Bond films do have a shorter gap between principal photography and release than most.
Also keep in mind, Eon play things close to their chest, this might not be entirely truthful as a timeline, it was just a more polite response than “I’ll tell you when i ****** tell you!!!”
How to reinvent Bond is a big decision. The last 2 years have seen a huge reshaping of the cultural landscape but so far most of the big films released went into production pre-pandemic. The dust still hasn’t truly settled after the upheaval. What does a pandemic era blockbuster look like? What does a pandemic era Bond film look like?
The next Bond film is going to set the tone for the next decade. I’d say it’s a decision that warrants some long and serious thought.
Not sure how I feel about this news. I don’t really want to see another reboot, though, NTTD pretty much forced it. I also don’t want it to take until 2025 or later to see the next film.
I’m kind of scared who she’s talking about reinventing Bond with. I really think MGW is out of the picture, main producer wise. Gregg Wilson could definitely be getting a new type of promotion. If it’s Purvis and Wade, don’t expect a complete reinvention. Bond will leave MI6 at some point. Cary’s definitely not coming back. I could see her talking to Anthony Horowitz and Phoebe Waller-Bridge about writing. Maybe it’s time for FAAD to be a good starting point.
I’m not surprised by this. Barbara said they wouldn’t be making a new film for a while when promoting her production of Macbeth. I believed her then, and didn’t think it was simply flattering Craig.
Fresh from reading A Mind to a Kill waiting for new “00” series. will help pass time. Reboot should have firmly established,experienced 007 a new origin story isn’t needed
The phrase “We’re reinventing him” scares me. Yes, it could just be figuring out how to write/portray him in the 2020s. It could also be something much, much worse such as changing the James Bond character into something he is most definitely not. Realistically, it’s probably somewhere in between, and that still doesn’t sound too good to me.
Bond needs to be the same type of character he was from Sean Connery through Pierce Brosnan. Daniel Craig’s rebooted version was different, but that tenure is now over. EON needs to go back to the basics, bring back the FUN and make 007 cool again. Bring back the big stunts, the sex, and the bon mots (although they don’t have to go overboard on it).
Don’t apologize for 007’s quirks or foibles or character weaknesses. (He certainly wouldn’t.) No one is perfect, and our heroes shouldn’t have to be either. Let Bond be Bond. The original version worked for 40 years! James Bond, the man, the character, is a worldwide icon and the star of the longest running film series for a reason. Because as the half-serious phrase goes, “James Bond is who every man wants to be and who every woman wants to be with.”
Bond is also a complicated man of dichotomies. He’s a government-trained assassin who doesn’t like to kill but will willingly do so if he has to, who loves women but is also a womanizer, who enjoys the finer things in life but can’t stand the aristocracy, who feels most alive when his job pushes him to his limits and yet that same job causes incessant boredom when he’s stuck in the office, and who often wonders if all his efforts are worth the trouble and yet will still lay down his life if need be for queen and country.
THAT is James Bond. If you reinvent him too much, you neuter the character and take away what makes him Bond, what makes him awesome, and what makes him such a fan favorite. If you want a hero without the above traits then you might as well create a whole new character and start a different series because then you’re not doing a James Bond movie.
Bring the REAL James Bond back!
(Audiences will follow.)
We will not innovate anything. Just doing the same thing that brought us tons of money. The fans want more Fleming, audiences don’t care as long things blow up. So we will mix and pretend it’s new. Like every brand.
Does this make anyone more comfortable than „we will try to reinvent“?
I think the next direction seems fairly clear, in that we need less emotional drama and more escapism. Each Bond has a particular shade to their personality, but a lot of that is due to the new actor who assumes the role. And that naturally develops over the course of their era.
The long delays are a drain on the brand, and particularly so if fans aren’t all that impressed with what they receive after the period of waiting. In the meantime, Tom Cruise will fill the void with two great Mission Impossible films. At least I have those to look forward to.
I’ll believe that there will be a “reinvention” when I see it. Every time they’ve had a chance to gout and do something that could even be remotely construed as being a “radical” departure for the franchise, they’ve backtracked and gone with something that is extraordinarily familiar instead. They may say that they want to do something different now, but ultimately they’ll most likely end up backtracking and doing something that feels rather familiar to audiences. Perhaps a bit too familiar, when it’s all said and done.
That’s as strong and concise a description of the character as I’ve ever read.
At least it includes the word “him.”
I honestly think “reinventing” is just producer-speak, typical hyperbolic hucksterism. None of the elements you mention will really change: Bond won’t become a pacifist or an outspoken critic of the British government, ask permission before touching or kissing a woman or hide behind a pile of paperwork in his office when M calls because he really doesn’t want to leave the safety of the office to go on a dangerous mission. Even most of the superficial stuff won’t change: he won’t give up designer suits in favor of t-shirts, jeans and sandals and if Babs has her way he’ll probably still be driving that same damned car.
What Babs is talking about is the packaging; will the next era return to OTT world-shaking threats like the old days, or headline-grabbing stunts ala M:I, or double down on “realism” and try to ground Bond more in the world of true espionage, or given the success of Deadpool and Wolverine take the plunge with Bond’s first “R” rated era? Maybe even flirt with the notion of a “period piece” Bond set in the 50s? Some of those are more likely than others, but none of them would change, on a fundamental level, Bond as a character. However, in the parlance of producers, who don’t create so much as dress up someone else’s creations, it would all qualify as “reinvention.”
Possibly the most daring thing they could do (since she did say “him”) is to cast an actor of color in the lead role. Which would certainly put a whole new spin on the character but as far as those key elements you mention would not “break” him; it’s just a more radical redressing than most. (Granted it would turn Fleming’s version upside down, since his Bond is fundamentally a white Englishman with something condescending to say about every other race and nationality.)
For all that I go on about Craig not being “the same character” as the other guys, even his take wasn’t a “reinvention.” Pretty much all the essential Bond character elements are there. It’s impossible to reconcile his Bond with the others because there was never a Tracy in his life, he started the job with a female boss, he lacks even the veneer of sophistication, etc. But those details, too, are all “dressing,” tweaks to the way Bond is presented but not a fundamental re-writing of what the character is.
As a producer, Babs’ job is to navigate the most profitable course for the series. That means figuring out what sells and, if you’re really good at your job, anticipating what the audience is going to want slightly before they know they want it. That’s the kind of reinvention she’s looking at. It’s not “let’s change the product,” but “let’s come up with packaging that boosts sales.”
Yep; the sort of invention that’s actually lifting aspects of someone else’s intellectual property and then seeing if one can get away with it. The Patent infringement aspect of “inventing”. That’s “Back to Fleming”; he did that all the time.
The product placers won’t let them be too radical and as that’s how the budget builds, one anticipates a little bit of “new” but nothing to scare the horses. All cyclical - a Brosnan-type to build back interest in a safe and reassuring way and then later on hit us all with Bond played by a balloon or a dog. Moore > Dalton, Brosnan > Craig, [Whoever, matters not] > Gomorrah the Labrador
In my mind, that already was reinvented in the Craig era. Here Bond may have started out with that mission but never cared about Queen or country, only his own revenge or at least a kind of humanitarian aspect of thwarting the villain‘s plan.
Even at the Olympics the Queen rather jumped out of the plane herself.
I don’t have time at the moment to review all the posts, so if I duplicate someone’s thought already entered I apologize. I wonder if the 2 year delay might perhaps have anything to do with the fact Christopher Nolan will be busy until July of next year with his Openheimer project? If the “reinvention” does in fact go back to the timeframe of the original novels, Nolan is on record for wanting to do a Bond set in the 60’s. Just an idea.
I doubt it, but who knows? I think No Time to Die had such a nightmare-ish production that it didn’t allow for EON to look ahead to the next film. I do think its kind of ridiculous that this is the new normal for the Bond series: one film every 4-6 years. At this rate, each actor will only get maybe 2 or 3 films and we’ll be in for a radical, reinvention fairly regularly. Something has gotta give. I think P&W need to give way to a newer generation. Yes, they wrote Casino Royale and Skyfall, but they also wrote Die Another Day, Quantum of Solace, and Spectre. There have got to be ways to get the budget for these films down and make them in a more regular time frame. Recall, Skyfall grossed over $1 billion and had a budget smaller than QoS, SP, and NTTD. I guess I wouldn’t be so galled by the gaps if IFP and the video games hadn’t also taken the let’s make one entry half decade approach. I still lament EON making a deal with Activision for the Bond games. I wish EON had revoked the license much earlier and done what Marvel did with Spiderman and given to someone that actually cared.
I really don’t think that a strong production royalty like EON could work very well with a probably even stronger production duo like Nolan and Thomas.
It’s not like doing Thunderball with someone who owns the rights…
Yes. And Bond was reinvented prior to that, and even during the tenures of some Bonds. “Reinvention” is the movie producing buzzword of the moment. EON will do what it has always done: produce a film that will be successful–in terms of both aesthetics and profit–in the contemporary moment when it is made. That goal, in and of itself, means that every Bond film is a reinvention of some sort and to varying degrees.
In the context of political disagreement, David Shor makes a distinction between people with high openness and those with low openness (Jonathan Hardt is good on this subject as well). It is not a distinction applicable only to the political realm, but to most realms in which people find themselves, including here at CBN.
This. Exactly this.
I totally agree, Mendes is probably the biggest name they’ll ever go for. Any bigger names are going to want more control than EON seem comfortable with.