With Casino Royale a major, absolute smash success (no matter what the delusional Daniel Craig Is Not Bond people think), the attention of everybody behind James Bond has turned to a sequel. Casino Royale was the last Ian Fleming James Bond book that had been untouched by the films… or was it? I didn’t know this, but it turns out that Fleming had written a number of short Bond stories (some of which began life as episodes for a proposed James Bond TV show, believe it or not). Five stories were published in a collection entitled For Your Eyes Only, and one of those stories, Risico, might be providing the story for Bond 22.
Risico was sort of kind of previously adapted into the film For Your Eyes Only, but really just in the most perfunctory way (many of the Bond stories seem to have lent their names to films and little else). Reports from Pinewood Studios have people chattering about Risico being the working title for the next film, and the basics of the story – Bond investigating drug smuggling – would seem ideal for the new era James Bond. The only problem is that some of the characters from the story were used in the film of For Your Eyes Only, even if they were used in almost completely different contexts and in a story bearing little resemblance to this one. It’s possible that screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade may just rename those characters.
I suddenly find myself very interested in a new Bond film for the first time in my life. It’s a little scary, but I’ll muddle through and report every baseless rumor and bit of scuttlebutt between now and 2008! Or 2009, whenever they get it out.