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Nothing like starting your time in Hollywood so young in the world of Bond and being able to knock it out of the park ever since. I've loved following her career.
Have to agree there. Would be a solid choice!
It’s the most sober, brief and realistic explanation of why Nolan likely won’t be a director of James Bond. And the writer of the article, like me, throws a splash of cold water on the idea that EoN and Nolan had recent talks that broke down. I don’t believe they did.
But a very sober approach to look at this.
And I am asbolutely certain that he would be fine with doing it without Syncopy. He did say last summer that he would like to direct a Bond film and that he is aware of the constraints. The dude has very clearly expressed on multiple occasions that he is very eager to direct a Bond film. Not having creative freedom absolutely would be a dealbreaker for him but not involving Syncopy would not.
To sum it up: if Nolan wanted to do something completely different with Bond 26 than EON, then sure, I would somewhat understand why they would pick someone else. But there is asbolutely no reason not to have talks with him about his idea, and do that BEFORE talking to any other writer or director.
Also, it's very annoying that reporters nearly always ask Nolan the wrong question when it comes to Bond. Two days ago Bamigboye asked him " if there was any truth whatsoever about him directing the next James Bond film". Of course he was going to say no! He should have asked him what he would do if the Bond producers approached him about Bond 26.
Park Chan-wook. He said in an interview that he's been storyboarding Bond movies in his head since he was 15 years old.
Ok.
Obviously that never happened. Maybe EON will pick Chris Nolan to direct Bond film.
Then again, it’s possible that they won’t.
Some people need to stop reading so much into things that aren’t true.
Guy Ritchie can do it. He made Aladdin after all. He can be a good soldier.
Ritchie is like Vaughn...I feel. Too unnecessarily flashy and outlandish of late.
Wrath of man and The Covenant are pretty gritty.
Anyway, maybe we need a flashy Bond movie after NTTD.
Yes, and Boyle left the project - at least that's the official version Boyle gave - that EON wanted additional writers to overhaul the Hodsge script, and he doid not want this to happen, so he left. And EON would not allow any director to nhave the complete creative control to a director, and when thye see the final product, would approve. They are and were used to have the final say. The only time they did not interfere, was Madonna's horrible DAD song, and they probably regretted it, when they heard the finished product. Spottiswoode rejected Feirsteins TND script and made EON hiring four screenwriters to come up with a script, then Feirstein (mind you, the guy whose script was rejected by the director) was asked back, to write a script based on the four scripts. And it showed. Needless to say, they did not want Spottiswoode back, after he had massive fallouts with Brosnan,Dench and Pryce.
https://www.partizan.com/director/emma-westenberg/music-content
Emma Westenberg. Directed Bleeding Love (Credit as 2023) with British (Scotland) actor Ewan McGregor and his daughter for American release on 16 Feb 2024. https://www.whattowatch.com/watching-guides/bleeding-love-release-date-cast-plot-and-everything-we-know-about-the-ewan-mcgregor-movie
She made music video Pynk for Janelle Monáe in 2018 and Super Bowl comercial with the daughter of Lenny Kravitz. One of earlier was that she direct music video Dominique for Dutch Rock artist Anouk in 2015.
She is Dutch / American (English) directer. Dutch parents growing up in The Netherlands and was born in America works there for 6 years as directer before she moved to England last year.
https://www.adforum.com/talent/81879188-emma-westenberg
Last Thursday edition of NRC a Dutch paper there is interview with here she said MGM plan movie directed by her that been on hold/delayed by Amazon when there bought MGM and she stil hopes it happen.
I hate the Conjuring films but I can't put that on him.
Not saying she’ll get the job but why wouldn’t EON (or any producer) consider someone like that over a director like Nolan? It’s a bit like saying if we were in 1995 ‘why would EON consider Martin Campbell, a director known for making sex comedies and the equivalent of B movie thrillers, over Steven Spielberg? The next Bond film is obviously going to be rubbish!’
Martin Campbell had directed Edge of Darkness, a conspiracy thriller that cleaned up at the Baftas and is still considered one of the best BBC miniseries ever. He had also directed the well-regarded miniseries Reilly, Ace of Spies, which I assume was very much on Eon's radar as it starred Sam Neill. I mean I don't think you're wrong in that Eon will go for a more arthouse director rather than an action director, they hired Marc Forster to direct QoS after all, but the comparison between Emma Westenberg and Campbell doesn't work (imo).
That’s fair enough. All of those shows are before my time so mean absolutely nothing to me (in the sense that I don’t hear about them/see them replayed nowadays). And I think Campbell had a level of expirience at that time that almost all 33 year old directors wouldn’t have anyway. It was more about why EON would pick certain kinds of directors (not necessarily arthouse ones, just ‘smaller’ ones) over more big name ones should they see potential in them.
Yes, while EON does go with smaller name directors, they do tend to be arthouse ones. Marc Forster being the biggest example. It is time for EON to take a break from these types of directors.
I'm not sure if arthouse best describes the directors they've gone for to be honest. There's likely an element of semantics here, but for me arthouse directors are those along the lines of very early David Lynch, Derek Jarman, or Jean Luc Goddard types. Independently made films, different to the norm stylistically or story-wise etc. These types generally don't direct things like Bond films even if they were offered.
You can kind of argue Marc Forster started off like this (his first two films were low budget anyway, although from what I can tell they're not comparable to the works of the directors I mentioned above. By contrast they seem to be relatively standard story-wise, sort of low budget genre films). That said by 2008 he had done films like The Kite Runner, Monster's Ball, Stranger Than Fiction etc. These are not independent films and show a director who was entrusted with increasingly large budgets and films which were financed/distributed by big studios. They're all dramas to some extent, and Stranger Than Fiction is certainly inventive script-wise, but they're not arthouse films.
Sam Mendes is even further from an arthouse director. His first film was American Beauty, an inventive drama yes, but a more than moderately budgeted one and directed in a relatively standard way (it's more comparable to a Billy Wilder film than a Derek Jarman or David Lynch one). His work before Skyfall is a mixture of similar dramas or even genre films. His filmography is arguably pretty standard for a Bond director, comparable to Guy Hamilton or Lewis Gilbert.
Fukuaga's a similar case. I'm not sure if we can call his Jane Eyre, True Detective or Maniac 'arthouse'. Not really sure if even Beasts of No Nation can be put into that category. So yeah, I wouldn't say EON go for arthouse directors at all really. If you mean they'd be better off going for directors who specifically do thrillers, action, or similar types of films to Bond that's another thing (although even then I'd argue there's traces of this in all these directors' filmographies, and often such versatile directors bring much more to the table. I'd argue it's certainly more preferable that future directors have experience with films at similar moderate budgets in order to give EON a sense of their strengths).
"Solid script" is the hard part.