thedeparted
04-23-2010, 02:10 AM
James Bond has worked his way through enough luxury cars, bespoke suits and expensive women on screen to suggest that he has never been particularly worried about prudent book-keeping. But after nearly half a century of heroic consumption, debt has finally caught up with him.
EON Productions, the producer of the James Bond films, has announced that the 23rd instalment in the series has been postponed indefinitely because of the financial woes of its distributor, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Any lengthy postponement is certain to cloud the future of Daniel Craig, the latest Bond. Questions are also hanging over the involvement of Sam Mendes, who had been in line to become the first Oscar-winning director at the helm of a Bond film.
MGM is $3.7 billion (£2.4 billion) in debt and has been up for sale since November. Now Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli of EON Productions appear to have run out of patience. “Due to the continuing uncertainty surrounding the future of MGM and the failure to close a sale of the studio, we have suspended development on ‘Bond 23’ indefinitely,” they said. “We do not know when development will resume.”
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Wilson and Broccoli are the stepson and daughter of Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, the American-Italian who rescued Ian Fleming’s literary spy from legal limbo in the 1960s and finally brought him to to the big screen.
Four years ago Craig, 42, became the sixth official screen 007 and revitalised the franchise in Casino Royale. His debut took almost $600 million at the box office, the most of any Bond film. Craig has since reprised his gritty “blunt instrument” Bond in Quantum of Solace in 2008, which was less well received but made almost as much money. Last year he said that he was happy to keep making Bond films for as long as “people still want to see these movies ... or until my knees go, whichever happens quicker.”
His success as Bond has proved that he has the mass audience appeal to back up his undoubted acting class. He will have no shortage of alternative offers if “Bond 23” remains on hold for long.
Sean Connery played Bond for the last time in Never Say Never Again in 1983, 12 years after his previous appearance. That film was not produced by EON and is therefore not included in the official canon of Bond films. The longest official break in one actor’s tenure in the role is only four years, the time that Connery sat out between You Only Live Twice in 1967 and Diamonds are Forever in 1971.
Craig was already looking at a break from the part of roughly that length. Bond 23 had been set for release in 2011 or 2012. Patrick Marber recently became the latest big name screenwriter linked with the project.
Mike Goodridge, editor of Screen International, the industry newspaper, said: “You just can’t keep talent like that hanging around. Sam Mendes has a multitude of projects on the go and Daniel Craig has all these slots that he has to fill every year. The question is how fast can they reactivate the film once the MGM ownership is on a clearer footing. Broccoli and Wilson have been doing this for decades so they do know exactly what that entails.”
One of the principal victims of the delay appears to be Pinewood, the venerable British studios where the Bond films are largely made and where weeks of shooting time now need to be filled at short notice. Pinewood referred all inquiries to EON yesterday, which would not expand beyond Wilson and Broccoli’s statement.
The other loser is MGM itself. As the longest running film franchise in the world the Bond series is one of the pivotal attractions to any prospective buyer of the studio. EON may now try to use the stalemate to engineer an exit from its relationship with MGM to a healthier distributor.
MGM has other assets — its name and roaring lion logo, the United Artists operations, a library with more than 4,000 titles and a stripped-back film and television operation. But it is Bond, and its stake in Peter Jackson’s two-part adaptation of The Hobbit, that were expected to be “the two big drivers of a deal”, Mr Goodridge said.
I really need to start going through and seeing Bonds I haven't seen and damn at MGM 4,000 title library
EON Productions, the producer of the James Bond films, has announced that the 23rd instalment in the series has been postponed indefinitely because of the financial woes of its distributor, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Any lengthy postponement is certain to cloud the future of Daniel Craig, the latest Bond. Questions are also hanging over the involvement of Sam Mendes, who had been in line to become the first Oscar-winning director at the helm of a Bond film.
MGM is $3.7 billion (£2.4 billion) in debt and has been up for sale since November. Now Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli of EON Productions appear to have run out of patience. “Due to the continuing uncertainty surrounding the future of MGM and the failure to close a sale of the studio, we have suspended development on ‘Bond 23’ indefinitely,” they said. “We do not know when development will resume.”
Related Links
Miramax brothers tell Disney: let us buy it back
Keira Knightley takes on performance art
The Ghost
Wilson and Broccoli are the stepson and daughter of Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, the American-Italian who rescued Ian Fleming’s literary spy from legal limbo in the 1960s and finally brought him to to the big screen.
Four years ago Craig, 42, became the sixth official screen 007 and revitalised the franchise in Casino Royale. His debut took almost $600 million at the box office, the most of any Bond film. Craig has since reprised his gritty “blunt instrument” Bond in Quantum of Solace in 2008, which was less well received but made almost as much money. Last year he said that he was happy to keep making Bond films for as long as “people still want to see these movies ... or until my knees go, whichever happens quicker.”
His success as Bond has proved that he has the mass audience appeal to back up his undoubted acting class. He will have no shortage of alternative offers if “Bond 23” remains on hold for long.
Sean Connery played Bond for the last time in Never Say Never Again in 1983, 12 years after his previous appearance. That film was not produced by EON and is therefore not included in the official canon of Bond films. The longest official break in one actor’s tenure in the role is only four years, the time that Connery sat out between You Only Live Twice in 1967 and Diamonds are Forever in 1971.
Craig was already looking at a break from the part of roughly that length. Bond 23 had been set for release in 2011 or 2012. Patrick Marber recently became the latest big name screenwriter linked with the project.
Mike Goodridge, editor of Screen International, the industry newspaper, said: “You just can’t keep talent like that hanging around. Sam Mendes has a multitude of projects on the go and Daniel Craig has all these slots that he has to fill every year. The question is how fast can they reactivate the film once the MGM ownership is on a clearer footing. Broccoli and Wilson have been doing this for decades so they do know exactly what that entails.”
One of the principal victims of the delay appears to be Pinewood, the venerable British studios where the Bond films are largely made and where weeks of shooting time now need to be filled at short notice. Pinewood referred all inquiries to EON yesterday, which would not expand beyond Wilson and Broccoli’s statement.
The other loser is MGM itself. As the longest running film franchise in the world the Bond series is one of the pivotal attractions to any prospective buyer of the studio. EON may now try to use the stalemate to engineer an exit from its relationship with MGM to a healthier distributor.
MGM has other assets — its name and roaring lion logo, the United Artists operations, a library with more than 4,000 titles and a stripped-back film and television operation. But it is Bond, and its stake in Peter Jackson’s two-part adaptation of The Hobbit, that were expected to be “the two big drivers of a deal”, Mr Goodridge said.
I really need to start going through and seeing Bonds I haven't seen and damn at MGM 4,000 title library