Bond 25 – what we know so far

Rumours emerged yesterday that Daniel Craig has ‘been persuaded’ to make another Bond movie, following those infamous quotes suggesting he’d rather do himself in than wear the tux again.

It seems such talk may have been somewhat exaggerated.

But what do we know about the next James Bond movie? Let’s have a look at the 007 landscape going ahead…

‘Bond 25’…

It has no name yet, but it’s set to be a historic instalment. The follow-up to ‘Spectre’ will be the 25th movie in the Bond series, and in that regard, producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson will want it to be special. And that would most likely involve keeping Daniel Craig on-board very much the top priority. He’s been a hugely popular Bond among the fanbase, and risking the 25th movie on an unknown quantity could lead to potential damage to the franchise. Surely, it simply has to be Craig. And if the sources cited by Page Six yesterday are anything to go by, he’s back in the game. Even the bookies seem pretty sure, with William Hill now offering rubbish odds of 1/6 on Craig’s return.

Craig’s swansong…

He said he wouldn’t do another – “Now? I’d rather break this glass and slash my wrists. No, not at the moment. Not at all. That’s fine. I’m over it at the moment. We’re done. All I want to do is move on. If I did another Bond movie, it would only be for the money,” he famously told Time Out in 2015 – but there were even rumours at the time that, whether Craig wanted to or not, he was still contracted for another movie. So with this being the 25th movie, it would end Craig’s tenure nicely, with five films in the bag. The deal to do another movie was also likely sweetened by the fact that Barbara Broccoli produced Craig’s recent off-Broadway production of ‘Othello’.

Writers on board…

Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, the writing partnership who have penned the last six Bond movies – ‘The World is Not Enough’, ‘Die Another Day’, ‘Casino Royale’, ‘Quantum of Solace’, ‘Skyfall’ and ‘Spectre’ – were confirmed to be on board by the Daily Mail’s Baz Bamigboye earlier this month. Veteran entertainment reporter Baz has a reputation for Bond scoops which is second to none, so it seems that things are indeed moving forward in that regard.

Location, location, location…

MI6 HQ, the online authority on matters Bond, spied a local news story via a Croatian news outlet that put the ‘pearl of the Adriatic’ Dubrovnik in the frame as a location. “James Bond is in an advanced stage of negotiations,” the Mayor Andro Vlahušić told local press. So that’s another piece of the puzzle.

2019…

We’ve got the ‘who’, an inkling of the ‘where’, but what about the ‘when’? It was thought that Eon had the 25th Bond movie slated for a release in October, 2018 (Craig’s Bond films have always opened in October), but with writers only just hired, that surely wouldn’t leave enough time to get this most pivotal Bond movie together and into production, so our money is on an October 2019 release instead.

Read more
New trailer for The Mummy
Harrison Ford avoids penalties over plane blunder
Tom Hardy ad causes Twitter meltdown