Bond 24 and Bond 25 to tell a two-part story

The Hollywood Reporter:

Quote :

Hugo scribe John Logan has begun work on a two-part original James Bond story.

Logan, who sold the pitch to Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson, has begun writing the two screenplays, which are not based on the works of Ian Fleming.

Let's hope these two films work better together than CASINO ROYALE and QUANTUM OF SOLACE do.

What, it's gonna be a DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 1 & 2/BREAKING DAWN PART 1 & 2 kinda deal?

Maybe not quite so connected as those two-parters. But perhaps BOND 24 and BOND 25 share a villain?

Maybe this could end up a back-to-back double bill of Bond films made simultaneously and released in close proximity, because Craig isn't getting any younger (quite the opposite, in fact), and

Spoiler:

They'll want to make something of that while they still have Craig, surely?

Interesting, with the idea of two films being connected this early, hopefully that does mean they'll connect better than CR and QOS did.

Loomis wrote:

What, it's gonna be a DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 1 & 2/BREAKING DAWN PART 1 & 2 kinda deal?

Maybe it'll be a two-part story...told in three films.

Financially speaking, you'd think it would advisable to film them both at once. And, as has been mentioned elsewhere, the freshness seal on Craig ain't getting any younger.

Harmsway wrote:

Maybe not quite so connected as those two-parters. But perhaps BOND 24 and BOND 25 share a villain?

That's what I would go with. I couldn't imagine the Bond producers ever doing a Part I and Part II type of deal, that's silly even for them. I think it will be something along the lines of what you said: a villain or an organization. Maybe the first part is realizing there is a mystery bad guy, then finally revealed, etc. in the second half.

Or it could be another CR/QOS kind of deal. The second film picks up an hour later from the prior one.

Harmsway wrote:

Let's hope these two films work better together than CASINO ROYALE and QUANTUM OF SOLACE do.

If they're being written together, they should. One of the problems with QUANTUM OF SOLACE is that CASINO ROYALE only had a vague idea of where it wanted to go with the next installment, which was not written at the time.

Harmsway wrote:

Maybe not quite so connected as those two-parters. But perhaps BOND 24 and BOND 25 share a villain?

The best way to do it would probably be to have a secondary villain from BOND 24 become the primary villain in BOND 25.

SPECTRE, having cuts its ties with Al-Queda and QUANTUM by the end of Bond 24, stops playing various foes off against one another and goes public, creating a buying frenzy on the stock market. They can call 25 '007 in New York' since the pitched battle finale will take place on the floor of the stock market. Charlie Sheen will play the film's sacrificial lamb, and Michael Douglas will be Blofeld with Zeta as Irma Buntilicious.

M wrote:

Maybe this could end up a back-to-back double bill of Bond films made simultaneously and released in close proximity, because Craig isn't getting any younger (quite the opposite, in fact), and

Spoiler:

They'll want to make something of that while they still have Craig, surely?

Spoiler:

.

Logan seems to have been energized by his Skyfall experience. Good on him, pitching new ideas to EON so early on. Now, if only Mendes could commit...

No one knows how to tell a story in 2 hours anymore?

Who says it's one story?

What if, for example, BOND 24 saw Bond take down the leadership of Quantum - only for the ending to reveal that this was all part of a plan by a reimagined Ernst Stavro Blofeld to seize control of the organisation for himself, emerging in BOND 25 as the evil supervillain we all know and love?

Or a reimagined Gustav Graves emerges as "the evil supervillain we all know and love" in Bond 24, straps Bond to the dream machine for a few days, then Bond wakes up as Idris Elba for Bond 25.

Now that would be a story.

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

Who says it's one story?

Quote :

Hugo scribe John Logan has begun work on a two-part original James Bond story.

Lazenby. wrote:

Or a reimagined Gustav Graves emerges as "the evil supervillain we all know and love" in Bond 24, straps Bond to the dream machine for a few days, then Bond wakes up as Idris Elba for Bond 25.

Now that would be a story.

Who needs Idris Elba? We can get the folks from CLOUD ATLAS to give Bond a racial makeover.

CJB wrote:

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

Who says it's one story?

Quote :

Hugo scribe John Logan has begun work on a two-part original James Bond story.

A story can have two parts, provided that it is done properly.

I'm not suggesting that BOND 24 should end abruptly on a cliffhanger and the story is resolved in the next film (kind of like PROMETHEUS), but rather that BOND 24 can be a self-contained story, with BOND 25 spinning out from the events of it. So long as the first threads of BOND 25 are established in BOND 24, there is no problem with it. That's what CASINO ROYALE did wrong - it laid the groundwork for QUANTUM OF SOLACE, but there was no real direction to it.

Lazenby. wrote:

Or a reimagined Gustav Graves emerges as "the evil supervillain we all know and love" in Bond 24, straps Bond to the dream machine for a few days, then Bond wakes up as Idris Elba for Bond 25.

Now that would be a story.

What's got your panties in a twist this time?

No, don't tell me (seriously, don't - I'm trying to avoid spoilers) ... you actually enjoyed SKYFALL, didn't you?

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

That's what CASINO ROYALE did wrong - it laid the groundwork for QUANTUM OF SOLACE, but there was no real direction to it.

It's not the responsibility of a film to "lock in" the story for the sequel. Even so, CASINO ROYALE's ending suggested a pretty clear direction for a follow-up, one that QUANTUM OF SOLACE only partially pursued.

Harmsway wrote:

It's not the responsibility of a film to "lock in" the story for the sequel.

If it's going to be a two-part film with both parts written together the way BOND 24 and 25 will supposedly be, I would expect 24 to set up 25.

Harmsway wrote:

Even so, CASINO ROYALE's ending suggested a pretty clear direction for a follow-up, one that QUANTUM OF SOLACE only partially pursued.

There are many flaws with QUANTUM OF SOLACE, but I cannot help but think that a clearer set-up in CASINO ROYALE would have done wonders for it. I think it's pretty clear that EON had no idea what they were going to do with QUANTUM OF SOLACE when CASINO ROYALE was made. All they really had was this vague notion of "there's this organisation, and they're bad, and they coerce people into doing their bidding". They didn't have to set up Greene and the Bolivia plot, but a little embellishment here and there in the place of innuendo would have helped if it had been planned.

For example, in the scene where White introduces Obanno to Le Chiffre, they could have built up a little bit more, maybe dropped hints about staging the coup in Haiti that Greene would later detail to Medrano as reassurance of the organisation's abilities (though this scene probably appeared too early in CASINO ROYALE) for that kind of detail. Or perhaps the addition of a scene where White tells Obanno that he and the organisation will deal with Le Chiffre for the disaster in Miami, only for Obanno to demand Le Chiffre's whereabouts to reclaim the money, thereby explaining how Obanno knew where to find Le Chiffre and also giving the opportunity to explore the organisation a little more.

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

Harmsway wrote:

It's not the responsibility of a film to "lock in" the story for the sequel.

If it's going to be a two-part film with both parts written together the way BOND 24 and 25 will supposedly be, I would expect 24 to set up 25.

Well, yes. But CASINO ROYALE was conceived as a standalone film.

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

For example, in the scene where White introduces Obanno to Le Chiffre, they could have built up a little bit more, maybe dropped hints about staging the coup in Haiti that Greene would later detail to Medrano as reassurance of the organisation's abilities (though this scene probably appeared too early in CASINO ROYALE) for that kind of detail.

How would that have helped QUANTUM OF SOLACE's production in any regard? (And, as far as I'm concerned, the Haiti/Medrano story is one of QUANTUM OF SOLACE's problems, not one of its strengths.)

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

Or perhaps the addition of a scene where White tells Obanno that he and the organisation will deal with Le Chiffre for the disaster in Miami, only for Obanno to demand Le Chiffre's whereabouts to reclaim the money, thereby explaining how Obanno knew where to find Le Chiffre and also giving the opportunity to explore the organisation a little more.

That doesn't really add anything to our sense of the organization beyond what the film already gives us.

Harmsway wrote:

Well, yes. But CASINO ROYALE was conceived as a standalone film.

The content - chiefly the undefined and unseen evil organisation - suggests otherwise.

Harmsway wrote:

How would that have helped QUANTUM OF SOLACE's production in any regard? (And, as far as I'm concerned, the Haiti/Medrano story is one of QUANTUM OF SOLACE's problems, not one of its strengths.)

It might have given a bit more focus to the narrative early on. QOS is pretty listless early on, and mistakes its indecision for building up the mystery. Consider how Bond gets to Greene:

- Vesper leaves a phone number for him. The number leads him to White.
- Bond captures White, who reveals Mitchell's duplicity.
- The investigation of Mitchell leads Bond to Edmund Slate.
- Bond takes Slate's place, which sees him meet Camille.
- He follow Camille to Greene.

In other words, he follows the most indirect path from Vesper to Greene, and no evidence is actually presented of Greene's involvement other than his guilt by association.

The idea behind the Medrano-Greene story has its merits, but I think it was let down by paper-thin execution in the end. A lot of people criticised the choice of Bolivia as being key to the plot, since it's a minnow in world affairs, but there's some interesting content - how far would Bond go to find answers about Vesper's death? - that the film only really touches on in passing rather than explores to the full extent. There's a lack of anything substantial tying Vesper back into all of this, so the film feels aimless, substituing action for an actual direction. It could have been done so much better.

Harmsway wrote:

That doesn't really add anything to our sense of the organization beyond what the film already gives us.

Us, no. But it might have offered something more solid for QOS to be built upon, and made it a stronger film.

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

Harmsway wrote:

Well, yes. But CASINO ROYALE was conceived as a standalone film.

The content - chiefly the undefined and unseen evil organisation - suggests otherwise.

The organization would naturally probably show up in sequels, but there wasn't a strong sense that any sequel would really have to pick up right where CASINO ROYALE had left off. If CASINO ROYALE hadn't gone over well, EON had the freedom to essentially do an OHMSS/DAF-style transition. That freedom is likely why some of the more obvious "stay tuned for the sequel" aspects of Haggis' script were gone when the film hit movie screens. Note, also, that Forster/EON cut the cliffhanger-y ending of QUANTUM OF SOLACE.

Just a thought - could be like the FRWL - DN novels...

Yup. Wilson actually came up with the idea of Bond 22 being a follow up, but as Craig said in an interview it originally wasn't supposed to be as much of a sequel as it turned out. I assume the unused draft by Purvis & Wade went about it more like the LALD novel where it's a whole new mission set months later after CR and Bond is briefed that the person he is after is a member of that organization and he gladly accepts the assignment ready to get back at them.