With Boyle’s exit, latest 007 could miss release date
LOS ANGELES: The next James Bond movie didn’t just lose a director when Danny Boyle left over creative differences. It may have also forfeited a release date.
Word around town is that it’s back to the drawing board for the creators of the new 007 adventure after Boyle and his co-writer, John Hodge, delivered a draft of the script that didn’t meet the approval of producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, as well as star Daniel Craig.
After Boyle exited, MGM and Eon, the film’s backers, sent out the word that they are looking for a writer or a writer-director to come on to the film, according to insiders.
The companies are not simply eyeing a director for hire, which signals that a major rewrite will have to be undertaken. It is also telling that the producers seem more eager to find a screenwriter than a person willing to slide behind the camera.
That has many believing that the Boyle script will be scrapped. It may also be a sign that Broccoli and Craig aren’t interested in returning to an earlier draft that was submitted by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, the team behind “Skyfall.”
Filming on the project, with the working title Bond 25, was originally supposed to begin on Dec 8, with some of the shooting expected to take place at Pinewood Studios in the UK.
Other far-flung locales, a staple of the espionage series, had yet to be announced.
However, the need for a new script makes that start date difficult to achieve, according to rival studio executives. Bond films are notoriously complex productions, involving pricey set pieces that are often shot in exotic destinations.
They require a rigorous preproduction process that takes months. Any delay in filming could have a domino effect because locations that have been scouted and secured could fall out of place, wrecking havoc on the rigidly controlled shooting schedule.
In order to hit Bond 25’s Nov 9, 2019, release date, rival executives say that MGM and Eon must be in production no later than January. Since 1995’s “Goldeneye,” every Bond film has bowed in winter, but it is possible that the backers of the sequel could opt to slide it into the summer of 2020 or wait a full year.