Licence to Shock: Morgan Comments on Bond 23

Following the interesting comments made by Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson in their recent interview with ‘Total Film’, which we broke on 17th Dec, news has now emerged that screenwriter Peter Morgan has offered a further intriguing clue to the possible nature of Bond 23.

Speaking from Vienna, Austria, Morgan told local reporters that he had been hard at work developing ideas for the Bond 23 script during the period July-October, 2009, and that, while he was unable to go into detail, the Bond 23 script would have ‘a shocking story’.

He also reflected on the sheer excitement and anticipation generated by being involved in a new James Bond film: ‘There is a level of hysteria that I haven’t seen before’. He noted that 007 is a ‘magnet for publicity’ and recognised that ‘everyone wants to know what is going on with the new film’.

But he also cautioned that development work on the new Craig Bond movie has been temporarily put on hold until at least February, 2010, due to the continuing uncertainty over who might purchase MGM.

This news ties in with comments made by Michael Wilson in the USA in recent months and in the new ‘Total Film’ interview (in which he revealed that they were at the stage ‘where a lot of ideas are floating around that sound very good’, but that the production timeline was ‘a little up in the air’ due to the MGM situation). Slowly, but surely, a trickle of information on the new Bond film is coming into the public domain.

Morgan is developing the screenplay for Bond 23 in cooperation with Bond regulars Robert Wade and Neal Purvis.