Director stir leaves Bond shaken
Tim Robey on Danny Boyle’s departure
‘ Creative differences.” It’s under this routine catch-all explanation that Bond producers Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli just announced Danny Boyle won’t be directing their next instalment after all. There have been reports about a specific dispute over casting, though more fundamental differences were always probable. Boyle is a fervent stylist with his own way of doing things; 007 is the most producer-led franchise in the business.
Time after time, Wilson and Broccoli have turned to directors prepared to work with the prescribed Bond format – the John Glens of this world, never the Ridley Scotts. Boyle, more so than
Sam Mendes, was something of a maverick signing for this habitually safe lineage. It sounds like a simple case of the new director wanting to imprint his particular stamp on Bond, and that stamp being rejected.
The chalice he’d inherited was a less enviable one than meets the eye. Skyfall and Spectre were the first consecutive entries in years by a single director – Mendes – who was lured back after initial reluctance. Spectre not only got much worse reviews than its predecessor, but suffered a downtick at the box office, earning 80 per cent of Skyfall’s global grosses, and a mere 66 per cent in the vital US market. Were these signs of brand fatigue, perhaps an impatience for Daniel Craig to clear the stage? Either way, they were the kind of figures that make producers nervous. Boyle, announced in March, was the fresh element coming into Bond 25, after Craig made a mockery of the declaration that he’d “rather slit his wrists” than return. Screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who have been involved on the last six Bond films, had written a script, but Boyle wanted a new one by his old Trainspotting ally John Hodge. Wilson and Broccoli agreed, hoping Boyle would jazz things up, and now seem to have decided they don’t like his flavour of jazz.
The difficulties of innovating within the prescribed Bond format are hard to overstate. Filming locations, because of deals with various tourist boards, get decided years in advance. The product placement of cars, watches and so on must be carefully integrated.
As such, the story is always a movable feast, slotted in around the set pieces, often rewritten – or reshot, like much of Skyfall’s third act – at the very last minute. A director gets little say in any of this. Boyle wanted his Bond to be less retrograde, but there’s only so much rocking of the boat that Wilson and Broccoli will allow.
These are uncertain days to be hired as the director of any canonical blockbuster. Boyle quitting comes after a series of directors have been sacked or sidelined from Star Wars by producer/overlord Kathleen Kennedy, who brought in Tony Gilroy to complete Rogue One, replaced Phil Lord and Chris Miller with Ron Howard on Solo, and binned Colin Trevorrow from Episode IX before he’d even made it to the set.
Who will take over Bond? Who would dare? There’s a habitual clamour for Christopher Nolan, a noted 007 fan, who has ruled himself out. The success of Mission: Impossible – Fallout, which was bigger and better than Spectre in every way, has seen Christopher Mcquarrie’s name thrown in, but this would feel like cross-pollination between franchises, and he may be in too powerful a position now to submit to the yoke of Wilson/broccoli, with their obsessive protection of the brand. Mendes could be begged to return, but this might smack of desperation; Gilroy has been mentioned, and so has Martin Campbell, whose bookending of the Craig era (he directed the first one, Casino Royale) would have an elegant symmetry.
It’s very possible that someone else has been waiting in the wings since the moment Boyle was signed. But the time frame now is getting seriously crunchy. Bond 25 has a release date set of Nov 8 2019, which is precariously tight for a currently directorless film with all eyes watching. If they announce a replacement quickly and dive in, perhaps they could pull it off, but Boyle’s departure raises all kinds of questions about what state the script – Hodge’s, or whoever’s – must be in. There’s a severe danger of them rushing it and botching it, and ending the Craig run with a damaging nadir.
The best thing they could possibly do is take a big, deep, revivifying breath. Scrap that release date. Spend some time on a brand new script. Let Craig go – his heart clearly isn’t in it any more – and resolve that burning question of who will be filling his shoes.
This is how to tempt an exciting director in – a Boyle, or better yet, a Bigelow – who won’t feel like she is being held hostage in panicky and compromised circumstances. The glory days of 007 belong to the past – and feasibly, if they stop and take stock, to the future. The present, right now, is looking awfully dicey.