[New post] Quantum’s 15th: Impact still felt on 007 franchise
The Spy Commander posted: " Adapted and updated from a 2018 post This fall marks the 15th anniversary of Quantum of Solace, the 22nd 007 film made by Eon Productions. It's a production that still reverberates with the franchise. It was the last time the makers of James Bond film" The Spy Command
This fall marks the 15th anniversary of Quantum of Solace, the 22nd 007 film made by Eon Productions. It's a production that still reverberates with the franchise.
It was the last time the makers of James Bond films tried to come out with an entry just two years after the previous installment. It's probably the last time this will happen.
As Casino Royale was ending production, Sony Pictures put out a July 20, 2006 release (the press release was once online but has been yanked by the studio) saying it intended to release Bond 22 (as it was then known) quickly -- May 2, 2008.
"As we wrap production on CASINO ROYALE we couldn't be more excited about the direction the franchise is heading with Daniel Craig. Daniel has taken the origins of Ian Fleming's James Bond portraying, with emotional complexity, a darker and edgier 007," Eon's Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli were quoted in the press release.
Writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, with three Bond films under their belt, were aboard to come up with a story for what Eon would later describe as the series' first "direct sequel."
There were soon signs the pace was causing some strains.
'Very Nervous' Director Roger Michell (1956-20210 opted not to helm the movie because he felt the story wasn't developed enough. In 2007, Michell gave an interview to The Times. The original link to the interview is broken, but the Commander Bond website's summary includes some of Michell's comments.
"'Well, I did give up directing the Bond film," Michell told The Times, according to the Commander Bond summary. "It was because in the end I didn't feel comfortable with the Bond process, and I was very nervous that there was a start date but really no script at all. And I like to be very well prepared as a director."
Eventually, Quantum was pushed back to a fall 2008 release. But there were still time pressures. The Writers Guild of America was in labor talks and a strike deadline was looming. The union went on strike from November 2007 to February 2008, with the Bond movie starting production in early 2008.
The director hired for the movie, Marc Forster, said in an April 2008 Rotten Tomatoes story, said there was a reset after he arrived.
'From Scratch' "Once I signed on to do it we pretty much developed the script from scratch because I felt that it wasn't the movie I wanted to make and we started with Paul Haggis from scratch," Forster said in the story. Haggis was the writer who did the final drafts of Casino Royale.
"And I said to him these are the topics I am interested in this is what I would like to say, what's important to me," the director said. "And we developed it from there together. Then Barbara and Michael said they liked where we were going and they liked the script."
In this interview, Forster said everything worked out fine.
"The good thing is that Paul and I and Daniel all worked on the script before the strike happened and got it where we were pretty happy with," the director said. "Then we started shooting and the only problems I had with the script we were shooting in April, May and June so as soon as the strike was over we did another polish."
The writer doing that polish, Forster said, was Joshua Zetumer. The scribe's involvement with the film was noted in other stories written during the production.
More Complicated Forster, in a Nov. 3, 2008 story on the Vulture culture blog of New York magazine, indicated things were more complicated.
"Haggis had an idea they weren't fond of, and I didn't know if it would work or not," Forster told Vulture. "The idea was that Vesper in the last movie, maybe she had a kid, and there would be an orphan out there."
Eventually, with the clocking ticking to a WGA strike, the idea of Bond searching for Vesper's child was rejected. Haggis, though, delivered a script ahead of the WGA walkout.
Daniel Craig in 2012 during filming of Skyfall.
In 2011, as Skyfall was preparing production, a new scenario was unveiled.
Daniel Craig in an interview with Time Out London, said he and Forster were forced to rewrite the script as Quantum was being filmed.
The actor described what they had as a "bare bones of a script." Because of the WGA strike, "We couldn't employ a writer to finish it."
This tale has emerged as the now-accepted version, with Joshua Zetumer the movie's forgotten man.
The movie did fine at the box office, with $586 million globally. But Quantum's biggest effect may be that Eon doesn't want to rush things if it can help it.
'External Pressures' "Sometimes there are external pressures from a studio who want you to make it in a certain time frame or for their own benefit, and sometimes we've given into that," Eon's Barbara Broccoli told the Los Angeles Times in 2012.
Barbara Broccoli
"But following what we hope will be a tremendous success with 'Skyfall,' we have to try to keep the deadlines within our own time limits and not cave in to external pressures," the Eon boss told the newspaper.
She didn't mention either Sony or Quantum of Solace. But it's not much of a stretch to wonder if both were on her mind during that interview.
What's more, a Sony executive told theater executives in 2012 that Bond 24 (eventually titled SPECTRE) would be out in 2014. Broccoli and Craig, in a May 1, 2012 interview with Collider, shut down such talk.
Broccoli: He was getting a little overexcited (laughs). We're just actually focusing on this movie. One hopes that in the future we'll be announcing other films, but no one's officially announced it.
Craig: No one's announced anything. He got a little ahead of himself (laughs). It's very nice that he has the confidence to be able to do that, but we haven't finished this movie yet.
SPECTRE, of course, came out in 2015, not 2014.
Today, Quantum occupies an odd space. Despite its financial success, it wasn't discussed much in the 2012 documentary Everything Or Nothing. But many fans feel it's more than a worthy entry in the Eon-made series.
Regardless of how you feel about the movie, though, it had an impact on the franchise. Trying to make a James Bond film within two years is now unthinkable. There would be a six-year gap between SPECTRE and No Time to Die. The COVID-19 pandemic was a major reason, but not the only one.
As for Bond 26? Who knows. It's obviously not coming out in 2023 (two years after No Time to Die). There's no script, no Bond actor, no director (as of this writing), etc., etc.
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