When you look at the careers enjoyed by the various actors to have played the role once they gave it up for good, there’s no such thing as the “James Bond curse,” although most people would agree that Sean Connery enjoyed the most stellar post-007 career by far. However, Daniel Craig is well on his way to matching that success.
Having secured his second consecutive Golden Globe nomination in the Best Actor – Musical or Comedy category for reprising his role as Benoit Blanc in Knives Out: A Glass Onion Mystery, the world is now Craig’s oyster now that the heavy weight of Bond has been lifted off his shoulders.
However, one project we won’t be seeing him in is Purity, acclaimed filmmaker Todd Field’s literary adaptation that was given a 20-episode order by Showtime a few years back. During an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, the TÁR director admitted the project was as good as dead, despite revealing previously that Craig has spent a year working with himself and author Jonathan Franzen for a year knocking out a story template that ran for 2000 pages.
“I think there was a polite— words that were said, ‘Oh you know, it was a Bond thing that came up,’ but that wasn’t true. It was just that the network just didn’t want to spend what the three of us thought needed to be spent to make the thing that we spent a year of our lives on. If that material wasn’t so prophetic… and it was prophetic. It had… there were things in the air that wound up in that material that have unfortunately come to pass, having to do with the American government, having to do with geopolitics, having to do with a lot of things.”
Purity tells the story of an idealistic young woman who ends up in a relationship with a German activist (which is where Craig would also come in handy), with plenty of sex and intrigue along the way, but it doesn’t sound as though we’ll ever get to see it – which could end up as a huge missed opportunity given the talent involved.
Published: Jan 3, 2023 12:39 pm