first 00-agent book: “Unlike the first part of the trilogy, Double or Nothing, this book is written in present tense. I wanted to communicate a feeling that everything is constantly in motion.”
A Spy Like Me went on sale in the U.K. today, April 25. It went on sale in the U.S. on April 23.
Kim Sherwood’s second Double O universe novel, A Spy Like Me, officially went on sale in the U.S. today. It’s scheduled to go on sale in the U.K. on April 25.
“Johanna Harwood, Agent 003, is on the hunt – for revenge and for James Bond…,” Ian Fleming Publications said in a Jan. 29 list of its publication plans for this year.
The author has been promoting the new book on social media. Here is an example:
Jumping for joy! #aspylikeme is out in America today. Only in my wildest dreams could I have imagined writing #jamesbond & publishing in 🇺🇸 – that today brings both those things is absolutely amazing 🤩 Thank you @WmMorrowBooks & @TheIanFleming If you see it in stores take a pic! pic.twitter.com/52hli9qS4d
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is No. 4 at the U.S. box office this weekend. It was a quiet movie-going weekend overall.
The Guy Ritchie-directed World War II spy movie generated an estimated $9 million this weekend, according to a social media post on X by Exhibitor Relations Co., which tracks box office trends.
The top movie for the weekend was Civil War, now in its second week at $11 million. Here’s the post with the other top five:
TOP 5 DOMESTIC BOX OFFICE
1. CIVIL WAR ($11M) 2. ABIGAIL ($10M) 3. GxK ($9.4M) 4. MINISTRY OF UNGENTLEMANLY WARFARE ($9M) 5. SPY x FAMILY CODE: WHITE ($4.8M) pic.twitter.com/1cfGocRjnS
— Exhibitor Relations Co. (@ERCboxoffice) April 21, 2024
Ungentlemanly Warfare stars Henry Cavill as the leader of a team going behind enemy lines to sabotage a facility vital to the German submarine fleet. The team’s mission is unauthorized and it faces peril from the British Navy in addition to the Nazis. Ian Fleming is a secondary character in the film.
Ritchie’s movie had an estimated $60 million production budget.
Director Guy Ritchie and actor Henry Cavill have had their share of ups and downs. Each has fans and detractors.
With The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, the director and star basically share an upswing.
The story, a spy tale set in World War II, isn’t especially innovative. A team of misfits is sent on an impossible assignment? The Dirty Dozen in 1967 covered similar territory.
Still, how you carry out such basic ideas matters a lot. We all know how World War II ended and Germany didn’t win it. The trick is to show the audience that an Allied victory wasn’t a sure thing.
This movie should not be taken as a history lesson. Still, German submarines were a major complication in the Allied war effort. So The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare uses that as the start of its plot.
Cavill is the leader of the effort to sabotage a key facility supplying the German submarines. Essentially, he’s an English, more urbane version of Lee Marin in The Dirty Dozen. The British Cavill’s group faces peril from both the Nazis and the British Navy because this isn’t an authorized mission.
As the story unfolds, numerous complications have to be overcome. Ritchie (also one of the screenwriters) paces such complications well.
Besides Cavill, the rest of the cast has plenty to do. Rory Kinnear, who played Tanner in the Daniel Craig 007 films, portrays Winston Churchill. Ian Fleming is a secondary character played by Freddie Fox.
The movie definitely is violent. There is death via pistols, rifles, machine guns, arrows, and other sources of mayhem. If violence isn’t your thing, you may want to give this a pass.
Still, the movie is tight, with a running time of two hours (despite the usual long end titles). In recent years, many movies have gone well beyond that mark. GRADE: B-Plus
Cover to the original soundtrack release of The World Is Not Enough
Updated from previous posts.
The World Is Not Enough, the 19th film in the 007 film series made by Eon Productions, marked a transition.
Producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli hired a director, Michael Apted, with little experience in action movies. Apted was brought on because of his drama experience.
Apted also was charged with increasing the female audience for a Bond film.
“I didn’t understand why they picked me to do (The World Is Not Enough),” Apted told The Hollywood Reporter in an October 2018 interview.
“It turned out, they were trying to get more women to come and see it,” Apted said. “So, we really wanted to do a Bond with a lot of women in it. I was right person because I’d done a lot of successful films with women in them. But they didn’t tell me that until right before we started. When I found out, I finally understood.”
The producers also hired a new writing team, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, to develop the story. They’re still in the world of 007 well into the 21st century.
The script development established a pattern the duo would soon be familiar with. They delivered their script, which would be reworked by other writers. In the case of The World Is Not Enough, Dana Stevens, Apted’s wife, revised the story. Another scribe, Bruce Feirstein, worked on the final drafts. Purvis, Wade and Feirstein would get a screen credit.
Meanwhile, Judi Dench’s M got expanded screen time, something that would persist through 2012’s Skyfall. The film also marked the final appearance of Desmond Llewelyn as Q. John Cleese came aboard as Q’s understudy.
Pierce Brosnan, in his third 007 outing, was now an established film Bond. In interviews at the time, he talked up the increased emphasis on drama. In the film, Bond falls for Elektra King, whose industrialist father is killed in MI6’s own headquarters. But in a twist, Elektra (played by Sophie Marceau) proves to be the real mastermind.
Q’s Good-Bye
The movie tried to balance the new emphasis on drama with traditional Bond bits such as quips and gadgets, such as the “Q boat” capable of diving underwater or rocketing across land. Some fans find the character of Dr. Christmas Jones, a scientist played by Denise Richards, over the top.
Years later, Richards did an interview with the SpyHards podcast. “Why is it on CNN that I am a Bond girl?” Richards said on the podcast, quoting her comments to her agent. The agent’s response: “Do you not know how big this movie is?”
Afterward, Richards told SpyHards, “I wanted to educate myself on the franchise” and she saw earlier films in the series.
For the actress, things were rough at times. She endured ridicule for playing a scientist. “I would go to my hotel and cry because the reviews were making fun of me,” Richards told the podcast.
Sometimes, the dual tones collided. Cleese’s initial appearance was played for laughs. In the same scene, however, Q, in effect, tells Bond good-bye in what’s intended to be a touching moment. It was indeed the final good-bye. Llewelyn died later that year as the result of a traffic accident.
The movie was a financial success, with $361.8 million in worldwide box office. Broccoli and Wilson, meanwhile, would return to the idea of increased drama in later entries after recasting Bond with Daniel Craig.
Good-bye, United Artists
The World Is Not Enough also dispensed (mostly) with the name of United Artists. UA cut the deal with Eon founders Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman in 1961 that led to the 007 film series.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer acquired UA in the early 1980s. But UA retained some kind of presence via corporate logos and such. (CLICK HERE for a history.)
With The World Is Not Enough, the film was branded as an MGM release, not a United Artists one. An MGM 75th anniversary logo appeared at the start of the movie. Deep into the end titles, the copyright notice listed “DANJAQ LLC” and “UNITED ARTISTS CORPORATION” as the owners of the movie. By this time, UA existed on paper only as part of MGM.
In 2019, MGM revived the UA name with United Artists Releasing, a joint venture with Annapurna, which distributed MGM and Annapurna movies in the U.S. Even so, with Bond films, the United Artists Releasing name appeared in small print on posters and wasn’t shown at the start of movies. No Time to Die had logos for MGM and Universal (which distributed the film outside the U.S.) or MGM only (in the U.S.)
Remember when The Sun said last month that actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson had been offered the part of James Bond? Supposedly, the actor would sign the contract in a few days. Many, many other outlets did stories, citing The Sun.
We’re almost halfway through April. No sign yet a deal has been struck.
As the blog has pointed out before (including a March 7 post), British tabloids count on readers having amnesia about what the publications have posted before. When real life catches up to tabloid stories, the tabloids have a tendency to forget what they’ve “reported.”
There have been other tabloids who’ve “reported” ATJ’s possible co-stars for Bond 26. I’m not going to link because things have been in ridiculous mode for a while now.
To be honest, Eon Productions has gotten a TON of free publicity thanks to The Sun.
There have been no visible signs that Eon and its partners at Amazon/MGM have been doing much work on Bond 26. Remember, Eon can’t make a Bond film without Amazon/MGM. Amazon/MGM can’t do a Bond film without Eon.
But thanks to The Sun (and outlets who cited the tabloid), Bond has stayed in the public eye — in a cynical way, to be sure.
Robert MacNeil, a long-time television journalist, died this week at the age of 93. During his day job, he covered the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and hosted the MacNeil/Lehrer Report (later the PBS News Hour) for years.
MacNeil also had a spy entertainment footnote: He hosted PBS’s presentation of the Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy miniseries in 1980. The miniseries debuted in 1979 in the U.K.
MacNeil made clear in his introductions that he was a big fan of David Cornwell/John Le Carre. In one of his Tinker Tailor introductions, he took a dig at Ian Fleming and James Bond. Bond was a cardboard figure, as MacNeil told it. Le Carre wrote well-developed, complicated characters.
Essentially, MacNeil mirrored a decades-long debate. In 2017, there was a debate in London about whether Le Carre or Fleming was the better spy novelist.
Personal note: That Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy miniseries is when I discovered Le Carre. I then bought some of the author’s novels. They’re all quite good. But I never liked how some Le Carre fans (such as MacNeil) felt the need to slam Fleming and Bond.
For more about MacNeil’s career, you can view obituaries by The Washington Post and The New York Times. These are gift links meaning there should be no paywall issues.
Khigh Dhiegh, who appeared in The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and in many episodes of Hawaii Five-O.
The SpyHards podcast recently had an episode reviewing the 1969 movie The Chairman, where Gregory Peck goes into China on a mission. During the episode, there was a discussion concerning Mao Zedong and how he ranked with real-life figures such as Hitler and Stalin.
This post won’t make a judgment. But in the 1960s, into the 1970s, Mao was viewed as a really, really bad guy. This showed up in popular entertainment.
The Manchurian Candidate (1962): This movie, based on a Richard Condon novel, details a joint Chinese-Russian plot to assassinate a U.S. presidential candidate. The lead Chinese operative was played by Khiegh Dhiegh (1910-1991), who has brainwashed U.S. soldiers during the Korean War. One of them (Laurence Harvey) will ultimately pull the trigger.
Goldfinger (1964): In Ian Fleming’s 1959 novel, Auric Goldfinger worked for the Russians. When the book was adapted, Goldfinger formed an alliance with the Chinese government, including agent Mr. Ling.
Real life (1965): In real life, the U.S. still didn’t recognize the communist government of China until the end of the 1970s. It was extremely difficult for American reporters to get into China. On the July 5, 1965, installment of To Tell The Truth (see game 2), a Canadian-born reporter for a U.S. outlet described her experiences in China.
Hawaii Five-O pilot (1968): Five-O debuted as a two-hour TV movie in September 1968. Written and produced by Leonard Freeman, the show introduced Wo Fat (Khiegh Dhiegh again) as the arch-villain who would bedevil Steve McGarrett (Jack Lord) for the next dozen years.
Hawaii Five-O, Presenting…In The Center Ring…Murder (1974): In the early 1970s, the U.S. had begun to normalize relations with China. So what to do with Wo Fat? In this episode, the villain has gone independent and is plotting to kill a high-ranking Chinese government official because he believes the leadership of the country is too weak toward the Americans.
Wolfgang Thurauf, a prominent German fan of James Bond, has died.
Thurauf’s passing was reported on social media on Tuesday. His many friends posted about his passing.
I had exchanges with Wolfgang. I asked — pleaded, even — for more details from his friends. Age? Bond affiliation? Nothing was forthcoming. Over the years, I had seen photos of him at different Bond movie premieres.
Based on the social media announcements, Wolfgang had a huge impact on other Bond fans.
As the 007 film franchise advances, the likes of fans such as Wolfgang are passing from the scene. Such fans are no longer around.
UPDATE: I’m told Wolfgang was 62 and was the vice president of the German James bond Fan Club.
UPDATE II: Wolfgang’s DOB was April 29, 1962, meaning he was 61, 11 months, when he died.
Raymond Burr in The Case of The Fugitive Fraulein, which originally aired in fall 1965
In the final season of Perry Mason (1957-66), the intrepid attorney went behind the Iron Curtain for an adventure.
“The Case of the Fugitive Fraulein” saw Raymond Burr’s Mason (helped and abetted by William Hopper’s private investigator Paul Drake) venture into East Germany.
Perry has been hired by a scientist and his wife to help get their granddaughter out of East Berlin. A series of double-crosses follow. Mason and Drake navigate various traps.
With a typical Perry Mason episode, the attorney deals with a trial or preliminary hearing in the U.S. In this episode, Mason isn’t sure until the last minute whether his credentials will recognized in East Berlin. At the last possible moment, they are. Yet, Mason doesn’t have his normal advantages.
This episode, written by Jonathan Latimer (1906-1983), a veteran mystery scribe, turns elements of the Perry Mason formula on its head. Yet, Perry still gets to confront the real killer in typical Mason style.
The episode showed that in its ninth season, Perry Mason could still pull off a surprise or two. The guest cast included performers such as Jeanette Nolan, Kevin Hagen, Susanne Cramer and Ronald Long who performed in spy shows of the 1960s.
The Spy Command 