After the recent announcement thatJames Bond 25is going to arrive in theaters onNovember 8, 2017, some secondary reports have tried to fill in some of the other information we need about the movie, since we know little else. A recent report from the Mirror suggested that the upcomingJames Bondwas going to be partially based on Raymond Benson’s novelNever Dream of Dyingand they even claimed to have spoken to the author directly about it. Now he has set the record straight and denied these reports.
As reported by fan siteMI6 H, Raymond Benson, who wrote severalJames Bondnovels includingNever Dream of Dying, released a statement on his Facebook page shortly after the new rumors aboutJames Bond 25started circulating. As he tells it, there is no truth to the movie being based on his novel and he didn’t speak with the Mirror. Here’s what he had to say about it.
“Some of you may have seen an article published by U.K.’s The Mirror yesterday that claims that the next Bond movie will be based on my novel Never Dream of Dying. I know nothing of this, but as I have not spoken with any Mirror journalists at all, I can only assume that the article is a piece of fabrication. It would, of course, be wonderful if it were true.”
So there you have it. There were some other issues with Mirror’s recent report as well. They stated thatNever Dream of Dyingcame out in 1999 when it was in fact published in 2001. The novel in question sees 007 squaring off with a blind villain, which sounds like a cool idea and something that would be pretty unique heading intoJames Bond 25. Raymond Benson doesn’t actually have any involvement in the production of the new movie, so he can’t say definitively that the novel isn’t being used in some way by writers Neil Purvis and Robert Wade. But this does cast a lot of doubt over the credibility of Mirror’s report.
The recent report from Mirror also suggested thatJames Bond 25is going under the working title ofShatterhandand that it will be shooting in Croatia. We’ve heard previously about the possibility of the production shooting in Croatia, so that could still prove to be true. But everything else from this report is more than likelynot truebased on Raymond Benson’s comments.
As for what we do know aboutJames Bond 25, it is all but confirmed officially thatDaniel Craig is going to return, but Eon Productions and MGM have yet to make a formal announcement. Currently, there is no director, butDenis Villeneuve(Blade Runner 2049), David Mackenzie (Hell or High Water) and Yann Demange (‘71) are said to be on the studio’s shortlist, with Demange reportedly the frontrunner for the job. With production likely to start relatively soon onJames Bond 25, we should be getting some more official details shortly. At least for now, we can rule some of these recent rumors out.
