Shatterhand: new James Bond film's working title revealed

The next James Bond film is to shoot under the working title Shatterhand.

Industry publication Production Weekly has included a listing in its 21 February newsletter for “Bond 25 w/t Shatterhand”, with shooting due to start at Pinewood studios on 6 April.

It appears to confirm longstanding rumours that Shatterhand is a contender for Bond 25’s official title. The name comes from an alias used by series supervillain Ernst Stavro Blofeld in Ian Fleming’s 1964 Bond novel You Only Live Twice.

The news comes days after the film’s release date was pushed back to April 2020 amid reports of extensive script rewrites. Bourne Ultimatum writer Scott Z Burns has been hired to rework the screenplay for Daniel Craig’s fifth and final outing as 007. Original director Danny Boyle dropped out in August 2018 after “creative differences” with the producers, and there have since been script drafts by Paul Haggis and the series’ writing team Neal Purvis and Robert Wade.