Next James Bond 007 film on indefinite hold (MGM is in heavy debt)

[Blue_Tires]

James Bond has worked his way through enough luxury cars, bespoke suits and expensive women on screen to suggest that he has never been particularly worried about prudent book-keeping. But after nearly half a century of heroic consumption, debt has finally caught up with him.

EON Productions, the producer of the James Bond films, has announced that the 23rd instalment in the series has been postponed indefinitely because of the financial woes of its distributor, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Any lengthy postponement is certain to cloud the future of Daniel Craig, the latest Bond. Questions are also hanging over the involvement of Sam Mendes, who had been in line to become the first Oscar-winning director at the helm of a Bond film.

MGM is $3.7 billion (£2.4 billion) in debt and has been up for sale since November. Now Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli of EON Productions appear to have run out of patience. “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,” they said. “We do not know when development will resume.”

Wilson and Broccoli are the stepson and daughter of Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, the American-Italian who rescued Ian Fleming’s literary spy from legal limbo in the 1960s and finally brought him to to the big screen.


http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article7102578.ece