James Bond star Daniel Craig, who is currently preparing for the start of his fourth 007 adventure later this year, has reportedly withdrawn from the courtroom drama The Whole Truth, in which he was to play a lawyer opposite Renne Zellweger.
The legal-themed movie, which will be directed by Courtney Hunt and was due to start filming in Boston, USA, last week, has now been pushed back for at least three weeks while the producers hunt for a replacement. Daniel has not given any reason for his withdrawal from the film.
According to The Boston Globe newspaper, Craig had been spotted in the city in the weeks prior to the start of filming doing research for his role at Suffolk County Superior Court.
In a script penned by Nicholas Kazan, Craig was to have played a lawyer who engages in a tough battle to try to ensure that his teenage client (played by Gabriel Basso) is aquitted of the murder of his father.
Craig and his wife Rachel Weisz recently starred alongside Rafe Spall on Broadway in a critically-acclaimed version of the Harold Pinter play Betrayal, which ran until January 5. The smash-hit play took an astonishing $17.5m (£10.7m) in its 14-week run, making it the second most successful Broadway play of 2013.
The day after he left The Whole Truth, Daniel and his wife made an appearance at the Opportunity Network’s 7th Annual ‘Night of Opportunity’ Gala.
Bond 24 rumours
Meanwhile, following an interesting report by Justin Kroll in Variety (April 4) claiming that 12 Years a Slave star Chiwetel Ejiofor has been mooted by studio bosses as the main villain for Bond 24, the award-winning actor refused to be drawn on the allegation when he was interviewed for the UK’s Independent newspaper.
In a wide-ranging interview given to the newspaper’s Radar arts supplement (Saturday, April 12), Ejiofor steadfastly refused to make any comment on the Bond 24 rumour: ‘I don’t want to talk about that’.
When the newspaper tried another angle and asked him about his favourite Bond villain, he responded: ‘I can’t talk about that’. And when the newspaper tried to probe whether he would like to work with Sam Mendes, Ejiofor said: ‘I couldn’t say’.
Ejiofor has recently been in New Zealand doing some location filming for Z for Zachariah, a dystopian sci-fi thriller in which he plays a character called Loomis, who is described as a cold, calculating scientist.
As the Independent mischievously noted, it is this role ‘that 007 fans may look to to try and predict what kind of Bond baddie he might make’.
Sam Mendes, who will take the helm as director on Bond 24, has reportedly been working very closely with scriptwriter John Logan, Craig and the EON producers on shaping up the next 007 script.
The ever-busy Mendes has also been working on a revival of the pre-war Berlin musical Cabaret, which he will direct in New York. After previews from April 18, the new show will open to the general public on April 24.
And according to a recent report by the Daily Mail gossip columnist Baz Bamigboye, Mendes has been overseeing things for the new musical in between scouting locations for Bond 24.