Well, not really: Almost from the start, although names like Mel Gibson, Ralph Fiennes, and Liam Neeson had been approached about the part first made iconic by the late, great Sean Connery, the studio and Eon both agreed that their man was Pierce Brosnan. With New Zealand director Martin Campbell already secured on the strength of his previous picture, No Escape (1994), the search was on for a new actor to don the tux. I thought they could do better." (Dalton told the story differently in 2014.) said, "I didn't think that was the appropriate man for it. Although it was publicly stated at the time that Dalton was resigning of his own accord, then co-chairman of MGM Alan Ladd Jr. Speaking of which, it was revealed in Some Kind of Hero that MGM/UA made it clear to Eon that it was not interested in making a third Bond film with Dalton after the declining fortunes of the two he had done.
The story would address 007's role in a post-Cold War world and bring back some of the fun missing from the two Dalton films. The go-ahead was given for a new script, this time written by Michael France ( Cliffhanger) and later rewritten by Jeffrey Caine and Bruce Feirstein. The entire mess was sorted out by the summer of 1993, and the studio, now known as MGM/UA (for United Artists), began talks with Eon about relaunching Bond. We won't get into the legal wrangling between the Bond producers and MGM, except to say that, in simplified terms, it had to do with the licensing of the Bond movies by the studio to television networks at prices far below what the producers thought their value was. Albert Broccoli and Eon Productions (through its parent company, Danjaq) began a protracted legal battle with MGM that would freeze all development of a new Bond film for the next two years. But in August 1990, real-life events put a halt to work on Bond 17. Some of those included a pre-credits sequence set at a chemical weapons facility and the theft of a stealth aircraft. The script went through further revisions, which yielded plot points that ended up in what later became GoldenEye. In the 2015 book Some Kind of Hero: The Remarkable Story of the James Bond Films, Osborne told authors Matthew Field and Ajay Chowdhury, "The idea was that Bond was beginning to doubt whether he could still do it." Other writers worked on the script, including television writer Al Ruggiero ( Wiseguy) and the British duo of William Osborne and William Davies. The story also featured a jewel thief named Connie Webb, an old mentor of Bond's called Denholm Crisp, and a plot to start World War III. Wilson, a producer, executive producer, or co-writer on every Bond film since Moonraker (1979), penned a screenplay (allegedly titled "The Property of a Lady" after a Fleming short story) involving a terrorist attack on a Scottish nuclear facility and Bond's investigation of a wealthy yet corrupt businessman named Sir Henry Lee Ching. Broccoli was interested in bringing new blood to the series, and some of his candidates for director allegedly included John Landis ( An American Werewolf in London) and Ted Kotcheff ( First Blood). Eon chief Albert Broccoli parted ways with longtime screenwriter Richard Maibaum, who had worked on all but three of the previous 007 adventures, and director John Glen, who had helmed the five previous entries (still the longest stint by any Bond director).
No) and the studio behind Bond, MGM, began planning in 1990 for the 17th entry in the series, which would have been the third to feature Timothy Dalton as 007.Įven in 1990, changes were afoot in the world of James Bond.
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But despite License to Kill’s lackluster box office, Eon Productions (producers of every official Bond film since the series started in 1962 with Dr.
(it took in just $34 million) and was criticized for its dark tone and heavy violence. Licence to Kill had been the franchise's lowest-grossing entry in the U.S. GoldenEye introduced the fifth actor to play the role in the series, Pierce Brosnan, while updating other elements of the canon for the 1990s and resuscitating the iconic but venerable character's financial clout with moviegoers. 17, 1995, saw the wide release of GoldenEye, the 17th feature based on author Ian Fleming's fictional British agent and the first in six years - the longest stretch to date between Bond films - since 1989’s License to Kill.
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It was 25 years ago that British super-spy James Bond accomplished the most important rescue of his long, legendary career: His own movie franchise.