After MGM’s indefinitely postponing of Bond 23 after last year’s financial troubles with the company, David Arnold finally gives confirmation that the Bond film is back on. This is no surprise considering The Hobbit, under MGM, is preparing to start shooting in February and Bond is a pre-sold franchise and a guaranteed money maker.
This news comes from regular Bond composer David Arnold who has been saying that Bond will definitely be going ahead and that financial situation would solve itself in the end. He said:
We only just got the news that we’re back on. But ‘there’s many a slip twixt cup and lip’ so I will keep quiet until I get a script and then start writing ideas. I just hope the next one is as good as my favorites, as I think everyone does. And I’m always interested in what Daniel Craig brings to the part. But like most things with movies, if it ain’t on the page etc… All I can say is that I’m looking forward to a great script for it, alongside every other Bond fan in the world!
It had previously been announced that Peter Morgan, the Frost/Nixon scribe, would be writing a draft of the screenplay and Sam Mendes was attached to direct. Whether this is still happening or not depends on scheduling. The last I had heard Morgan had left the project and that Mendes is busy prepping an adaptation of Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach with Carey Mulligan. And of course the production will have to wait for Daniel Craig to finish his work on Fincher’s remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
So there are some major hurdles to jump yet, such as finding a writer and director as well as getting a degree of security from the studio, but at least it’s going ahead and 007 will soon be returning.