How 007 Barely Avoided a Paul Haggis-Sired 'Bond Baby'

Kyle Buchanan — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 18:50:15 EST

Though Casino Royale provided the James Bond franchise with a rebooted reservoir of goodwill, director Marc Forster says that the follow-up, Quantum of Solace, almost took things in a perilous, Mutt Williams-ish direction. Speaking to New York, Forster detailed how Bond producers clashed with screenwriter Paul Haggis when the Crash scripter wanted to add one considerably more kindergarten-friendly element to the film:

"Haggis had an idea they weren't fond of, and I didn't know if it would work or not," says Forster. "The idea was that Vesper in the last movie, maybe she had a kid, and there would be an orphan out there. It wasn't anything to insult the franchise. But they felt it wasn't particularly Bond — him looking for the kid. I think Paul thought he just leaves the kid, he doesn't deal with it. But [the producers] thought that would be really nasty, too, because Bond was an orphan himself. If he would find a kid, would he just leave it? They were so vehemently against it. That was the only time I saw, really, 'No, we can't do that.' They said, 'Once he finds the kid, Bond can't just leave the kid. It's not right.'"

Could Bond really have weathered the change from secret agent to absentee surrogate father? We have a hard time believing that Bond would lift a finger for a bratty British tyke, but that's OK — his Bond girl has several fingers to spare.

How James Bond Nearly Became a Father [New York]

The Quantum Of Cyrus

Mark Graham — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:15:00 EDT

We're still flipping through "The New Classics" issue of Entertainment Weekly that hit newsstands about two weeks ago. And while we feel that, on the whole, the staffers over there put together a pretty thorough examination of the last 25 years of pop culture, we do have a few qualms with their list. Chief among them is the inclusion of Casino Royale, the 2006 rebooting of the Bond franchise, which came in at #19 in their list of Top 100 movies. While it was certainly a serviceable action thriller, we've never quite been able to understand Owen Gleiberman's fascination with the film (he also rated it the top movie of 2006). Sure, the opening sequence was pretty cool if you've never seen Banlieue 13 or The Bourne Supremacy, but for us, the rest of the film was pure, uncut meh. After all, it couldn't have been just us who fell asleep during that interminable card game of Uno* that took up the entire third act of the film, right? But we're getting off track here. What we meant to be discussing all along is the new trailer for JB22, aka Quantum Of Solace, which we have for you after the jump.

Once again, color us unimpressed. James Bond's gone rogue? Um, as we alluded to before the jump, we've already seen that movie. Three times, in fact. Although, we did find it interesting that director Marc Forster (he of Monster's Ball fame) decided to film a scene that recreates this year's most controversial Vanity Fair cover shoot, substituting British babebot Gemma Atherton for the despoiled Miley, in a plot twist that seems on the surface to be more Friedberg and Seltzer than Ian Fleming. If test audiences like what they see and demand that Forster insert a few more pop culture spoofs into his film, then maybe this movie will be worth seeing after all. We've got our fingers crossed for the "I Can Do 200 Of These" guy.

*We're pretty sure it wasn't actually Uno, but like we said, we were asleep.

Quantum Of Solace [Moviefone]

Gawker: defamer, marc forster

How 007 Barely Avoided a Paul Haggis-Sired 'Bond Baby'

The Quantum Of Cyrus