Bond Bets on “Casino Royale”
GoldenEye helmer Martin Campbell has been given the chance to try another day.
The brain trust behind the 007 franchise have tapped Campbell to direct Casino Royale, the 21st film featuring the one and only Bond. James Bond.
Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson of Eon Productions together with MGM announced the move on Thursday. The film had previously been pushed back from an anticipated November start date to sometime next year while the search for a director was underway.
“We are thrilled that Martin has accepted our offer to direct Casino Royale,” Broccoli and Wilson said in a joint statement. “He is an extremely talented director and we believe he will help take our films in a new and exciting direction. He…will be joining Eon Productions shortly to work on the development of the script with our writers, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade.”
Campbell is currently at work on Legend of Zorro, the sequel to The Mask of Zorro, starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Antonio Banderas.
His first foray onto Bond turf marked Pierce Brosnan’s introduction to the 007 role in 1995’s GoldenEye. The Irish-born actor went on to star in 1997’s Tomorrow Never Dies; 1999’s The World Is Not Enough; and 2002’s Die Another Day.
However, it seems unlikely that Campbell will have the chance to direct Brosnan again. In a July 2004 interview with Entertainment Weekly, the thesp sounded ready to turn in his license to kill.
“That’s it,” Brosnan said in the interview. “I’ve said all I’ve got to say on the world of James Bond.”
Brosnan is the fifth actor to profess his preference for martinis shaken, not stirred. He follows in the footsteps of fellow Bond men Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton.
Rumors of who will be the next secret agent to keep company with the likes of Miss Moneypenny have included Hulk vet Eric Bana, Jude Law, Heath Ledger and Orlando Bloom. The BBC reported last month that one British oddsmaker has stopped taking bets on the next 007 after wagers on Dougray Scott, best known as the baddie in Mission: Impossible 2, began to increase in recent weeks.
According to Eon Productions, no decisions about Bond casting have been made.
Casino Royale was Bond creator Ian Fleming’s first book and the only title not initially purchased by Eon Productions.
An unrelated spoof version of the book, starring Peter Sellers and Woody Allen, was made into a 1967 film as a mockery of the spy genre.
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