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MI6 profiles Barbara Broccoli, co-producer of
the upcoming 22nd James Bond film and daughter of
the legendary Albert R.
Cubby Broccoli...
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Meet The Filmmakers - Barbara Broccoli Biography
16th August 2007
Born to Albert and Dana Broccoli on
June 18 1960, the youngest of the Broccoli children, Barbara
grew up with a unique look at the production of the James
Bond movies. After school she attended Loyola University
where she graduated with a degree in Motion Picture Communication.
She entered the movie business after graduating
at age 22, as the Executive Assistant in her father's
roaring
series - just as production began on 1983’s
Bond film “Octopussy”.
She held this role until “The
Living Daylights” where she took on the responsibilities
of Associate Producer and collaborated with Tom Pevsner,
while her half-brother Michael G. Wilson worked alongside
the writing crew.
During her time with the James Bond productions,
Barbara Broccoli has worked (at various points) on the
directorial,
writing and production management departments of the Bond
movies before taking her father’s role as producer.
After the 6 year hiatus between Dalton’s
“Licence To Kill”
and Brosnan’s debut in “GoldenEye”,
Barbara took up her father’s position on board the
infamous Bond series as co-producer, joining forces
with her half-brother
Michael G. Wilson. Between the
two - who by now had Bond well and truly in their
blood -
Broccoli and Wilson set about crafting a fresh 007 for
the 21st Century. Her most notable call on the Brosnan
era
was
the
inspired casting of Judi
Dench as the female ‘M’ as
well as taking direct responsibility for the on-location
crew
at the Russian locations of "GoldenEye".
After Bond legend Cubby Broccoli’s passing in 1996,
Barbara was in the driving seat of the biggest film franchise
in history.
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Veering away from the world of 007, Broccoli
founded production company Astoria Productions with husband Frederick
Zollo. Together their joint credits include “Crime of the
Century”, starring Stephen Rea and Isabella Rossellini.
This made-for-TV production scooped up four Golden Globe nominations.
"We just got to the
point where the last film had taken the fantasy aspect to the
limit. Given the world situation, we felt we needed to do something
more realistic and more serious..."
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On top of “Astoria”, Broccoli
has recently been involved in putting together the colourful
stage show based on Fleming’s children’s novella
and the film musical “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”.
This Broadway hit made its on-stage debut on April 16, 2002
breaking records in both the UK and America.
Broccoli is responsible for ushering in
two of the six James Bond actors. Both debut Bond films
“GoldenEye” and last year’s “Casino
Royale” - were met with
amazing success. While the casting choice of Pierce
Brosnan ultimately was selected by Cubby Broccoli,
his daughter was directly responsible for assembling
the creative
team and leading the production of “GoldenEye”
and proving herself not only a lucky daughter but a brilliant
producer in her own right.
Most recently Barbara Broccoli has begun
assembling the team to create “Bond 22” -
with Daniel Craig set
to return as Bond and the diverse director of “Monster’s
Ball”, Marc
Forster taking up the director’s chair.
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Selected Interview Quotes
"Casino Royale is the definitive Bond story. It was always
an ambition of theirs [her father and his producing partner] to
be able to make this story, but sadly, they were never able to.
So when it finally became available to us, we leaped at the chance.
I like to think that I'm doing this for my dad."
On casting Bond #6: “It was a little bizarre
reading things that were so not true. First of all, with the whole
casting, who we were looking at, who we were offering it to. The
reality was that (producer) Michael G. Wilson and I wanted Daniel
from the very beginning. Our only challenge was to get him to
agree to do it. All the speculation was going on about all these
other people for like a year or more.”
“It’s clear in this story that there’s
someone out there. In fact there’s a line at the end of
the book Casino Royale where Bond makes a decision that he’s
going to take on this task, he’s going to become a warrior
and try to find the hand that holds the whip. The big menace out
there, the man who manipulates people and gets them to do evil
things. That’s very much the spirit of the book and that’s
the direction we’re going to continue on.”
On bringing Bond back down to earth: “We
just got to the point where the last film had taken the fantasy
aspect to the limit. Given the world situation, we felt we needed
to do something more realistic and more serious, and this was
the obvious thing for us to do. And we couldn’t have an
actor who had played the role before playing the first mission.
Brosnan was a wonderful Bond, but it wasn’t about him, it
was about making a decision to change the direction of the series.”
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