Wonder Woman star Said Taghmaoui has revealed to The National that he’d been cast as the main villain in Bond 25 prior to the departure of director Danny Boyle, with his involvement now uncertain as Eon and MGM regroup in the wake of Boyle’s exit.
“I’m supposed to do the next James Bond, playing the lead bad guy,” said Taghmaoui. “I was cast by Danny Boyle, and just now he left the project, so of course there’s some uncertainty. We don’t know who the director will be, and the producers don’t know if they’re going to go Russian or Middle East with the baddie right now. I literally just received a message saying: ‘If they go Middle East, it’s you. If they go Russian, it’s someone else.’ It’s the story of my life. Always on that line between something that could change my life and something that disappears.”
Although a new director is yet to be appointed (with the rumoured shortlist said to include the likes of Yann Demange, David Mackenzie, Jean-Marc Vallee, Edgar Wright, S.J. Clarkson and Bart Layton), The Daily Mail is reporting that the producers have decided to jettison John Hodge’s script for Bond 25 and have re-enlisted 007 veterans Neal Purvis and Robert Wade.
SEE ALSO: Rumour: Bond 25 producers wanted Danny Boyle to kill off 007
The duo – who have worked on every Bond film since The World Is Not Enough in 1999 – had originally been hired to write Bond 25, although their version was put on hold when Boyle and Hodge came on board. The writers are said to have now been given the go ahead to write a full script based upon their original treatment, which will presumably kill off any lingering hope of Bond 25 meeting its original October 2019 release date. And, as for whether they’ll find room for Said Taghmaoui and his Middle-Eastern villain, only time will tell…
