The playwright of eight productions staged between 1992 and 2012, Jez Butterworth, recently confirmed in a new interview with the New Yorker that he has been on call for James Bond director Sam Mendes to polish the script for Bond 24.
Butterworth, whose screenwriting work includes this year's well-received "Edge of Tomorrow", was recently in New York to celebrate the release of "Get On Up", a biopic of singer and musician James Brown. He spoke to the media about casting for his play "The River", moving between the mediums of stage and screen and about the scripting work he was heading home to London to perform for EON and the 007 team.
Of the character and the dos-and-don'ts of scripting for 007, Butterworth comments, "You know, like Bond doesn't have scenes with other men. Bond shoots other men - he doesn't sit around chatting to them. So you put a line through that."
Butterworth draws inspiration from his hero Harold Pinter, received positive reviews for his comedy "Jerusalem", and earned the Paul Selvin Honorary Award for his work with his brother, John-Henry, on "Fair Game" (2011).
He was first approached about Bond 24 in early September 2014, and spent two weeks before his US trip being motorbiked back and forth to Pinewood for conversations with Mendes and Bond star Daniel Craig. It is now understood that he has started on a rewrite - presumably of the same script that passed through the hands of John Logan, and 007's regular scribes, Purvis and Wade.
It was also revealed that he performed the same duties on Sam Mendes' successful "Skyfall", although went uncredited on the film. At this point it remains unknown if the work he will do on Bond 24 will be enough to earn him a screen credit. What is clear is that the writer will have limited time to work on the rewrite if production is still scheduled to commence in early December. Sam Mendes is also known for blocking out up to a fortnight for rehearsals with his cast, bringing the deadline for script approval even closer.
Bond 24 is scheduled to shoot in Austria in January 2015, with location work in Rome and Morocco to follow.
