It All Boyle's Down To...
18th March 2019
Danny Boyle explains why he walked away from directing Bond 25
By MI6 Staff
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Director Danny Boyle has given some indication as to the reason he departed Bond 25 back in August last year. Officially, he left the production due to 'creative differences.'
Speaking to Empire Magazine in the May issue, Boyle revealed that is was his tight working partnership with John Hodge that became an issue with EON Productions, because the producers wanted to bring another writer (s) on to the script that he and Hodge were developing. Boyle was a package deal.
"I learned quite a lot about myself working with Bond. I work in partnership with writers and I am not prepared to break it up. We were working very, very well, but they didn't want to go down that route," he explained. "So we decided to part company, and it would be unfair of me to say what it was because I don't know what Cary is going to do. I got a very nice message from him and I gave him my best wishes... it is just a great shame."
He went on to say, "What John Hodge and I were doing, I thought, was really good. It wasn't finished, but it could have been really good. You have to believe in your process and part of that is the partnership I have with a writer. It's like saying 'Hey, we are going to give you a different editor...' Those fundamental partnerships are vital."
Boyle confirms here that they did not have a final shooting script at the time of the split, so it would indicate that EON may have also had issues with the direction the script was taking with their ideas and concepts for the film. Whether or not any of those will make it through to the script that Fukunaga will ultimately shoot remains to be seen.
Finally, when asked which projects that have fallen by the wayside that Boyle regrets not doing, he said: "The Bowie film.... and the Bond, actually, because our version of it was good. Those are the two that kind of haunt you. They could have been really good."
Since Boyle and Hodge's departure, series stalwarts Neal Purvis and Robert Wade were brought back to work on the script, followed by Paul Haggis, and - most recently - Scott Z. Burns.
Thanks to 'Mallory' on the MI6 Forums.
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