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In real life, Columbia's parent company Sony gave up the rights when MGM gave it its share to the Spider-Man movie rights in 1999. However, Columbia has apparently not been interested in adapting CR between the 1970s and the early 1990s, the only exception being in 1997, when Kevin McClory, teaming up with Sony, hoped to produce a franchise competing with Eon by adapting both CR and TB. Nevertheless, it would have been possible for Columbia to sell the rights back to Eon at some point, or get something in return from MGM, at least before the late 90s.
I recently discovered that Columbia Pictures acquired a sheet music operations from MGM/UA in 1983, this is very hypothetical but maybe at that time the rights to CR could have been gained by Eon. Do you think that the novel would have been immediately adapted by Broccoli, Wilson and Maibaum, and reimagined for the late Moore's era, or on the contrary put aside? Could the novel have served as the ideal vehicle to debut a new Bond in '87? How do you imagine such a film at this period?
MAYBE had Cubby held off on using CR around that time and saved for Dalton it would have been a faithful adaptation, albeit updated to 1987. Instead of SMERSH it's Koskov trying to raise money before the KGB gets wind of him "misusing state funds". As Bond gets tortured (would have probably just been mild flogging rather than stripped naked having his balls mashed), the General Gogol breaks in with the KGB and arrests Koskov. Gogol makes a remark about how "rescuing" Bond makes for good "détente".
Not sure Cubby would have gone as far as having Vesper revealed as a spy and committing suicide. It worked in the context of 2006, not sure audiences would have been ready for that in 1987, especially coming off of the lighter years of Roger Moore.
A CR Dalton, with Vesper killing herself, would have been even more jarring to audiences than LTK was.
Yes and no. Beating an enemy by sitting down in a lovely suit and suavely out-gambling them sounds extremely 80's Roger to me! :)
I think they could have made it work, essentially.
Slightly counter-intuitively I actually think it would have been a harder sell for Dalton because I'm not sure he ever quite makes the connection with the audience in his films that Roger did, so if Roger had lost a lover I actually think you'd care more than if Dalton did. I don't think Roger would have been comfortable with it at all, no, but I think he could have done it. Dalton is fine in many ways, but I don't think he ever really sold the idea that he particularly cared for any of his leading ladies.
I guess it would have been longer and more pivotal to the plot, but yes otherwise you could do it. You'd still have Bond foiling Le Chiffre's initial plan, whatever that may be, to put him in trouble with the Russians and owing money, driving him to the Casino Royale, because that's just a natural extension of the plot. I guess after Bond has won you'd have Le Chiffre kidnapping Bond to his lair in order to get the money from him (as happened in many Roger films- as you say, Octopussy is a good example when he's taken to Khan's palace) and although the chair torture probably wouldn't have been it he may well have used some grander, more blockbustery method. Like the tiger hunt! Bizarrely one can almost imagine Octopussy being tweaked into a Roger version of CR.
I love CR '06, and I don't think this would have been better, but I think you could make a perfectly decent Roger Moore Bond film out of the CR storyline.
To be honest I have no trouble imagining this. Not that I would have liked to see it, but it would have been something that could have happened. By the way, using Koskov's backstory for Le Chiffre is quite pertinent. Vesper would perhaps in this context have become Le Chiffre's girlfriend, acting more or less as a double agent before choosing Bond's side... But it would probably have been too close to the CBS adaptation when I think about it. Anyway, this is very fun to visualize mentally.
CR would have worked better for Lazenby or Dalton in some shape and form.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRHHHHHHH!
As for Moore playing the part of Bond in CR. Depends what kind of movie you are going with. Moore's Bond only played in a casino once in FYEO. OP had the backgammon. I am not sure how I would feel about Moore's Bond spending a good chunk of the film at the table. Moore's eyebrows might have been given lots of exercise. LOL
I don t think it would make any difference, the Bond begins angle isn t a part of the novel CR either.
It didn't stop Cubby from heavily deviating from the other novels either.
And to be clear: Cubby was against the Bond Begins idea because he didn't think people would want to see a novice Bond. Given how successful CR was ultimately, he was clearly wrong on that. It's too bad he didn't live long enough to see it himself.
It would have been interesting to see Dalton in an '80s CR.
I think it was the TWINE watchalong that pointed out that that was the last film while Dana Broccoli was still alive...and that afterward, they may have been willing to take more risks with the formula.
That was mentioned in the CR watchalong, given that Dana Broccoli died in 2004, just a few days after the release of the EVERYTHING OR NOTHING video game.
There's also the old rumor that Brosnan made some rude remarks about Dana Broccoli after her death that supposedly upset Mike and Barbara, which lead to them dumping him.
The rookie Bond script was not an adaptation of TLD--it was a completely different (and original) story. A synopsis is given in Charles Helfenstein's book on The Making of The Living Daylights. It could have been a fun film, but I understand why Cubby rejected it. Audiences at that time weren't thirsting for origin stories. And linking Bond's start with CR makes more sense, since it was the first Bond book and included a formative personal tragedy.
Of all the Bonds, Dalton would have been the best suited for a faithful adaptation of CR, though that would have been next to impossible in the 80s...or maybe any decade, since even the '06 film was less harsh than the book. Dalton's Bond was very much the brutal, noir-ish Bond of Fleming's CR, before the character became more human and less of a "wonderful machine." CR was also a book Dalton studied as his guide to Bond. If I was a billionaire with a time machine...
That's probably why AVTAK didn't end with "James Bond Will Return in The Living Daylights"? TLD likely wasn't seriously considered until they had lesser time to develop a movie after the rookie idea was shot down, so using Fleming's short story and building off of that helped.
I imagine a faithful adaptation to CR would have only been possible if there was never a franchise with all the expectations audiences have of Bond.
Based upon how much LTK took inspiration the LALD novel, I could have seen TD pulling off a faithful adaptation of LALD, with Terence Young or Peter Hunt directing. Have James Earl Jones play Mr. Big.
That's true. The source material is too harsh, downbeat and low-action to meet the expectations of modern audiences. I wouldn't mind seeing an animated DTV adaptation, similar to what DC and Marvel have been doing in tandem with their live action films. Animation would likely less expensive than making a live action period piece set in 1953. But of course there's almost no chance of this happening any time soon.
Ha! I'd have loved that :)
I was having a quick ponder about it and I reckon it would have been pretty do-able. Kick off with some sort of big, vaguely unrelated PTS where Roger is skiing and defeats some evil plan, have your titles, then Roger goes to M's office and is told they've discovered suspiciously large amounts of Russian money going into bets on sports events - they suspect they're trying to raise funds and discredit the west.
Bond is sent to perhaps Sydney where the Grand Prix is racing: Bond investigates the Russian team which has entered, goes to a few gala events where he drinks some lovely champagne, romances a lady, breaks into the pits at night and find evidence of a large bomb- some of the cars have been sabotaged! He manages to get out without being spotted, romances another lady, is then captured and dumped in the outback or something. Gets back to the racetrack just in time to stop the sabotage in a big action sequence where he drives an F1 car etc. the baddies are foiled and the race is fine, but the Russian F1 team leader Le Chiffre has lost a load of money.
Bond meets up with M who tells him they've heard Le Chiffre has gone rogue from the KGB (we see Gogol chucking him out) and he is is trying to get his money back- Bond is sent to the Casino Royale to beat him, which is onboard a specially-hired massive cruise ship touring the China sea and where all the supervillains of the world go to meet up and gamble for the future of the world etc. etc.
You can make it as big and glossy as you like, and the big torture moment at the end can be made into whatever you want- something like the Goldfinger laser table could even work. We'd seen Roger in these sort of situations before (the keel-hauling from the LALD novel for example) so it's not all that outlandish to see him put into that. Probably not as brutal as we were finally given with Craig, but it wouldn't have been impossible to do. Even ending on Vesper's death isn't that outlandish- think of Lisl in FYEO, and of course a Bond film had ended on the main heroine's death once before. It'd be a surprise for a Roger audience but not impossible- don't forget that even with Craig's version they still found a way to end the movie on a high note.
Disagree. Moore would simply raise an eyebrow and not care if he lost a lover or not. Dalton, on the other hand, did have some regret in him in LTK after he killed Sanchez. So a late 80’s version of CR would of suited him a lot better.
I think Roger sells Lisl’s death very well and he doesn’t just ‘raise an eyebrow’ over it. Dalton’s Bond on the other hand I don’t think really made me believe he cared for the women he got involved with, or particularly enjoyed anything to be honest. His Bond could sell anger that someone has been killed, but I’m not sure about love.
Interesting that DaltonBond never had a lover killed.
His brief responses to the deaths of Lisl and Tibbett and XXX's mention of Tracy show a little bit of that.
It would have been interesting to see his Bond have something a bit heavier to play with.
Yeah, and I don't think it means it would have ended on a OHMSS-style downer; I've only just really thought about how the character of Mr White is primarily there in the 2006 version to give the film a reason to end on a high note and to send the audience out of the cinema happy. If they could have done that in the brutal Craig version then I'm sure they'd have found a way to get M to exclaim "Double Oh seven!!" as he's being made to watch Bond have sex again in a Roger version of CR.
No, I'll stop there, sorry.
BUT What if...what if Boyle hadn't been dumped and had gone on to direct Craig in his final outing as Bond. The screen story was said to be a "modern day" Cold War with a Russian as the protagonist. This would have meant the film would have been released in 2019 and not had to get bogged into the pandemic. This would have meant that EON could be gearing up for a new actor to take the role!
So what say you? What if Danny Boyle had directed Daniel Craig in Bond 25 for a November 2019 release date?
I love the idea of a cold war thriller, and hope to learn more about Boyle's concepts and ideas for the final Craig. Perhaps Boyle deviated too far from formula to the level it made no point referring to it as a Bond film?
To be honest I think the plot of NTTD seems cobbled together last minute as a direct sequel to SP. THAT is something I don't care for in the least, but need to reserve judgment until I see the film. Hopefully, Fukunaga has made a masterpiece on par with FRWL, OHMSS, and CR.
Perhaps had Boyle never entered the picture, we might have gotten a Wade/Purvis SHATTERHAND? I wonder if there are many elements from their original script in the new film?
Great topic, BTW.