After the likes of Sam Mendes, Denis Villenueve and Christopher Nolan were previously linked with the movie, Danny Boyle recently emerged as the frontrunner to direct the next installment of the James Bond franchise – which will be the 25th outing overall. Now, we’re hearing that he’s making his mark on the project and is keen to go back to the drawing board.
Deadline says that Boyle is discarding the previously-penned script for Bond 25 from longtime screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade and is bringing his Trainspotting partner John Hodge on board to come up with a new screenplay from scratch. The outline estimates this may take another couple of months, at which point, it will be up to MGM whether they invest in Hodge’s script and move forward with Boyle as director or say goodbye to both filmmakers and start going on the hunt again for someone else to helm.
It sounds like Boyle is very keen to put his own authorial stamp on Bond 25, then, which can only be expected from a director with multiple Oscar nominations (and one win) to his name. This shouldn’t pose too much of a problem to MGM, either, as they were clearly looking for someone with a strong vision to helm the movie, hence the other auteur directors they were eyeing.
Of course, Boyle hasn’t made a big budget action flick just yet, but neither had Sam Mendes – and he turned in two of the most successful Bond movies ever in 2012’s Skyfall and 2015’s Spectre. Boyle already has the upper hand on his predecessor, too, as he previously directed Daniel Craig as 007 as part of the opening ceremony for the 2012 London Olympics. You might remember that it saw the secret agent skydiving out of helicopter with the Queen.
Bond 25 is currently scheduled for a release date of November 8th, 2019. All we know for sure about it is that Daniel Craig will be back for his fifth go at playing the super spy, but as soon as we learn more, we’ll definitely let you know. Stay tuned!
