Kathleen Kennedy doesn’t read the room

Kathleen Kennedy, head of Walt Disney’s Lucasfilm unit.

Kathleen Kennedy, 69, the chief of Walt Disney Co.’s Lucasfilm subsidiary, says she’s looking for guidance from the James Bond film franchise.

“I’ve often brought up Bond,” Kennedy told Empire magazine. “That’s every three or four years and there wasn’t this pressure to feel like you had to have a movie every year. I feel that was very important to Star Wars. We have to eventize this.”

Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2012 for more than $4 billion. Disney wanted to revive the Star Wars film franchise. The plan that emerged: Do a Star Wars film every other year (beginning in 2015), with other Star Wars-related projects coming out in-between.

Since then, there hasn’t been a Star Wars movie since 2019, while various shows have shown up on the Disney + streaming channel.

“It’s much better to tell the truth,” Kennedy told Empire, “that we’re going to make these movies when they’re ready to be made, and release them when they’re ready to be released.”

That is, more or less, the same message that Barbara Broccoli, the boss of Eon Productions, has given out regarding future James Bond films. Eon will come out with a new Bond film when it’s ready and not before.

The problem is, many Bond fans are getting impatient with such long stretches between 007 movies.The gaps are closer now to five years to six years.

The last Bond film, 2021’s No Time to Die, saw the Daniel Craig version of Bond die with a vague promise the character will return sometime, someday. Meanwhile, the early generation of Bond film fans is reaching the end, with no certainty the cinematic 007 will actually return before those fans shed their mortal coil.

In Star Wars fandom, Kathleen Kennedy is a divisive figure. In Bond fandom, so is Barbara Broccoli.

We’ll see what happens.

007 reality show turns to Succession star Cox

The James Bond-themed reality show on Amazon Prime has signed up Brian Cox, star of the series Succession, for a part.

On 007’s Road to a Million, Cox will be “The Controller.” Cox’s character controls the fate of contestants on the show.

Cox’s hiring was reported on various entertainment sites, including Deadline: Hollywood. The James Bond website of Eon Productions also carried an announcement.

The reality show is a competition among teams of two. Here’s an excerpt from the Eon announcement about Cox’s participation:

The Controller revels in the increasingly difficult journeys and questions the contestants must overcome. He has millions of pounds to give away, but he doesn’t make it easy. Whilst he lurks in the shadows, he is watching and controlling everything.

Brian Cox said, “I got to see how ordinary people would cope with being on a James Bond adventure. As they travel the world to some of the most iconic Bond locations, it gets more intense and nail-biting. I enjoyed my role as both villain and tormentor, with license to put the hopeful participants through the mangle.”

This is the first major piece of news since the reality show was announced in early 2022. The contestants are seeking a prize of 1 million British pounds ($1.25 million).

The reality show is the only James Bond spinoff Amazon has come up with since it acquired Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Eon Productions boss Barbara Broccoli has said she’s not interested in Bond streaming shows and that 007 will remain a theatrical movie franchise.

Here’s an Eon tweet about the hiring of Cox:

Actor Brian Cox will star as ‘The Controller’ in 007’s Road to a Million which will launch later this year on @primevideouk https://t.co/9R8LCplRfP pic.twitter.com/W39BzQIZvk

— James Bond (@007) April 24, 2023

An old friend of mine tells me ‘something smells’

Phoebe Waller-Bridge

Over the weekend, the Mail on Sunday (Sunday edition of the Daily Mail) came out with a story that claimed Phoebe Waller-Bridge was Barbara Broccoli’s first choice to direct (and co-write) Bond 26.

The article had an April 1 time stamp. A gag? Perhaps, except most April Fool’s gags come out early in the day. The Mail story didn’t come out until 5:01 p.m. New York time, which means it didn’t come out until late in the day in the U.K.

More importantly, the story, well, reeked. Reeked of bad writing and a lack of reporting. I intended to ignore it. But, as Lt. Columbo observed many times, little things bother me. Or, to quote Kerim Bey (pointing to his nose), “This is an old friend of mine. And it tells me something smells.”

Waller-Bridge’s directing experience? The talented Waller-Bridge has acting, writing, and producing credits on her IMDB.COM ENTRY. Not so much for directing credits.

Do you really want to hand over a Bond film to a directing novice?

John Glen’s first film directing credit was For Your Eyes Only (1981). But Glen was a veteran film editor and second-unit director. He had lots of experience working in both TV and films. Glen’s IMDB.com entry includes a directing credit for the TV series Man in a Suitcase.

Who is/are Waller-Bridge’s co-writer/co-writers? The Mail doesn’t bother to say. Eon’s Barbara Broccoli said in September 2022 that veteran 007 film scribes Neal Purvis and Robert Wade will be summoned, yet again, to toil on Bond 26. But the Mail glosses over this.

How hard is it to direct a Bond movie? It’s really hard. Months of pre-productions. Months of filming. Months of editing and post-production. It’s as much directing an army as a film.

Got it. Easy peasy.

Lewis Gilbert was a veteran movie director when he accepted the job of directing You Only Live Twice in the 1960s. Gilbert was overwhelmed. So we’re going to have someone with no directing experience take on a job that has gotten even more complicated a half-century later.

While we’re at it, directors such as Josh Trank and Chloe Zhao stumbled when they took on huge films based on comic books. Zhao won an Oscar for directing Nomadland. Her efforts for directing Marvel’s The Eternals didn’t work out so well. The less said about Trank’s 2015 Fantastic Four movie, the better.

“This is an old friend of mine. And it tells me something smells.”

UPDATE (April 4): The byline on last weekend’s Mail story was Caroline Graham, a Los Angeles-based scribe. Graham co-wrote a November 2014 story for the Mail that said Christoph Waltz would play Blofeld in SPECTRE.

Quantum’s 15th: Impact still felt on 007 franchise

International poster for Quantum of Solace

Adapted and updated from a 2018 post

This fall marks the 15th anniversary of Quantum of Solace, the 22nd 007 film made by Eon Productions. It’s a production that still reverberates with the franchise.

It was the last time the makers of James Bond films tried to come out with an entry just two years after the previous installment. It’s probably the last time this will happen.

As Casino Royale was ending production, Sony Pictures put out a July 20, 2006 release (the press release was once online but has been yanked by the studio) saying it intended to release Bond 22 (as it was then known) quickly — May 2, 2008.

“As we wrap production on CASINO ROYALE we couldn’t be more excited about the direction the franchise is heading with Daniel Craig. Daniel has taken the origins of Ian Fleming’s James Bond portraying, with emotional complexity, a darker and edgier 007,” Eon’s Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli were quoted in the press release.

Writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, with three Bond films under their belt, were aboard to come up with a story for what Eon would later describe as the series’ first “direct sequel.”

There were soon signs the pace was causing some strains.

‘Very Nervous’
Director Roger Michell (1956-2021) opted not to helm the movie because he felt the story wasn’t developed enough. In 2007, Michell gave an interview to The Times. The original link to the interview is broken, but the Commander Bond website’s summary includes some of Michell’s comments.

“‘Well, I did give up directing the Bond film,” Michell told The Times, according to the Commander Bond summary. “It was because in the end I didn’t feel comfortable with the Bond process, and I was very nervous that there was a start date but really no script at all. And I like to be very well prepared as a director.”

Eventually, Quantum was pushed back to a fall 2008 release. But there were still time pressures. The Writers Guild of America was in labor talks and a strike deadline was looming. The union went on strike from November 2007 to February 2008, with the Bond movie starting production in early 2008.

There are conflicting versions of the movie’s story process.

Marc Forster

The director hired for the movie, Marc Forster, said in an April 2008 Rotten Tomatoes story, said there was a reset after he arrived.

‘From Scratch’
“Once I signed on to do it we pretty much developed the script from scratch because I felt that it wasn’t the movie I wanted to make and we started with Paul Haggis from scratch,” Forster said in the story. Haggis was the writer who did the final drafts of Casino Royale.

“And I said to him these are the topics I am interested in this is what I would like to say, what’s important to me,” the director said. “And we developed it from there together. Then Barbara and Michael said they liked where we were going and they liked the script.”

In this interview, Forster said everything worked out fine.

“The good thing is that Paul and I and Daniel all worked on the script before the strike happened and got it where we were pretty happy with,” the director said. “Then we started shooting and the only problems I had with the script we were shooting in April, May and June so as soon as the strike was over we did another polish.”

The writer doing that polish, Forster said, was Joshua Zetumer. The scribe’s involvement with the film was noted in other stories written during the production.

More Complicated
Forster, in a Nov. 3, 2008 story on the Vulture culture blog of New York magazine, indicated things were more complicated.

“Haggis had an idea they weren’t fond of, and I didn’t know if it would work or not,” Forster told Vulture. “The idea was that Vesper in the last movie, maybe she had a kid, and there would be an orphan out there.”

Eventually, with the clocking ticking to a WGA strike, the idea of Bond searching for Vesper’s child was rejected. Haggis, though, delivered a script ahead of the WGA walkout.

Daniel Craig in 2012 during filming of Skyfall.

In 2011, as Skyfall was preparing production, a new scenario was unveiled.

Daniel Craig in an interview with Time Out London, said he and Forster were forced to rewrite the script as Quantum was being filmed.

The actor described what they had as a “bare bones of a script.” Because of the WGA strike, “We couldn’t employ a writer to finish it.”

This tale has emerged as the now-accepted version, with Joshua Zetumer the movie’s forgotten man.

(This SUMMARY OF THE INTERVIEW ON INDIEWIRE has the Craig quotes involved.)

The movie did fine at the box office, with $586 million globally. But Quantum’s biggest effect may be that Eon doesn’t want to rush things if it can help it.

‘External Pressures’
“Sometimes there are external pressures from a studio who want you to make it in a certain time frame or for their own benefit, and sometimes we’ve given into that,” Eon’s Barbara Broccoli told the Los Angeles Times in 2012.

Barbara Broccoli

“But following what we hope will be a tremendous success with ‘Skyfall,’ we have to try to keep the deadlines within our own time limits and not cave in to external pressures,” the Eon boss told the newspaper.

She didn’t mention either Sony or Quantum of Solace. But it’s not much of a stretch to wonder if both were on her mind during that interview.

What’s more, a Sony executive told theater executives in 2012 that Bond 24 (eventually titled SPECTRE) would be out in 2014. Broccoli and Craig, in a May 1, 2012 interview with Collider, shut down such talk.

Broccoli: He was getting a little overexcited (laughs). We’re just actually focusing on this movie. One hopes that in the future we’ll be announcing other films, but no one’s officially announced it.

Craig: No one’s announced anything. He got a little ahead of himself (laughs). It’s very nice that he has the confidence to be able to do that, but we haven’t finished this movie yet.

SPECTRE, of course, came out in 2015, not 2014.

Today, Quantum occupies an odd space. Despite its financial success, it wasn’t discussed much in the 2012 documentary Everything Or Nothing. But many fans feel it’s more than a worthy entry in the Eon-made series.

Regardless of how you feel about the movie, though, it had an impact on the franchise. Trying to make a James Bond film within two years is now unthinkable. There would be a six-year gap between SPECTRE and No Time to Die. The COVID-19 pandemic was a major reason, but not the only one.

As for Bond 26? Who knows. It’s obviously not coming out in 2023 (two years after No Time to Die). There’s no script, no Bond actor, no director (as of this writing), etc., etc.

Reminder: Eon said Bond films wouldn’t come out as often

Eon Productions logo

Consider this an epilogue to the recent buzz about Bond 26 and the lack of news. Go back into events of the past decade (and longer) and you’ll see that Eon Productions signaled James Bond films wouldn’t be out as often.

Eon boss Barbara Broccoli said the following in a November 2012 interview with the Los Angeles Times:

“Sometimes there are external pressures from a studio who want you to make it in a certain time frame or for their own benefit, and sometimes we’ve given into that,” Broccoli said. “But following what we hope will be a tremendous success with ‘Skyfall,’ we have to try to keep the deadlines within our own time limits and not cave in to external pressures.”

Context: While 2006’s Casino Royale was wrapping up, Sony Pictures (which released Bond films at the time) announced that Bond 22 (the eventual Quantum of Solace) would be released on May 2, 2008. That would be less than two years after the release of Casino Royale. (Sony used to have the release online but it has been yanked from the company’s website.)

Eventually, Quantum of Solace would be pushed back to the fall of 2008. Even so, there was a lot of tension to meet the fall 2008 date, including a Writer’s Guild strike.

To be sure, in the 2012 LA Times interview, Broccoli didn’t provide details about giving into studio pressure. But given what happened between 2006 and 2012, it’s not a big leap to conclude the Quantum of Solace experience was an influence.

Undoubtedly, in the 2020s, there are more considerations in play with Bond 26. But it’s always useful to review the record of past events.

Ying and the yang about entertainment

Image for the official James Bond feed on Twitter

The past few weeks have demonstrated the yin and the yang about entertainment.

The pro-artist side:

–Actors owe fans only their best performance,

–When it comes to Bond films, the Bond producers don’t owe anything to fans. Fans can accept what the producers come out with or no.

The pro-fan slide:

— Without fans, nothing much else happens.

Regardless, the entire enterprise is complicated. There are (potentially) millions of dollars at risk.

Still, producers are as subject to fan reviews as actors. When you get into “the arena,” your efforts” are subject to fan reviews and comments.

It has been like this since the earliest days of movies and more recently with TV shows. Audience reactions for both movies and TV shows have had an impact for decades.

Broccoli seeks to cool down Bond 26 speculation

Barbara Broccoli, boss of Eon Productions

Barbara Broccoli, the boss of Eon Productions, has again tried to cool down temperatures related to Bond 26.

Last week, the LAD Bible website carried some comments from Broccoli that Bond 26 isn’t that far along.

“No, we haven’t even started casting yet,” she said. “There isn’t even a script.”

In past months, there have been stories from British tabloids such as The Sun that Eon has gotten hot and bothered about Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Eon’s Bond No. 007 to succeed Daniel Craig.

Some Bond fans have bitten on such reports. They figure there’s something behind such smoke.

Over the past year (or longer), there’s a notion that Eon is coming up with a long-range plan.

IF that’s true, that would be a change.

During the Daniel Craig era (2006-2021), Eon said Skyfall (2012) had nothing to do with Casino Royale (2006) and Quantum of Solace (2008).

But, with 2015’s SPECTRE was suddenly talked about part of an extended storyline (especially after Eon regained the rights to the character of Ernst Stavro Blofeld). That was extended with No Time to Die.

Eon *never* envisioned a five-part arc. But, as the movies unfolded, the talking points changed.

Now, we’re told that Eon is trying to come up with an extended plan for a post-Craig era. Maybe yes, maybe no.

But, as the saying goes, when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

RE-POST: The hero’s last stand

No Time to Die poster

Adapted from a 2021 post

No Time to Die wrapped up a five-movie arc featuring Daniel Craig as James Bond. It was a self-contained Bond universe that (mostly) didn’t concern itself with the previous 20 Eon Productions movies.

Eon Productions got the idea in the middle of the arc (in between Skyfall and SPECTRE). Skyfall director Sam Mendes originally said that movie had nothing to do with the first two Craig 007 movies.

Still, it’s now official these films are their own thing. That’s much the way that Christopher Nolan’s three Batman movies are their own thing, not related to any other Batman films.

Whether Eon wants to admit it or not, the makers of the Bond film series are following the same path set by Fox and Marvel movies featuring Marvel comic book characters

With 2015’s SPECTRE, Eon specifically adapted interconnected storytelling featured in movies made by Walt Disney Co.’s Marvel Studios. With No Time to Die, Eon has doubled down on that concept.

2017’s Logan (made by Fox before it was absorbed by Disney), we had the final Hugh Jackman adventure as Logan/Wolverine. In 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, we had the concluding tale of Tony Stark/Iron man (Robert Downey Jr.), ending an arc of more than a decade.

The concept, of course, is The Hero’s Last Stand. The hero falls, but falls heroically. The audience weeps.

When executed well, it works.

To be clear, The Hero’s Last Stand goes back a long time. It was included in genres as diverse as Biblical epics (Samson and Deliah) and Westerns (Ride the High Country and The Shootist). But Biblical movies and Westerns aren’t popular anymore.

But comic book films are.

For example, Tony Stark makes the ultimate sacrifice to save those who matter the most to him. Sound familiar?

Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark/Iron about to make the ultimate sacrifice in Avengers: Endgame (2019)

You may respond that’s a coincidence. No, it’s not.

The tabloids ran stories in 2018 and 2019 speculating about whether Bond 25 would kill off Craig’s Bond. They also had stories asking whether Eon or Danny Boyle, No Time to Die’s original director wanted to kill Bond off.

The Sun said in August 2018 that Boyle quit because he did not want to kill off Bond. The Daily Star said in April 2019 that it was Boyle who wanted Bond “to die in the arms of returning Bond girl Lea Seydoux in the 25th spy movie Shatterhand.” (Oops.)

Regardless, we now know that somebody did. The notion of Bond dying has been in plain sight for years.

To be sure, movies can have similar themes and still be good. High Noon and Rio Bravo featured western lawmen who were outnumbered by the bad guys. But the two movies had considerably different takes on the same notion.

Many Bond fans despise Marvel films. Many fans are in denial that Bond has been adapting Marvel film concepts (including Eon boss Barbara Broccoli).

Of course, it also works the way around. Both Nolan’s Batman movies and Marvel’s film output have been influenced by Bond. Example: Look at casino scenes in 2012’s Skyfall and 2018’s Black Panther, for example.

Regardless, all still comes down to execution. So how does No Time to Die’s version of The Hero’s Last Stand compare?

When I finally saw it, I thought it was done very well. The ending had been spoiled for me. Not in a, “I stumbled it while surfing the internet” way but hearing it presented to me full on. Nevertheless, watching No Time to Die for the first time, it felt genuinely emotional.

You may disagree. And that’s fine. The thing is, Bond’s exit in No Time to Die was not brand-new territory.

State of the Bond franchise: Year-end 2022

The year of the 60th anniversary of the James Bond movie franchise is drawing to an end. What happens next?

The thing is, nobody outside of Eon Productions (and their film partners Amazon and MGM) really knows.

Nature abhors a vacuum. So it is with the future of the cinematic James Bond.

One U.K. tabloid, Rupert Murdoch’s The Sun, claims that Aaron Taylor-Johnson, has the inside track to be the next cinematic Bond. But nobody else has confirmed that. For now, The Sun is alone, out on that limb.

One Bond fan YouTube Channel has suggested Christopher Nolan has an inside track to be Bond 26’s director. But we’ve heard that song before.

One Spanish-language Bond fan site once claimed in 2017 that Nolan would direct Bond 25/No Time to Die. This week, that same site did a gag post saying it had confirmed Taylor-Johnson would be the new film Bond. Dec. 28 is the Spanish equivalent of April Fools. You might think that’s funny but it’s not a way to enhance your credibility.

All of this reflects a thirst, a hunger, for ANYTHING about ACTUAL, REAL information about the future of the cinematic 007.

Barbara Broccoli, the boss of Eon Productions, said repeatedly it would be at least two years before Bond 26 would start filming. Supposedly, Eon is doing a deep dive into Bond’s movie future.

Broccoli’s father, Albert R. Broccoli, once (between May 1985 and July 1987) changed creative direction and cast not one, but two Bond actors (Pierce Brosnan first and when that didn’t work out, Timothy Dalton).

Is this a serious deliberation? Of course. But it’s not rocket science. James Bond is James Bond. The character has been adapted to the times on numerous occasions.

Maybe, just maybe, we’ll know more in 2023.

Until then, happy New Year.

A history of Christopher Nolan as next Bond director

Christopher Nolan

There has long been fan interest in the idea of Christopher Nolan directing a James Bond film. This week, The Bond Geek channel on YouTube brought up the idea again.

Nolan is a self-confessed Bond fan. Some bits from his trilogy of Batman movies (2005, 2008, 2012) have homages to the Bond film series. So did his 2010 movie Inception, where one segment seemed based on On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

What’s more, Nolan’s name comes up every so often in connection with Bond movies.

It happened in 2013 when Nolan was mentioned as a possible director for Bond 24 (finally titled SPECTRE).

It happened again in December 2017, when a fan website said Nolan was “more than likely” to direct Bond 25, finally titled No Time to Die. I’d provide the link, except the fan site apparently took the article down.

As the blog has written before, the Bond series itself has been affected by Nolan. 2012’s Skyfall had Nolan inflences. Director Sam Mendes said so.

That influence continued with SPECTRE, which had Hoyte Van Hoytema as director of photography and Lee Smith as editor.

If you bring Nolan inside the Eon 007 tent, there are other issues. With Nolan, you typically also get the involvement of his production company, Syncopy. Nolan gets a producer’s credit. So does his wife, Emma Thomas.

As usual, we’ll see. Nolan’s next film, Oppenheimer, is scheduled for release in July 2023. Here’s the trailer: