As rumblings start to be felt regarding development of Bond 25, it seems that more than the world is at stake as no less than five studios are vying for distribution rights to the next 007 adventure.
Although Sony has been distributing the films since 2006's Casino Royale, their license to distribute has expired. As a result, they now have to get in line with all the other interested parties to impress EON (Everything Or Nothing) Productions' Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, and convince them, along with co-owners MGM, that they're the right people for Her Majesty's Secret Service.
According to an article in The New York Times, besides Sony, the other studios vying for the rights are Warner Bros, Universal, 20th Century Fox and, surprisingly, Annapurna, the company behind such films as Her and American Hustle. The theory regarding the latter is that having Bond could be a game-changer for them.
Of course while all of this is going on, Broccoli and Wilson are, at best, hopeful that Daniel Craig will return for one more outing, which would be his fifth following Casino Royale, Quantum Of Solace, Skyfall and Spectre. Virtually nothing is known about the plot of Bond 25, although it is being written by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who have co-written every Bond film from 1999’s The World Is Not Enough through 2012's Skyfall, while also contributing to Spectre.
Not long ago Purvis spoke to The Telegraph and offered up some of the potential challenges facing the new film creatively. “I’m just not sure how you would go about writing a James Bond film now,” he said. “Each time, you’ve got to say something about Bond’s place in the world, which is Britain’s place in the world. But things are moving so quickly now that that becomes tricky. With people like Trump, the Bond villain has become a reality.”
More recently, actor Jeffrey Wright, coming off of HBO's Westworld, offered up a tweet that suggested he could be returning as CIA agent Felix Leiter in the new film.