Bond 23 Halted Until MGM Is Sold
MGM’s troubles aren’t exactly a mystery. The studio has been on sale for almost two months now, it has been hemorrhaging money and DVD sales have plummeted. While this has been happening for some time now, the company’s financial woes had not affected the its two biggest potential moneymakers: The Hobbit and the Bond franchise (the delay of The Hobbit was due to script issues, not money). Take note of the word “had” in that last sentence, though, because the honeymoon is over.
According to MI6, the James Bond homepage, the next film in the Bond franchise, working title Bond 23, has been put on hold indefinitely as producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli are waiting for the studio to be sold before they continue production. Speaking with TotalFilm magazine, Wilson was quoted saying, “Our timeline’s a little up in the air what with the situation at MGM, so we have to be flexible. We just don’t know enough about the situation to comment, but we know it’s uncertain.”
It is somewhat hard to be upset about this news, if not only because it was so predictable. The most recent news on the project had screenwriter Peter Morgan suggesting that production would be halted, but now this news merely changes things from rumor to fact. Considering the fact that two of the three writers (Neal Purvis and Robert Wade) worked on Die Another Day, however, this may not be the worst thing in the world. It may give them some time to fix all their mistakes.
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