12 replies to this topic

[ShakeNotStirred]

I've always wondered why us Bond fans waited so long? Was it because of Dalton and we wasnt gonna do a third or because Brosnan wasnt ready yet. Cuz i know Brosnan was doin RemingtonSteele but I thought he got out of that contract in like 90. So i was just wondering.

[SeanValen00V]

Legal battle between Bond producers and Kevin Mclory who thought he had the rights to the remake of Thunderball, thus wanted to do a rival Bond series. Something like this, but definately it was Bond in the courts and legal battles.

[Felix's lighter]

Actually, Kevin McClory gave up on Bond much like everyone else but MGM/UA did in the early '90s (Cubby even tried to sell Danjaq at the time and there were no takers). The actual interim came about because of MGM/UA's legal problems, especially when it briefly became MGM/Pathe. McClory did not raise his ugly head until after the success of GoldenEye, after which he attempted to start his own rival series, with rumors Tim Dalton would star as Bond.

[SeanValen00V]

Cheers Felix, I stand corrected, sorry I couldn't save you from the sharks, but your alive.

[ShakeNotStirred]

Thanks. I new it would had something to do with legal battles but i know it also had something to do with Brosnan still starring in Remington Steele and how he couldnt get out of his contract with NBC.

[Alexborn007]

Originally posted by ShakeNotStirred
Thanks. I new it would had something to do with legal battles but i know it also had something to do with Brosnan still starring in Remington Steele and how he couldnt get out of his contract with NBC.

That happened in 1986 when they tried to get him for TLD. NBC wouldnt release him from his contract and they looked at Sam Neil (who pretty much had it clinched) until Albert Broccoli chose Timothy Dalton.

[ChandlerBing]

MGM refused to greenlight another Bond with Dalton. Cubby would not budge. He had his heart attack and was taken out of the picture. Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli were more keen to get the movie going so they agreed to look around at other actors, right about the time Dalton stepped aside.

Dalton hated the publicity he got with Bond, so why did he take the role? My God, this was only the biggest role you could get. Everyone on the planet will know who you are. And you want to bitch about the privacy, Mr. Dalton? Geez, you had to know what you were getting in bed with!

[MrDraco]

"I swear to god, she never told me her ago."-Daltion's reply

[Joyce Carrington]

Of course there was the legal stuff, and the 'trying to find the new Bond actor' thing, but maybe there was also the factor of finding a good script: Since the Cold War had ended, they had to invent a new enemy.

[mccartney007]

If you want a quick, easy and condensed answer it would be because EON had to protect itself from what it felt were shady business practices that could potentially devalue the series; therefore a lawsuit was launched. And even after the new Bond film was given a start date to begin filming, it ended up having to be pushed back six months. The details of this tenuous, nearly seven year journey, would trace their roots back to studio unrest and lack of confidence extended towards Licence to Kill even before it had opened.

1988-1989
MGM/UA began to have serious concerns about bankrolling Bond films in which they had little creative input. Albert Broccoli had bought United Artists 50% stake in Danjaq in the early 80`s (UA bought the shares in 1975 from Harry Saltzman when he sold his interest in the series and got out of the business of making Bond films) and thus retained 100% total creative control over the direction the series would take. But with the studio facing internal financial problems, they needed more bang for their buck, and were becoming less enthralled with Broccoli`s decision making.

The tension began to manifest itself in the way in which MGM/UA marketed Licence To Kill, or should we say, didn`t market Licence To Kill. Bob Peak`s original artwork was scrapped in exchange for a low brow, lowest-common-denominator approach. His painted, "classic" style artwork was traded for a run-of-the-mill computer composite poster that featured Timothy Dalton, Robert Davi, Talisa Soto and Carey Lowell in a rather non-descript pose. The title was changed from the more poignant Licence Revoked to the generic Licence To Kill out of fear that the American audience was too stupid to differentiate a Bond film from a teenage driving flick. With the exception of a guest appearance on MTV by Talisa Soto, both she and Carey Lowell were conspicuously absent from print media, as well as television and radio talk shows to promote the film. It was enough to make Timothy Dalton, in 1989, declare to BONDAGE Magazine #16: "My feeling is this will be the last one. I don`t mean my last one. I mean the end of the whole lot. I don`t speak with any real authority, but it`s sort of a feeling I have. Sorry!"

Dalton probably knew more than he let on, but it was clear even to him that the series was already in danger and this was well before the messy legal action that would explode onto the scene one year later. Creative control issues were merely the beginning of Danjaq`s problems.

1989-1990
The North American box office receipts were abysmal: the film debuted in 4th place in its first weekend, dropped to 7th place in its second weekend and by the third weekend of release fell completely out of the Top 10. North American box office amounted to an underwhelming $34 million dollars (estimated). In August 1990 director John Glen and long time writer Richard Maibaum were unceremoniously dumped from the series. Variety Magazine quoted an anonymous, and apparently uninformed, EON insider as saying Maibaum was a "has-been" who had only contributed dialogue on the recent films.

The current script under development, which was to deal with robots run amok and take place in Scotland, Japan, and Hong Kong, was scrapped. At the same time, the August 8th issue of Variety reported that Cubby Broccoli put Danjaq, the company that holds the rights to the Fleming stories, up for sale and then handed over EON Productions to his daughter, Barbara Broccoli, and step-son Michael G. Wilson (to be fair, Michael and Barbara had been groomed for this responsibility for a long time and in conjunction with Cubby`s fragile health, this was as good a time as any to make a change). The asking price for Danjaq was a reported $200 million dollars, though conservative estimates placed the value nearer at $166 million. MGM/UA considered buying Danjaq, but balked at the steep price tag. Other big name players came and went on the financial scene, such as producer Joel Silver of "Lethal Weapon" fame. He was high on the idea of doing Bond and having his longtime friend and box office champ Mel Gibson play 007. But Silver, like others, found the exclusive distribution deal with MGM/UA too hard to swallow. No one wanted to be committed to a project that was tethered to a sinking studio.

The problems really began to pile up with the proposed merger of MGM/UA and Pathe Communications. Giancarlo Paretti, a corrupt Italian businessman with a long history of bank fraud and worthless checks, ran Pathe. Before Giancarlo even owned MGM/UA, he intended to sell off foreign television rights to the Bond series piecemeal in an effort to finance his takeover. He made outside deals with television networks in France, Spain, Italy, South Korea, and Japan without first consulting Danjaq. A deal with Ted Turner`s cable superstation TBS may have proven the most irksome. In his book "Bond and Beyond", Tom Soter describes the prevailing attitude at the time towards the TBS deal for "James Bond Wednesdays": "He (Cubby Broccoli) was angry about the way the previous movies had been sold to television-Ted Turner`s cable superstation TBS was running a Bond movie a week at one point-which Broccoli felt decreased the series value." The TBS angle would become a side issue in a protracted two-year legal battle. Giancarlo Paretti bought MGM/Pathe on Oct. 22, 1990 for $1.3 billion and two days later signed a deal to sell 860 MGM/UA movie titles to Telecinco, a Spanish TV network. However, two weeks before that he signed a deal to sell 1,200 MGM/UA titles to Forta, another Spanish TV network.

Days before the merger though, Danjaq filed suit to block the deal. At the press junket for the movie GoldenEye, Goldeneye Magazine #4 (published by the Ian Fleming Foundation) recorded Michael Wilson`s comments in which he explained their strategic moves:"What happened was that Paretti took over MGM, and he wanted to have a leverage buyout, and we sued in federal court to enjoin him, and we failed, on the basis that if the leverage buyout went forward, that the company would be bankrupt, and four months later they were bankrupt."

Kirk Kerkorian, who had sold MGM/UA to the Australian Company Qintex, sued over Paretti`s mismanagement. Kerkorian was in turn served with a shareholder lawsuit over his own sales of MGM/UA assets of back catalogue. In 1992, Cr

[mccartney007]

1993-1995
Thinking the first draft would be turned in within twelve weeks, MGM/UA Chairman Alan Ladd proclaimed the project to be on the fast track. But that fast track had a few bumps along the way. France took longer to write the script than was originally expected. After rewrites by Bruce Feirstein, among others, it looked as if the project was all set. Filming was scheduled to begin August 1994 for a summer `95 release. Then, according to press reports at the time, True Lies, Arnold Shwarzenegger`s 1994 film, came along and contained enough action sequence similarities to the current GoldenEye script that EON was forced to back off its August 1994 start date, rewrite the storyline and push production to January 1995. On January 16, 1995 principal photography began on GoldenEye in Leavesden, England. By the time GoldenEye was released in the United States on November 17th, 1995, nearly six and a half years had gone by.

Even if there had never been a single lawsuit filed and Paretti had never entered the picture, it is unlikely that another film would have been immediately made for release in 1991, nor would Dalton have returned to the role. The creative control issues became temporarily dwarfed by the litigation, but when the smoke and dust cleared from all of that, Dalton found himself right back where he started: on the hot seat. John Calley, CEO of MGM/UA in 1994 and 1995, was reportedly adamant that a new Bond be hired for the next film. Dalton was the "Bond of record", but gracefully bowed out of the role, thus saving Albert Broccoli from having to make the hard call of firing Dalton.

[Byron]

One thing that always bothered me was the lack of continuity between
LTK and GE.

No explanation given as to how 007 got his licence restored or any reference at all to the events in LTK.

There was only a very vague conversation between M and Bond along the lines of "Do not turn this into a personal vendetta" and Bond saying "No, never".

DAD was pretty much about a personal vendetta.

Great chunks were lifted from the Dalton films. Although the personal revenge thing was done better in LTK.

I firmly believe that MGM and/or Brosnan and Wilson are trying to do all they can to dicredit, demean and outright rehash the 2 very fine Dalton films.

[BONDFINESSE 007]

why would brosnan want to discredit the dalton films?....that does not make a bit of sense