Bond 22 September update

Well, the summer has been and gone but that didn’t stop a whole load of James Bond 22 news rolling in. To help you catch up you can read our summary of the news that has been arriving from MI6 and other Bond sites.

Locations
Starting with locations, it seems the production crew, including Barbara Broccoli, director Marc Forster and the director of photography Roberto Schaefer visited Bregenz in Austria scouting for locations towards the end of June, including an floating Opera set. Floating on the Seebühne, it is a massive tourist draw, and the prohibitive cost of the set measns that each opera is staged for two years. And the Alps are likely to make a reappearance in a Bond film with the rumour of a ski sequence in the new film seemingly confirmed by crew members during and Bond event held at Pinewood Studios in July followed a month later by the press in Switzerland reporting that the Swiss Alps were being considered.

One fact that surprised many people was the attendance of Daniel Craig at a shoot Siena in Italy where shots of the Palio horse race were taken, apparently to be used for background shots and the 007 actor stayed firmly behind the lens, remaining an observer. An article in Italy’s Il Giornale apparently reported that James Bond will chase the villain across the city’s rooftops after a car chase in his Aston Martin, and another key sequence will take place in a network of tunnels beneath the city. Further filming is due to take place in Siena at some point between January and July 2008. Meanwhile reports state that filming also took place in Madrid during the last week of August, although this is yet to be confirmed. Finally, more rumours surfaced at the beginning of September stating that Lucerne and Gotthard were being considered as locations for Bond 22.

Cast and Crew
Following the news in June that Marc Forster was to helm Bond 22 the next surprising crew news surfaced at the Pinewood event when long term crew member Peter Lamont announced that he would not be reprising his role as Production Designer in Bond 22, for unspecified reasons, although at 78 years old it may be that he has decided to take retirement. The second piece of news regarding crew was the emergence of the action designer of the Bourne Ultimatum, Dan Bradley, stepping up to direct the second unit, perhaps an unsurprising choice.

While there is speculation that Eva Green will return from beyond the grave as Vesper in the form of video messages left for Bond, writer Paul Haggis hinted in an interview published by MTV at the end of August that Jeffrey Wright may return as Felix Leiter. Meanwhile, Jesper Christensen confirmed in early September that he would return as the sinister Mr White.

Screenplay
This latter fact fits well with more information from Paul Haggis, when in another interview he stated that Bond 22 would start 2 minutes after the end of Casino Royale – presumably the interrogation of Mr White in the pre-titles, while also breaking the hardly unexpected news that the screenplay would not be not based on an Ian Fleming story.

Cars
While it had been widely reported that James Bond would not return in an Aston Martin for Bond 22, it seems that the supposition that Ford’s sale of the luxury car marque would mean it wouldn’t appear in Bond 22 was wrong. Bond will return in an Aston Martin, with MI6 reporting that Daniel Craig has visited the factory recently and that his car will this time feature some gadgets; let’s hope he managed to keep the car intact this time. This has been confirmed by an interview with 2nd unit director Dan Bradley, who stated that both an Aston Martin and Ford GT40s would appear in the film.