Ah, the InterWebs. A rumor by British tabloid The Sun supposedly gave the project known only as Bond 23 a title: Red Sky At Night.
Nice title, isn’t it? Vague, provocative, just poetic enough to recall some Sean Connery-era Bond flicks, like You Only Live Twice. Too bad it’s utter nonsense. As is the rumor that The Constant Gardener Oscar-winner – and current Daniel Craig paramour (not to mention ex-wife of Darren Aronofsky) Rachel Weisz is being sought by Bond 23‘s producers as Bond’s next villain, a sinister lady-boss of Quantum, the international crime mega-syndicate whom Bond took on in Quantum of Solace.
All this turns out to be bogus, as well. In an amusing article titled Garbage Alert, passionate Bond fan site Mi6 denounced all this (the first of the following quotes is from The Sun, the next is Mi6’s comment):
“The film – due out next year – is tipped to be called Red Sky At Night. But Ian Fleming’s three remaining titles The Property of a Lady, Risico and The Hildebrand Rarity are also being mooted. And planned stunts could include a death-defying winter sports chase. ”
The Sun read an anonymous posting on a fan forum last week.
So why post it? Well, to assure our pals at Mi6 that not every blog site jumps onto hotly circulated rumors without doing a little research. Okay, guys? I’m looking forward to the next Bond movie as much as the next guy. As Roger Ebert once pointed out, Bond is the movie hero most likely to live on well into the 21st Century (along with Tarzan and Sherlock Holmes – how’s all that going? 007 is our only hope). We know that Sam Mendes is helming Bond 23 and it will be released on November 9th, 2012. Beyond that, we’ll await some hard facts as we wonder about this hypothetical movie and how it might’ve worked – or not.
Speaking hypothetically, what if this title and actress were linked with Bond 23? What would the plot be?