We thought that the Casino Royale producers would have sorted their acts out after the months and months of endless spazzing around as they tried to find a new James Bond. But no.
After squidge-faced Daniel Craig was finally confirmed as the new James Bond, everything else was expected to simply fall into place. But that hasn’t happened. At all. Casino Royale is still short of a Bond Girl and a Bond Villain. And the bloody thing has already started filming.
Friday saw the first day of filming for Casino Royale in Prague, with new James Bond
Daniel Craig (DVDs) all excited and ready to roll about the floor dodging
space lasers and invisible cars or whatever bollocks the film requires
him to do. Trouble is, he’s got nobody to do it with – casting for the
villain and the Bond Girl hasn’t been finalised yet.
Paul Haggis – the writer of the Casino Royale screenplay who won an
Oscar for writing Million Dollar Baby and has been Oscar-nominated this
year for writing and directing Crash – apparently told The Hollywood
Reporter what a dire state of affairs the search for a new Bond Girl is
in:
"They’re talking to three or four girls right now … every
week I read there’s a new Bond girl, and I call them and they say, ‘No,
you idiot.’"
The names of potential Bond girls have come thick and fast of late. Angelina Jolie didn’t want to do it – and she’s all sprogged-up now anyway, Charlize Theron just didn’t want to do it and – in what can only be described as a moment of staggeringly blind panic – Jessica Simpson was reportedly being considered to play the Casino Royale Bond Girl.
Now, apparently, the names in the Casino Royale running are Thandie
Newton from Mission: Impossible 2 and, um, some other films, and
Wedding Crashers star Rachel McAdams. As for a baddie, a decision is
reportedly close to being made, but names aren’t being hurtled about
with the ferocity of the Bond Girl search. The Bond Villain/Bond Girl
scenes don’t start shooting for another month yet, so there’s still
time for the Casino Royale producers to change and re-change their
minds about another 400 times before they have to commit to anything.
One Hollywood agent told the Hollywood Reporter that the producers are
in a tricky spot by leaving it this late:
"To be that exposed is
unheard of. [the actor or actress] can have them over a barrel. Not to
have your two principal leads [by now] is awfully strange."
Casino
Royale will be released on November 17th this year, even if it just
stars Daniel Craig, a burly stagehand in a dress and an evil-looking sock puppet.
Read more:
Wanted: 007 Babe & Baddie – E! Online
[story by Stuart Heritage]