9/20/2018

Cary Joji Fukunaga Replaces Danny Boyle As Next James Bond Director

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Some will disagree with this and that's okay, but I think Bond 25 just got a serious upgrade, and the loss of Danny Boyle may have been an unexpected gift. With Boyle recently leaving the 007 franchise over creative differences, mostly over casting decisions, Deadline reports that he has now been replaced by True Detective director, Cary Joji Fukunaga, a decision that is tremendously exciting.

Fukunaga comes aboard Bond 25 just as we are learning of a plan to basically start the film over from scratch with a script by franchise scribes Neal Purvis and Robert Wade. The producers decided to ditch Boyle and John Hodge's story altogether, which makes sense even though it means a longer wait time. As for how long that wait is, it's been confirmed the start of production will be next March, with the film set to open on February 14th 2020, the first time since 1989's License to Kill that a Bond movie has opened domestically outside of the November timeframe.

In news that surprised me, Fukunaga now becomes the first American filmmaker to direct a Bond movie. He wins out over a number of top notch candidates mentioned for the job, including Edgar Wright, Jean-Marc Vallee, and recent contenders S.J. Clarkson and Yann Demange. This will be a wild change of pace for Fukunaga, but to be fair his career has already been pretty diverse. He recently gained notice with 2009's immigration drama Sin Nombre, followed by Victorian thriller Jane Eyre, still my favorite version of that classic story. From there he upped the scale with Netflix's Beasts of No Nation, and he'll soon rejoin the streaming service for his Maniac series with Emma Stone and Jonah Hill. Obviously, he's done nothing quite the size and scope of Bond, and I can't wait to see what he does with a project of this magnitude. I expect he'll want to take a pass at the script himself, but he'll need to be quick in order to hit the March start date.