Source:Steven Chupnick

August 25, 2007

Oscar winner Paul Haggis is returning to the Bond series to write the 22nd adventure of Agent 007, starring Daniel Craig with Marc Forster taking the reigns as director. For the time being, the movie is being referred to merely as Bond 22.

During press for his latest film In the Valley of Elah, Haggis mentioned that writing Bond is very rewarding. "Bond is just pure imagination; you just get to have fun. It's escapism and it's fun, but I try to ground him as a human being."

But he does say that his version of James Bond is different than the others. "My Bond is an actual assassin; when he kills someone, he kills them with a knife, they're bloody and he pays a price. He denies that he pays a price, but he does. When he sees a woman who witnesses something horrific, and he sees her taking a shower, he doesn't just go in there and f*ck her, like the old Bond would have done. He sits there with her, and she says, 'I can't get this blood from my fingernails.' So he helps her get the blood from her fingernails; that's what he does, that's my Bond. So it's a different guy; it's a guy who's much more like these guys, these heroes (in 'Valley of Elah')."

As for the storyline, Mr. Haggis wasn't giving anything up including any possible shooting or setting locations, however he would say, "It picks up 2 minutes after the last one, and it's going to be fun."

He is sticking with the creation of Bond closer to the vision of author Ian Fleming, he said. "Yeah, I hope so because I really loved his books and his movies. That stuff was really close to his books, and most of them aren't."

He disproved the rumor about Carice van Houten, star of Paul Verhoeven's Black Book, being in Bond 22 as one of the vixens. "She's great, isn't she – but she's not going to be in this one."

He also added, "Everyone says they know what the ending is, and they're wrong. Everyone thinks they know about the Bond Girls, and they're wrong."

Bond 22 is scheduled to hit theatres on November 7, 2008. In the Valley of Elah, which Haggis wrote and directed, opens in select cities September 14. Based on the true story of the investigation of a soldier's murder following his duty fighting in Iraq, it stars Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron and Susan Sarandon.

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