The Bond film franchise has had several of its films re-conceived in the time leading up to production kicking off. One of the most famous was “Tomorrow Never Dies” which the Hong Kong handover as a key plot point in the original villain’s plan.
More recently, celebrated British director Danny Boyle was originally set to direct and develop Daniel Craig’s fifth and final outing as James Bond but he and screenwriter John Hodge ended up leaving over “creative differences” with producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson.
The film eventually ended up in Cary Fukunaga’s hands and became last year’s smash hit “No Time to Die”. With that movie firmly planted in the rearview mirror, and with Boyle currently out promoting his Sex Pistols series “Pistol,” the filmmaker has finally spoken about what might’ve been with his take on Bond.
Talking with Esquire UK, he said his scrapped version of Bond’s final outing would’ve taken cues from the classic Cold War setting of the originals and have 007 in Russia:
“I remember thinking, ‘Should I really get involved in franchises?’ Because they don’t really want something different. They want you to freshen it up a bit, but not really challenge it, and we wanted to do something different with it.
Weirdly – it would have been very topical now – it was all set in Russia, which is of course where Bond came from, out of the Cold War. It was set in present-day Russia and went back to his origins, and they just lost, what’s the word…they just lost confidence in it. It was a shame really.”
Some elements of Boyle and Hodge’s work did end up in the final product, albeit in a different way, was the use of Swann’s child which Boyle called “wonderful”.
The franchise currently stands at a crossroads with the next actor to play the role yet to be picked with several gambling agencies taking odds on the likes of Tom Hardy, Henry Cavill, Aidan Turner, Rege-Jean Page, Idris Elba and Sam Heughan.
