I don't get it guys, you all know how Bonds are done. If Haggis would be rewriting everything from scratch and is page 25 today, it means the movie could never come out on the expected date.
Purvis & Wade draft help to set up all the location and sets (ok, maybe they will delete and change about 20% in the rewrite), and they are all setting up right now, as we speak, the shooting dates etc. These things take LONG in advance to secure.
A set is a set, and is defined by the producers and the original writers during meetings. Once they mapped out the whole movie, give or take a few changes, the guys were off to work, and the locations scouts also etc... months in advance.
Haggis is mostly rewriting dialogue and action happening into already DEFINED SETS. He certainly isn't going to submit in december a script with 75% new locations / sets that need to be secured and built in the studio for the next months shoots.
He is not rewriting from scratch, he is rewriting either dialogue or action, to improve the whole shebang. Maybe one different plot twist involving a new set, will come to him during the rewrites. He would need to get it approved first by the producers, before even penning it.
Indeed. He'll be granted leeway to add and remove scenes, so long as the set and location requirements remain fundamentally the same. You can add a stairwell, for example, to existing hotel scenes. You can't add a new volcano lair.
Which is not to say that the influence or changes are minor. His work could totally change the relationships between people, the nature of characters, the tone and rhythm of the whole film, what order information comes out, even which set-pieces happen in which act.
But the foundations are there, and P&W built them. How much of their interior decor remains will be hard to tell...though they've often been forthcoming in interviews after the dust has settled.
Regarding the opening gunbarrel, it would make no sense to reshoot it. The whole point is that it's Bond first kill. They would just reuse the CR one, if they plan to get it back to the traditional way. No tux, no dance, just the same old first kill and it sounds cool.
I can't believe for a second that they'll simply use the CR footage. It's an almost impossible cut - the shot's specifically designed to come off of the shot before it, not to be the opening shot of a movie. It would give no time for the score to build-up, no time for the audience to warm into it...and it starts with an awkward pan to the left.
The whole point of the CR version, for me, was to allow the moment to become 'symbolic'. So that when we see the new version on BOND 22 - a version designed and paced to kick off a movie, akin to what audiences worldwide already know and love - it 'represents' Bond's creation, rather than literally showing it.
Still - time will tell.
