A stunt involving moving trains that director Sam Mendes wanted to shoot in India for the as-yet-untitled James Bond 23 has to be rewritten because locomotive officials won’t let the 007 sequel depict rooftop travel.
The Hindustan Times says the original script called for Daniel Craig’s British spy to leap from a motorcycle to a moving train, then hop aboard the roof of another train that’s packed with travelers. It’s that last bit, the part about travelers on the roof, that’s worrying officials of the state-run railway system. According to the Times, rooftop travel can be a serious problem in India, and they will not allow any sanctioned production to show the illegal practice on film.
To be clear, Indian Railways Minister Dinesh Trivedi has no problem with Craig (or his stuntman) performing the trick, so long as no one else is on the train roof with him at the time. It seems like a little problem, and one that’s easily resolved with the tapping of a few keystrokes by John Logan, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade or another of the film’s credited writers. In fact, Trivedi told the Times that the makers of the Bond sequel “had agreed to the conditions.”
Good. Now they can get back to deciding between Javier Bardem or Ralph Fiennes as Bond’s adversary in the next film, and finding a role for Naomie Harris, who has been rumored to play Miss Moneypenny in the film. We’ll continue to track casting on the film, which is due in theaters on Nov. 9, 2012.
