James Bond 25 has had some difficulty getting off the ground in the years since Spectre's release, but EON Productions and MGM announced last week that we can expect Great Britain's most famous spy to be gunning down bad guys and drinking martinis again the end of 2019. Aside from Daniel Craig reportedly returning to play Bond, no story details have been officially revealed yet. However, a new report claims that when Bond is back on the big screen next year, he'll be going up against a blind super villain, an adversary who the literary Bond dealt with in the early 2000s.
Supposedly the twenty-fifth James Bond movie will be at least partly based on the 2001 novel Never Dream of Dying by Raymond Benson, who wrote James Bond stories from 1997 to 2002. Among the many plot elements the next movie will use is Mr. Bond going up against a sightless main antagonist, who in Benson's novel was the leader of a criminal organization called the Union. The Mirror also reported that James Bond 25's working title is currently Shatterhand, although as with any working title, that's subject to change as production looms closer. Christoph Waltz and Dave Bautista are also expected to reprise their respective Spectre characters.
Many of the James Bond movies have been partly or fully inspired by James Bond stories, whether they were written by Ian Fleming or one of his successors, but the most recent installments (Quantum of Solace, Skyfall and Spectre) have been original stories. If this new report is legitimate, then it looks like Shatterhand, or whatever James Bond 25 ends up being called, will return to taking plot points from a previously published source. The Never Dream of Dying book began with a police raid that went wrong and resulted in numerous deaths. Realizing that the Union was behind the tragedy, Bond immediately set out to bring down the crime organization. His adventure took him to Paris, where he met movie star Tylyn Mignonne, whose husband, Leon Essinger, was connected to the Union.
While James Bond 25 may hit some of the basic beats of Never Dream of Dying, it doesn't sound like this will be a completely faithful adaptation, and it was also noted in the report that the James Bond 25 script will take inspiration from previous Bond cinematic outings You Only Live Twice and On Her Majesty's Secret Service. For right now, all that's been officially confirmed about James Bond 25 is its release date and that Neal Purvis and Robert Wade are working on the script. Sam Mendes will not return to direct, and his successor has not been announced yet. It's also unclear which studio will release James Bond 25 as Sony, Warner Bros, 20th Century Fox, Universal and Annapurna have been pitching to secure the distribution rights from EON and MGM.
James Bond 25 will be released in theaters on November 8, 2019. While we wait for more news on how the spy tale is progressing, be sure to browse through our 2017 movie guide to see what else is coming out for the remainder of the year.
