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EON Productions pass on adapting the new James Bond
continuation novel "Devil May Care" as a franchise
movie...
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Producers Pass On "Devil
May Care"
20th August 2008
James Bond may be 'back' in the new adventure "Devil
May Care",
but 007's latest literary exploits will not make it to a big
screen adaptation. The latest continuation novel, penned by one-time
Bond author Sebastian
Faulks for the Ian
Fleming centenary, has
not been taken up by the film franchise. According to Variety,
EON Productions passed up the opportunity to adapt the book in
to a future film. The decision almost certainly ensures "Devil
May Care" will never escape the printed page, as the 007 movie
copyrights and trademarks have been controlled since the 1950s
by Danjaq, locking out anyone
else
from producing
movies featuring the British spy (with the exception of
Warner Bros "Never Say Never
Again" in 1983, which
was a "Thunderball" remake permitted by a legal settlement between
Kevin McClory and Ian Fleming).
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According to Variety, even if a
production company could acquire the film rights to "Devil May Care",
jointly owned by the Ian Fleming Estate and Faulks, they
wouldn’t be able to use the James Bond name, his
007 call sign, the James Bond theme or gun-barrel sequence,
for example. "Devil May Care" features all the regular Bond
hijinks - including locations around the world, martinis,
glamorous women and archvillains- but there’s a key
problem. EON producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G.
Wilson claimed that the book’s 1960s setting made
it less desirable as a movie property, at least for now. "We
love the book, but because it is set in the 1960s, we haven’t
considered making it in the near future," Broccoli
and Wilson told Daily Variety. The Cold War-set adventure takes place in 1967 and revolves
around the international drug trade that takes Bond to
Iran, the Caspian Sea and Russia and features a villain
with an oversized monkey’s paw for a hand. The book
smashed sales records in the UK, but faired less well in
the US. Critics received the book with luke-warm reviews. |
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Before the book was published, author Sebastian
Faulks sounded more hopeful to The Telegraph, "Well,
it's a possibility. It's been read by Barbara Broccoli and [fellow
producer] Michael Wilson. They were both very positive about
the book. But I'm sure that their choice of story for the next
movie will be dictated by hundreds of other considerations to
do with Hollywood and franchise and marketing. I'd be delighted
if it works." Following the statement by producers to Variety
this week, Faulks told The Independent, "I would have thought
that if you could move Casino Royale from the 1950s you could move
Devil May Care from the Sixties. But Eon know what they are doing."
Faulks added that if the company changed its mind
he would support the idea of a film.
After Fleming’s death in 1964, subsequent
James Bond novels were written by Kingsley Amis (under the pseudonym
Robert Markham),
John Pearson, John Gardner and Raymond
Benson. Charlie Higson has
also penned a series of "Young James
Bond" novels, which follow the character’s progress
from his school days at British public school Eton. The Higson
books would appear ripe for cinematic adaptation.
For now, at least, neither the Ian Fleming Estate nor Faulks
are giving up hope that "Devil May Care" will eventually
make it into theaters, though in a joint statement to Daily Variety,
they confirmed, "There have been no discussions about the
film rights whatsoever."
