Mendes/Bond hook-up?

Last night, Variety reported that Sam Mendes may direct the next Bond film. Uhhh – correction. Last night, Variety reported the rumour that Sam Mendes may be in talks to direct the next Bond film. The financially floundering MGM studio has refused to confirm anything about anything. We nose around rumourville, after the jump.

Our take on this? It’s bloody unlikely but on the other hand, people have taken weirder jobs in a recession. It’s hard to imagine that Mendes would want to submit to the yoke of Bondage: producers Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli’s tight rein on all things image-related, the limited scope for imagination and the increasingly tired and self-referential scripts. Quantum of Solace had some of the most cripplingly weak Bond quips of all time – “I got pulled into a meeting” he says at one stage, as a why-bother euphemism for a knife-fight. And only Dame Judi Dench could get away with M’s dialogue, which seems to have been fashioned from cardboard and ground-up TV schoolteachers. Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (both veterans of four Bonds, three of them grim) worked on the script for Bond 23, so we can expect more of the same.

On the other hand, nifty scriptwriter Peter Morgan (Frost/Nixon, The Damned United, Longford) is also on board as a co-writer, which could level things up somewhat. There is also a precedent in that indie-orientated Marc Forster (The Kite Runner, Finding Neverland, Monster’s Ball) directed Quantum of Solace. Also, apart from Revolutionary Road, which was bolstered by the presence of Titanic couple Leo and Kate, Mr Mendes hasn’t helmed a bona-fide moneymaker since 2002’s Road to Perdition. Away We Go cost $17 million and has so far only recouped $10 million of that worldwide. Jarhead cost $72 million to make and recouped $96 million. It could be that in these belt-tightening times, Mendes could use a box-office smash (and Bond is a pretty safe bet; Quantum of Solace cost $200 million but took in $586,090,727 worldwide) to ensure that studios are willing to pony up for one of the films he has in development. Nonetheless, Mendes’ attachment to upcoming comic-book adaptation Preacher (which is likely to be comfortably budgeted) seems to mitigate against this line of reasoning.

Complicating matters further, MGM (rawr) is for sale, with its assets, including rights to half of the upcoming Hobbit film and the Bond franchise expected to be broken up and sold. Potential buyers include News Corp, Lionsgate and Time Warner, though at this stage, everyone is keeping details on the low-down.

Whatever the outcome, it’s a nice bit of publicity for everyone involved and an interesting nugget for us all to mull over in the dark days of January. You can read Variety's story here.