Double O trilogy by Kim Sherwood finale ‘Hurricane Room’ out 19. May 2026

Basically it’s anything that is original and not inherited from Fleming, they’d need to buy the rights off IFP and Sherwood. From what @stromberg got from Deaver when he was interviewed, Eon do it by reflex, and I do have a vague memory of William Boyd saying that Eon had bought Solo.

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Would strongly suspect it’s already well sewn up, long time ago. They can afford good lawyers.

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Not so sure about that. Remember: back in the days, we thought one (genuine) letter from their lawyers to be a hoax, because it read like it was fabricated by a 9-year-old :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

Like all the continuation authors, she was hired to do the job. Guess the questions of film rights and all that stuff are part of her contract. She delivered, received and amount of £XXX, and maybe will get a bonus if the book sells well. But everything else is in the hands of IFP/Eon.

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Looking at With a Mind to KIll, Mr Horowitz has asserted his various moral rights that come from being the author, but the copyright is that of IFP - speculation, but one suspects that part of the whole deal for these things is an assignment of copyright to IFP (the moral rights remain). Don’t want to? Thanks for the chat, now get out.

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It’s a whole thing that comic book companies have (Ab)used for decades

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Another great interview to check out!

There’s an interesting discussion about Bond continuity midway through between Sherwood and the interviewer, where she describes the pre-Craig films as having a bit of a ‘‘fairytale’’ element. She then basically states (not in so many words) that her books have a ‘floating timeline’ in place where some version of the events of Fleming’s books happened in the 80’s, 90’s and 00’s…but also some of Bond’s Cold War-era history and experience has now been transplanted to her version of M.

She also talks about how she wants to honor the film version of Bond as well, much like how Fleming himself did in his later books (by making Bond Scottish like Connery for instance). And the interviewer sort of hints that her book is inspired significantly by the Brosnan era.

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Yeah, that’s pretty much what I thought. Though I wasn’t sure if they’d actively been buying the rights to continuation novels.

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I kinda had DC and Marvel in mind when thinking about these rights issues involving continuation authors.

With comic-book films, for instance, a lot of the writers and artists may be entitled to royalties if the films feature characters that they created…even if the actual rights to those characters are owned by Marvel or DC. It does lead to a lot of tricky situations however, given that those characters are in many cases derivatives of pre-existing characters. A case in point is the comic-book writer Ed Brubaker, who believes that he should be paid for the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s use of the Winter Soldier. The Winter Soldier however is simply his reinvention of a pre-existing classic Marvel character Bucky so Disney/Marvel can rightly argue that Brubaker didn’t ‘create’ him but merely took an existing character and repackaged him.

But here’s an interesting hypothetical scenario to consider - let’s say maybe a decade from now we get a Bond film where Bond teams up with Joanna Harwood, 003 and they both get their equipment from Ann Reilly aka Q’ute. So do Kim Sherwood and John Gardner’s estate get royalties for the use of original characters from their respective books, even if no actual story elements from those books are being used? For that matter, is 003 really an ‘original’ character or is she basically a derivative of the James Bond, 007 character?

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Sorry to ask the obvious question,but has anyone actually READ the book?

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Still working on it…

I’m still waiting to my copy to arrive from the UK.

Same here.

Similar. It seems very eager to please.

I must admit,with everything going on since my mum passed away,the last five months have been very hectic and I’ve not had much time for reading

I’m sorry for your loss.

Possibly not Double or Nothing related, but interesting nonetheless.

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I got it yesterday from the postman. Didn’t find the time to read it.
I have right now my summer holliday, but it looks like I am busier now than when I am at work. :smile:
Unfortunately I recieved the normal regular version of the book.

I have it as an ebook downloaded to my Kindle, but just finished With a Mind to Kill yesterday and loved it. I’m having a hard time getting excited about starting it right now.

I just found out that I did receive the special version after all. Apparently I misunderstood: the dust cover is no different, the special version is under the dust cover, the hardcover itself is different. :grin:

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Remember that it doesn’t come out in the US until next year, so the only way we can get it now is to order from the UK, which means most of us haven’t gotten it yet…

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