Despite the first two movies of the Daniel Craig era being hits, it looks like fans may be in for a long wait for the next James Bond installment.
Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli of EON Productions Ltd., producer of the long-running James Bond franchise, said Monday that development work on the next 007 film had been suspended.
EON cited MGM’s current financial troubles as the reason that Bond has been put on ice.
“Due to the continuing uncertainty surrounding the future of MGM and the failure to close a sale of the studio, we have suspended development on ‘Bond 23’ indefinitely,” the duo said. “We do not know when development will resume and do not have a date for the release.”
The announcement will surprise no one who has followed the tortured recent efforts to bolster finances at MGM.
Solicitations of offers to buy the studio resulted in a couple rounds of underwhelming bidding by studio companies such as Lionsgate and corporate parents of Warner Bros. and Fox. More recently, Fox parent News Corp. and others have been drawn into discussions of possible limited investments in the studio, which has been strapped for cash and burdened by a big debt load.
Nobody doubts there will be a next Bond film, but current circumstances hardly allowed for a tidy development of the project. Some have suggested MGM might sell off rights to co-produce Bond pics to raise needed capital.
If they wait too long, they’ll have to recast the lead character … again.
Great, MGM should be forced to selle the rights of Bond to a decent production company. It is completely unacceptable that we should have to wait for the next film just because they are incompetent business people.