Bond 25 May Eject Itself From November 2019 Release Date
by Erik Amaya
In hindsight, the planned November 8th, 2019 release date for the twenty-fifth James Bond film always seemed like a impossible mission anyway.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the departure of Bond 25 director Danny Boyle has led to a scheduling nightmare as EON Productions looks for a new director and faces the very real possibility it will miss its scheduled release date next year. Sources also tell the site EON and MGM were already considering pushing back the release before Boyle’s departure. These movies are complex shoots with a lot of in-camera special effects work to devise and execute; leaving Boyle and his team very little time to plan the production as it was.
Recent rumors suggest Boyle ultimately quit the production when producers Barbara Broccoli, Michael G. Wilson and star Daniel Craig expressed displeasure with Boyle’s “modern day Cold War” storyline. It has also been suggested EON was less than thrilled when Boyle brought in his own writing partner, John Hodge, instead of the stalwart Bond writing team of Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who have been writing Bond films — in whole or in part — since 1999’s The World Is Not Enough.
It is presumed a Wade and Purvis script sidelined by Boyle will be back in play and the one any potential replacement will work from in lieu of Boyle and Hodge’s story. But making a change like this with less than 18 months before the release date is perilously little time for any director to mount a tentpole release, let alone a Bond film.
And, to be honest, I always thought the production window was too short from the moment Boyle admitted he was working on a Bond script in March of last year. I also think Wade and Purvis need to take a break from Bond work, but I’m just a spectator in this.
At the moment, Bond 25 is still set for release on November 8th, 2019, but it could become a 2020 release at any moment.
