Source:Edward Douglas

October 27, 2007

Director Marc ("Finding Neverland") Forster's sixth movie, an adaptation of Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, is about six weeks away from being released, but he's already well into prepping to shoot his most ambitious project yet, the 22nd installment of the James Bond franchise, currently known simply as Bond 22.

He took a break from pre-production to do some press in New York for "Kite Runner" and when ComingSoon.net talked to him, we made sure to leave a bit of time to ask him about the upcoming Bond flick, which is scheduled for release in just over a year. Either Forster really doesn't have many answers just yet and has an insanely busy month of preparation ahead of him or he's just been trained well to keep everything a secret until the inevitable press releases from the Broccolis and Sony/MGM.

He told us why he decided to take on something as challenging as trying to follow-up the best-received Bond movie in many years. "After doing 'Kite Runner' and being in this world and being in tents in Western China in the hardest conditions where obviously, you don't have any stars, so you're limited with your budget and what you can do," he began. "Ultimately, the studio has to watch out for the commercial possibilities of the films, so doing a Bond film next is just a new challenge, something different. I always like—if you look at my films—I always like to do the opposite of what I just did."

It's surprising how little we've heard about casting for the movie, and when we asked him about that, he responded, "No, I still have to do it all. I've been really focusing on 'Kite Runner' as well, so there has been no casting news, nothing." He also said that they don't know where they're going to be shooting first, despite early reports of the movie shooting in Panama.

The budget for the next Bond film is likely to be a good deal greater than Forster's last few movies, even Finding Neverland, but that doesn't worry him. "I assume that probably with every movie and movies in general, you always have to deal with budgetary concerns, but we will see."

Despite the larger budget, Forster says he's approaching the movie like any other movie and he thinks it's hard to judge whether the impending guild strikes may have on the production of the movie. "I hope if there's a strike, it will be short," he said. "It'll be hard to judge if it's a long strike. It's all up in the air."

You can read more with Forster just before the release of The Kite Runner on December 14, and then Bond 22 is scheduled to be released in just over a year on November 7, 2008.

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