Following months of director swaps, delays, script re-writes and release date shuffles, the next Bond film, still only known outside EON as Bond 25, might actually be on a positive track again. Collider reports that freshly minted Oscar winner Rami Malek is hammering out a deal to play the villain.
While Malek was previously mentioned as a potential recruit, it had been thought that his scheduled work on Mr. Robot's final season would take him out of contention for the Bond baddie role, diaries have been juggled and a way has apparently been found for him to do both. It's also not quite a done deal, as Malek's triumph at this weekend's Academy Awards means the Bohemian Rhapsody star can command a heftier fee.
Variety also brings an update on the film, letting slip that Daniel Craig's 007 will be joined by several new characters in addition to the returning likes of Lea Seydoux, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw and Naomie Harris. Two new female roles are planned, one a new MI6 agent and the other more like Olga Kurylenko's Camille, plus a CIA agent along the lines of Jeffrey Wright's Felix Leiter. The trade mag has heard that Billy Magnussen, who worked with current director Cary Fukunaga on Netflix's Maniac is the top choice for the part, though there's no offer in place just yet.
And there's also talk of Fukunaga being the one to work on the script, despite recent reports that Scott Z. Burns had been choppered in to re-write Neal Purvis and Robert Wade's previous draft. Variety's sources say that the producers and Craig are happy with what Fukunaga has delivered, though the truth may lie somewhere in between.
Bond 25 is still scheduled to land in the UK on 3 April next year, followed by its 8 April release in the States.
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