More Bond 25 Details Emerge After Weekend Leak

Reports from early Monday morning indicate that James Bond will take on a blind villain and travel to Croatia in the 25th installment of the 007 film franchise.

British news tabloid The Mirror got the inside scoop on the upcoming Bond flick thanks to an unnamed local mayor in Croatia, who revealed that location scouts were spotted in the coastal city of Dubrovnik, one of the most important tourist destinations on the Adriatic Sea. The film’s producers, MGM and the Broccoli family’s EON Productions, were understandably not pleased with this leak, as last week they jointly released official (but extremely limited) information about the movie, including the November 2019 release date and writers assigned to the project. However, the conspicuous absence of info relating to the actor playing James Bond, the director, the title of the movie and even cursory plot details led to massive fan speculation online.

After the leaks of the past weekend, at least some of those questions are cleared up: For starters, the 25th Bond movie has been provisionally given the working title “Shatterhand” – perhaps a reference to “Old Shatterhand,” a Euro-Western based on books written by German novelist Karl May and partially filmed in Croatia. “Shatterhand” Scriptwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (who penned all the screenplays of the Craig era going back to 2006’s “Casino Royale”) are believed to be drawing heavily on the plot of US author Raymond Benson’s 1999 James Bond novel “Never Dream of Dying.”

The story involves a plot by the criminal organization Union and a botched French police raid on a movie studio that leaves numerous innocent people dead. Several of Benson’s other novels were turned into 007 movies during Pierce Brosnan’s tenure in the role, including “Tomorrow Never Dies,” “The World is Not Enough” and “Die Another Day.” How the recent revelation of a blind villain will play into the newest entry in the Bond series remains unclear at this point, but it’s also reported that the story will have elements from 1960s Bond films “You Only Live Twice” and “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.”

What also remains unclear – if however slightly, given the very favorable odds of 1-to-8 posted by British gambling website Coral for Daniel Craig’s return as James Bond – is what actor will end up taking up the mantle of Agent 007. Some of the closer contenders for the role are Tom Hardy, Idris Elba and even “Sherlock Holmes” miniseries star Benedict Cumberbatch, though none of them come close to the betting odds for Craig to reprise his role. Another somewhat leftfield option being floated by fans, members of the media and the actress herself is Cara Delevigne, who told the BBC that she was “wouldn’t mind be a Bond girl but [she’s] going for James” in an effort to have a female 007 in the near future.

A week isn’t long for James Bond fans to wait between reveals from official and unofficial sources, and it’s still up in the air if MGM and EON will confirm or, more probably, “fail to unsubstantiate” what could be either bombshell insider intel or could be just internet hype. Looks like the world will have to wait on some more unnamed Croatian mayors to come forward with more juicy information and see how the Bond producers react.

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