Bond 23 locations to include Istanbul, filming permission granted

Quote:

According to press reports in the country, the 23rd James Bond production will also be taking in the scenery of Istanbul, Turkey, when Daniel Craig suits up as 007 for the third time.

Director Sam Mendes is reportedly keen to use the city’s historical neighborhood Sultanahmet Square, and has received permission from Turkish Culture Minister Ertuğrul Günay.

“Shooting will start within the next few months. We have discussed the issue and rather than closing the square completely, some parts could be partially closed from time to time for the filming,” Günay said, adding that it would be difficult to close the whole square. “We have to consider our tourists, but we can accommodate foreign film production companies that want to use Turkey as a platform.”

Two James Bond films have featured Istanbul: most notably "From Russia With Love" (1963), and to a lesser extent "The World Is Not Enough" (1999).

The major confirmed location for Bond 23 is India, with South Africa and China also rumoured.

Filming at Pinewood Studios is scheduled to start in November 2011, with the film's UK release just under a year later on 26th October 2012.

http://www.mi6-hq.com/news/index.php?itemid=9681&t=mi6&s=news

How about somewhere different for a change?

Bond has been to Istanbul at least twice!

How about Greece or Australia?

You may have a point there j7wild, and we've yet to see Bond down under.

BTW, welcome to the forums.

Nothing in Australia is worth having the Bond team here unfortunately. Let's try Canada, Denmark or The Seychelles please.

j7wild wrote:

How about somewhere different for a change?

Bond has been to Istanbul at least twice!

How about Greece or Australia?

Or Norway. Or Savannah, Ga or Charleston Sc. or San Antonio TX. or Aruba.

I like this news. Istanbul has been featured twice already, but it's such a fascinating city that it can come across differently on screen at least a dozen times. Venice has been visited thrice by Bond as well.

Over the moon about this, know Istanbul quite well, many friends there, I tell you, I'm determined to see at least one Bond movie filmed, I might take a trip. cheers

the Seychelles?

I always wanted to go there myself!!

With the increasing radical Islamization of Turkey, this may be a case of filming while the filming's good. Might not be long before western film crews will not be safe there. That said, surely there are fascinating and more unique places to film in Turkey than Istanbul. Ankara? Ismir?

Ed Tom Kowalsky wrote:

With the increasing radical Islamization of Turkey, this may be a case of filming while the filming's good. Might not be long before western film crews will not be safe there. That said, surely there are fascinating and more unique places to film in Turkey than Istanbul. Ankara? Ismir?

There's also the cave houses of Cappadocia.

I believe the production designers on the original PLANET OF THE APES were said to be inspired by these, when designing the ape village for the Hollywood lot.

Another benignly bizarre wonder is the Pamukkale ("cotton castle") salt waterfalls.

Looks like a giant wedding cake. You could stage a pretty amazing fight sequence on that, with some stunning helicopter shots (a la.YOLT).

There ya' go. You've just demonstrated more originality and ingenuity than Eon, if they really do take Bond back to Turkey and confine him to Istanbul. I mean, how hard can it be to come up with evocative, captivating locations Bond has yet to visit? There's a whole big world out there and globetrotting Bond has only seen a tiny fraction of it. No need at all to retrace his steps again and again and again.

Must be a way of putting the Bond films in such capable hands. Probably involves assasination of some kind.

Analyst Posts: 502 Member Since: 2011-08-21

Sharky wrote:

I could so spend an hour in that bath with Daniel Craig.

Istanbul, take #3. Well, alright. New Bond's not been here, the location wasn't really used for anything interesting in TWINE, there's lots of lovely scenery to take in. Interesting globehopping going on here.

Istanbul is a very interesting city - will be curious to see just how much it features and what they do with it (JB's not exactly known to linger much...)