RE-POST: What happened with Quantum of Solace’s script?

This is a re-post from 2011. It’s worth noting because a new WGA strike started this week and various entertainment websites are providing incomplete accounts of what occurred with Quantum of Solace because of the previous WGA walkout.

Daniel Craig recently gave an interview to Time Out magazine where he said he and Quantum of Solace director Marc Forester had to rewrite the film’s screenplay because it was only “the bare bones of a script” because of a Writers Guild of America strike. In the process, Craig told the magazine, the process turned Quantum into much more of a direct sequel to Casino Royale than originally intended.

The quotes from that interview keep turning up LIKE IN THIS POST on the Yahoo! Movies Web site. So by now, “Craig Had to Rewrite Quantum of Solace” has become an established narrative among fans.

Except, three years ago, while the movie was being filmed, writer Joshua Zetumer was supposed to be polishing the script during filming, according to stories LIKE THIS ONE FROM APRIL 2008 and THIS ONE.

Both of those appear to be based on a ROTTEN TOMATOES STORY. That story read in part:

Forster and (producer Michael G.) Wilson both revealed that an earlier idea for the film was scrapped when Forster came aboard to helm. “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 [the Oscar winner who rewrote Casino Royale] from scratch,” Forster recalled. “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. And we developed it from there together. Then Barbara and Michael said they liked where we were going and they liked the script.”

The Writers’ Guild strike, which began just as Quantum of Solace was gearing up for production, did not impact the production as much as the industry trade papers had speculated. “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,” Forster 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 with someone and it worked out with all this stuff coming up. So I was pretty happy with all the work we’d done in January and February so [there won’t be any need for reshoots].” (emphasis added)

Now bear in mind this passage is referring to the same Writers Guild strike that Daniel Craig says in 2011 meant Quantum had only “a bare bones of a script.” And once the strike was over, Zetumer was around to help do last-minute polishes, although you wouldn’t know that if you read the Time Out interview.

And what was the script that got rejected, causing a race to get a new script done before the Writers Guild strike? Forster revealed details in a post ON THE VULTURE BLOG OF NEW YORK MAGAZINE.

“Haggis had an idea they weren’t fond of, and I didn’t know if it would work or not,” says Forster. “The idea was that Vesper in the last movie, maybe she had a kid, and there would be an orphan out there. It wasn’t anything to insult the franchise. But they felt it wasn’t particularly Bond — him looking for the kid. I think Paul thought he just leaves the kid, he doesn’t deal with it. But [the producers] thought that would be really nasty, too, because Bond was an orphan himself. If he would find a kid, would he just leave it? They were so vehemently against it. That was the only time I saw, really, ‘No, we can’t do that.’ They said, ‘Once he finds the kid, Bond can’t just leave the kid. It’s not right.'”

So let’s recap. Haggis had an idea that Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli rejected. Haggis turns in another script just ahead of the Writers Guild strike in fall 2007. Marc Forster says in spring 2008 that script was fine, while some polishing was done after the strike by Joshua Zetumer.

Now, in 2011, Daniel Craig says he and Forster did all the work on the final script, with no word of any contributions by Haggis, Zetumer, Neal Purvis or Robert Wade.

Needless to say, all of this can’t be true. You be the judge which (if any) of these tales is the truth. But next time you hear how Skyfall will be “Bond with a capital B,” or will be a “classic Bond” or how director Sam Mendes is “working his arse off,” remember those are mere words.

Maybe Skyfall will be a classic Bond. If it is, it won’t be because of words uttered by cast and crew members during filming. The verdict will be determined by the finished film. Words change before, during and after filming. It’s the film that endures and is the ultimate report card.

WGA goes on strike

Writers Guild West logo

The Writers Guild of America went on strike after failing to reach a new contract agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the bargaining association for studios.

A central issue behind the walkout is the rise of streaming shows and movies. Residuals from streaming services tend to be much less than for traditional theatrically released movies and broadcast and cable shows. A streaming series usually results in far fewer episodes in a season compared with broadcast networks.

Zack Stentz, a screenwriter, laid out the issues in an April 30 guest opinion essay in The New York Times. Here’s an excerpt.

The reality is that the seemingly big paychecks of Hollywood have to last through the lean periods that nearly every writer experiences.

Traditionally, one of the biggest buffers against that volatility is residuals: the money that writers earn from the reuse of our work, encompassing everything from cable and syndicated reruns of old television episodes to airlines licensing movies for in-flight viewing. The formulas used to calculate the money owed for various forms of reuse are complicated and vary widely across platforms. As a result, the payments can be relatively tiny or very large — and one of the more delightful parts of being a working screenwriter is opening your mailbox and seeing the distinctive green envelope that residuals come in, not knowing if the check inside will cover an In-N-Out burger or your mortgage payment.

But the odds of a big check that bails out a writer in dire financial straits are growing ever longer. Programming is moving increasingly away from theatrical, broadcast and cable to streaming platforms, which typically pay residuals at a far lower rate. This is why one of the major areas in our current negotiation is bringing streaming residuals more in line with broadcast and cable rates.

The WGA and AMPTP put out dueling statements blaming the other for the impasse. THIS VARIETY STORY has quotes from both. AMPTP said it had offered increases in compensation and residuals but the guild was not giving in on other proposals. Variety summarized the WGA’s position as the studios represented by AMPTP are “not responding to fundamental shifts in the entertainment economy.”

The last WGA strike in 2007-08 affected production of Quantum of Solace. Writer Paul Haggis had delivered a script draft shortly before the walkout. But it wasn’t until after the strike ended (and filming had begun) that writer Joshua Zetumer could be hired to do revisions during production. Zetumer did not receive a screen credit for his work on the film.

Whether the current strike has an impact on Bond 26 remains to be seen.

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.

Bond 26 questions

Nature abhors a vacuum. With that in mind, here are some modest questions concerning Bond 26.

Time to lighten up? Over the past five Bond films made by Eon Productions there has been a lot of angst.

Bond losing his lady love (Casino Royale, based on Ian Fleming’s first novel). Bond out for revenge (Quantum of Solace). Bond not able to save M (Skyfall). Bond discovers his foster brother was his greatest enemy (SPECTRE). Bond getting blown up with missiles (No Time to Die).

The Daniel Craig era of Bond films (which started over from the previous 20 movies) was often very serious. That era was a big difference from the mostly escapist Eon adventures that preceded it. Should the past be the future?

Could it be time to lighten things up?

Time to reduce the budget? The Bond film series has a history of hiking production budgets and bringing them back under control.

With SPECTRE and No Time to Die, the production budgets exploded. U.K. regulatory filings in 2020 suggested No Time to Die’s budget was nearing $300 million. That doesn’t include marketing costs. Is this sustainable? Sure, delays related COVID-19 were a factor. But the film industry has, more or less, adjusted to all that.

Time to let go of the homages to past Bond movies? Quantum of Solace, SPECTRE, and No Time to Die all had homages (critics would say crutches) to previous Bond films.

No Time to Die alone had multiples homages to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. At one point, Bond is meeting with M in London with John Barry’s theme from Majesty’s plays in the background. There are multiple references to the John Barry-Hal David song We Have All the Time in the World. And, of course, we get the Aston DB5 (in the form of newly built replica cars).

Is it maybe time to move on from the homages?

As usual, we’ll see.

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.

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.

About that Daniel Craig LAT interview

Daniel Craig’s 007

Daniel Craig, after a five-film run as James Bond, reflected on his 007 run (Casino Royale through No Time to Die) in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.

Whatever your feelings about those five movies, the LAT interview showed the 54-year-old actor has mixed feelings. An excerpt:

“It’s my fault because I kind of didn’t shut up about the fact that I had all these injuries. I’m pissed off at myself that I ever even spoke about them,” Craig said. “I put way more work into the creative side of those movies than I did into the physical side of those movies. The physical side of the movies was just the job. I had to do it. I trained, learned the fights, that’s kind of my brain not working. The rest of it, the look, the feel, the kind of the temperature of the movies, getting Sam Mendes in to direct ‘Skyfall,’ that’s where the hard work was. Going to the gym is hard work, but it’s not really brain hard work.”

Craig endured numerous injuries. He also had unprecedented input (compared to previous actors employed by Eon Productions) into the plot and other aspects of the movies.

The actor, a year after No Time to Die came out, claims it was his idea for his version of Bond to be killed.

“Two things, one for myself and one for the franchise,” Craig said. “One, for the franchise, was that resets start again, which [the franchise] did with me. And I was like, ‘Well, you need to reset again.’ So let’s kill my character off and go find another Bond and go find another story. Start at [age] 23, start at 25, start at 30.

To be sure, there’s a lot of after-the-fact story telling before and after a movie comes out. “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” which is a line from 1962’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance. That’s still the case in the 21st century.

Quotes from Craig’s interviews have split Bond movie fans. Craig fans say that shows why he’s a great actor. Craig critics cite this why he’s selfish.

Whatever. It remains to be seen whether Eon gets on with the business of a post-Craig era.

RE-POST: What 007 and Batman have in common

Adapted from a 2012 post

When following debates among James Bond fans — whether on Internet bulletin boards, Facebook or in person — people sometimes say “try reading Fleming” (or a variation thereof) as if it were a trump card that shows they’re right and the other person is wrong.

Read Fleming. That shows Bond is supposed to be a “blunt instrument.” Therefore, Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace are really true to Fleming.

“Read Fleming!” = “I’m right, you’re wrong!”

Read Fleming. That shows Bond is a romantic hero, not a neurotic antihero, therefore, (INSERT BOND ACTOR HERE) was true to Fleming. Meanwhile, (INSERT BOND ACTOR HERE) meant the 007 film series had reached a nadir.

In reality, over a half-century, the Bond films have passed through multiple eras. To some, Connery can never be surpassed and Moore was a joke. Except, the Connery films have more humor than Fleming employed (on the “banned” Criterion laser disc commentaries, Terence Young chortles about how Fleming asking why the films had more humor than his novels). The Moore films, for all their humor, do have serious moments (Bond admitting to Anya he killed her KGB lover in The Spy Who Loved Me or Bond being hurt but not wanting to admit it after getting out of the centrifuge in Moonraker). Other comments heard frequently: Brosnan tried to split the difference between Connery and Moore, Craig plays the role seriously, the way it should be, etc., etc.

Lots of different opinions, all concerning the same character, dealing with different eras and the contributions of multiple directors and screenwriters. Which reminded of us another character, who’s been around even longer than the film 007: Batman, who made his debut in Detective Comics No. 27 in 1939.

Early Batman stories: definitely dark. “There is a sickening snap as the cossack’s neck breaks under the mighty pressure of the Batman’s foot,” reads a caption in Detective Comics No. 30.

Then, things lightened up after Batman picked up Robin as a sidekick. Eventually, there was Science Fiction Batman in the 1950s (during a period when superhero comics almost disappeared), followed by “New Look” Batman in 1964 (which could also be called Return of the Detective), followed by Campy Batman in 1966 (because of popularity of the Batman television show), followed by Classic Batman is Back, circa 1969 or ’70, etc., etc. All different interpretations of the same character.

In the 1990s, there was a Batman cartoon that captured all this. A group of kids are talking. Two claim to have seen Batman. The first provides a description and we see a sequence resembling Dick Sprang-drawn comics of the 1940s, with Gary Owens providing the voice of Batman. The second describes something much different, and the sequence is drawn to resemble Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns comic of the 1980s, with Michael Ironside voicing Batman.

Eventually, the group of kids gets into trouble and we see the 1990s cartoon Batman, voiced by Kevin Conroy, in a sequence that evokes elements of both visions.

With the Bond film series, something similar has occurred. In various media, you’ll see fans on different sides of an argument claiming Fleming as supporting their view. Search hard enough, and you can find bits of Fleming or Fleming-inspired elements in almost any Bond film. The thing is, the different eras aren’t the result of long-term planning. They’re based on choices, the best guess among filmmakers of what is popular at a given time, what makes a good Bond story, etc.

In effect, both the film 007 and the comic book Batman have had to adapt or die. Fans today can’t imagine a world without either character. But each has had crisis moments. For Bond, the Broccoli-Saltzman separation of the mid-1970s and the 1989-95 hiatus in Bond films raised major questions about 007’s future. Batman, meanwhile, faced the prospect of cancellation by DC Comics (one reason for the 1964 revamp that ended the science fiction era) but managed to avoid it.

None of this, of course, will stop the arguments. Truth be told, things might become dull if the debates ceased. Still things might go over better if participants looked at them as an opportunity. An opposing viewpoint that’s well argued keeps you sharp and might cause you to consider ideas you overlooked.

Haggis found liable in civil rape case, NYT says

Quantum of Solace’s soundtrack. The movie was co-scripted by Paul Haggis.

Paul Haggis, who co-scripted two James Bond films in the 2000s, has been found in a civil trial “liable for raping a former film industry publicist in his Manhattan apartment in 2013,” The New York Times reported on Nov. 10.

Haggis was ordered by a jury to pay the former publicist, Haleigh Breest, at least $7.5 million, the Times reported.

Haggis, 69, worked on 2006’s Casino Royale and 2008’s Quantum of Solace as a writer. The filmmaker also “wrote ‘Million Dollar Baby’ and co-wrote and directed ‘Crash,’ consecutive best picture winners,” the Times noted.

The newspaper said Haggis met Breest “while she worked at film premiere events in New York. In a lawsuit filed in the early months of the #MeToo movement, she alleged that after one such event, Mr. Haggis invited her to his loft in SoHo, where he forced her to give him oral sex, penetrated her digitally and proceeded to rape her.”

An excerpt from the story:

Mr. Haggis’s lead lawyer, Priya Chaudhry, said in a statement that the defense was “disappointed and shocked” by the verdict, accusing the plaintiff’s lawyers of portraying Mr. Haggis “as a monster” and lamenting the judge’s decision to allow testimony from four other women who have accused Mr. Haggis of sexual misconduct.

The $7.5 million figure is for compensatory damages. The jury is to return next week to consider punitive damages, the Times said.

What should happen for Bond 26

Global James Bond Day has come and gone. There were no major announcements made related to the Eon film series.

With that in mind, what should happen with Bond 26 (whenever it comes out)? :

Bring David Arnold back

Part of the 60th-anniversary festivities was a documentary about the music of the Bond films. Watching that documentary, it’s clear that Eon Productions still adores the work of David Arnold.

Yet, Arnold hasn’t scored a Bond film since 2008’s Quantum of Solace.

Sam Mendes wanted, and got, Thomas Newman for his two Bond films (Skyfall and SPECTRE). Cary Fukunaga initially got his choice (Dan Romer). But he was rejected. So we got Hans Zimmer and his multiple enablers.

Zimmer even said the No Time to Die score was a collaboration between himself and Steve Mazzaro. When you sign Hans Zimmer, he’s not an artist. He’s more of a film-music conglomerate.

Next time out, just sign David Arnold.

Get on with it

For the past six months or so, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson of Eon Productions have yammered about how hard it is to cast a new Bond.

Come on. Your father/stepfather switched gears and cast new Bond actors on the fly. (See what happened between May 1985 and July 1987.)

Get on with it. By this time, everybody knows about Ian Fleming, and James Bond, and how Fleming can be adapted to movies.