Double-O-Go For Bond 23

Michael G. Wilson has confirmed that preliminary work on the next Bond movie, number 23 in the official EON series, has commenced. The Bond producer, who was attending the recent Ivor Novello Awards at the Grosvenor Hotel in central London, told the British newspaper The Sun: “We have started work on the new film, which I can’t say anything about. Daniel Craig is very keen to get going”.

It has also emerged in recent weeks that MGM studio executives in America are equally keen to have some early indications of the possible shape of Craig’s third Bond outing. The actor himself has suggested that the next 007 adventure might be a stand-alone story, and will not necessarily be part of the continuous story-arc created for his first two Bond movies. He has also raised the intriguing possibility of having the ‘Q’ and Moneypenny characters return to the series.

Michael Wilson’s latest comments appear to be designed to reassure the studios, whose nervous executives are feeling the chill wind of the credit crunch at the moment. In mid-May MGM announced from Los Angeles that it had hired investment bank Moelis and Co to help refinance $3.7 billion worth of debt. MGM said it was “exploring options for optimizing its capital structure” and was in talks with a steering committee of 140 creditors.

As recently as April, in an interview with the UK’s Yorkshire Post newspaper to coincide with the Cubby Broccoli centenary celebrations, Wilson had commented that: “At the moment the third Daniel Craig movie is not even a glimmer in it’s mother’s eye”, and had hinted that, after all the hard work and smash success of both Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, EON were recharging their creative batteries.

However, the Bond franchise remains a key source of income for the studios. According to recent figures, for example, Quantum of Solace saw 27.5 million admissions across the main European Union countries, and was only beaten to first place by the musical Mama Mia.

In the meantime, as part of their plan to add some diversity to their movie production portfolio, Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli are preparing to oversee production on the thriller ‘Remote Control’, which will be based on the Mark Burnell novel about a war correspondent who becomes a British corporate intelligence analyst. He finds himself entangled in a plot hatched by some major Western corporations to disrupt the Chinese economy and is forced to go on the run. The Bond producers are also keen to continue with their long-term plan to remake 1968’s ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’, based on the now-famous children’s book by Ian Fleming about a magical flying car.