In a shock announcement, the James Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson and star Daniel Craig have announced that Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle has exited the new, as yet untitled, 007 production. Much fanfare was attached to the original announcement that Boyle, who previously directed "Trainspotting" and "Slumdog Millionaire", would follow in the footsteps of another Oscar winning director, Sam Mendes, who had helmed the two previous blockbuster Bond films, "Skyfall" and "Spectre". The reason cited for Boyle's departure is the old show biz catch phrase: "creative differences". It is not known whether the screenwriter that Boyle brought on board, John Hodge, will stay with the production. Hodge has replaced longtime Bond movie scribes Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who had already completed a screenplay that was shelved when Boyle and Hodge came aboard. Filming is set to begin in December at Pinewood Studios, London. The pressure will be on Eon Productions to find another director of stature to sign for the film on relatively short notice. The movie is scheduled for the usual high profile London premiere in late October 2019. For more click here.
Laemmle’s
NoHo 7 Theatre in Los Angeles will be presenting a Digital Cinema Package (DCP)
screening of John Glen’s 1989 James Bond outing Licence to Kill. The 133-minute film, which stars Timothy Dalton in
his second and final stint as 007, also features Cary Lowell, Robert Davi, Anthony
Zerbe, and Desmond Llewelyn. Director Glen also helmed For Your Eyes Only (1981), Octopussy
(1983), A View to a Kill (1985), and The Living Daylights (1987).
Licence to Kill will be
screened on Thursday, August 23, 2018 at 7:30
pm.
PLEASE NOTE: At press time, Licence to Kill actor Robert Davi will
participate in a Q&A after the screening at the NoHo on Thursday, August
23.
The
NoHo 7 Theatre is located at 5240
Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood, CA. The phone number is (310) 478 – 3836.
Connery in the blockbuster 1965 film version of "Thunderball".
BY LEE PFEIFFER
James Bond scholars and purists are well-versed in the muck and mire pertaining to Ian Fleming's ill-fated partnership with producer Kevin McClory and screenwriter Jack Whittingham. But for those who aren't as consumed with Bondian history, the BBC's Nicholas Barber summarizes the contrivances that occurred when the business relationship between the three men broke up, thus resulting in a high profile lawsuit against Fleming and complications pertaining to the screen rights to the film version of Fleming's novel "Thunderball". In the mid-1970s, McClory began to exercise his rights to remake the film and enlisted noted novelist Len Deighton, author of the Harry Palmer spy books and Sean Connery as screenwriters for a planned film titled "Warhead" (though Connery never committed to star in the film). When Eon Productions, the company that had made the traditional Bond films, decided to fight McClory in the courts, the project faded away. Connery would return as Bond in McClory's 1983 remake of "Thunderball" titled "Never Say Never Again", marking his last performance as 007. However, that film bore virtually no resemblance to the one that screenwriters Connery and Deighton had cooked up for "Warhead" involving a battle atop the Statue of Liberty. Click here to read.
Michael Coate of The Digital Bits web site has once again done yeoman work by rounding up a panel of James Bond scholars (including Cinema Retro's Lee Pfeiffer) to reflect on the 45th anniversary of Roger Moore's first James Bond film, "Live and Let Die".