Dec 5, 2012
Tradecraft: Jason Bourne Joins James Bond and OSS 117
Deadline reports that Matt Damon has joined the cast of The Monuments Men, possibly making that movie the greatest spy star team-up of all time. (Why wasn't Sean Connery in Bullseye!... or Roger Moore in The Man Who Would Be King?) With Daniel Craig and Jean Dujardin already cast, that means this WWII-set reverse caper movie will unite James Bond, Jason Bourne and OSS 117 on one screen! George Clooney also brings a lot of spy gravitas to the proceedings, though sadly he's not known as one iconic role. (Too bad he had to pass on Napoleon Solo.) Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, John Goodman, Hugh Bonneville and Bob Balaban round out the stellar cast, with Clooney directing and producing with his partner and co-writer Grant Heslov. The fact-based adventure follows a team of art historians and museum curators as they race to recover priceless artwork plundered by the Nazis at the end of WWII.
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4 comments:
A few points...
1) Ugh, Bullseye! Don't remind me.
2) On the related topic of a Connery-Moore teamup that never was, in the early '80s William Goldman wrote a spec script called The Sea Kings, based on the true story of how the legendary pirate Blackbeard joined with a wealthy landowner named Stede Bonnet who, having abandoned his plantation in Barbados and his miserable marriage, embarked on a new career in piracy. Goldman structured the script as a kind of high-seas Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid about two unlikely partners who were each other's dream -- the exhausted and broke Blackbeard wanting to end his pirating days and retire, the rich and bored Bonnet wanting a life of adventure. He wrote the role of Blackbeard for Connery, and producer Joseph E. Levine got the idea of casting Moore as Bonnet, who was known as "the Gentleman Pirate;" an alternate notion was to cast two Moores -- Roger as Blackbeard, and Dudley Moore, then at the height of his fame, as Bonnet. Astronomical budget projections, though, sent the project into permanent turnaround.
3) I mentioned this in a comment on a thread some months' back, but this is as good a place as any to reiterate it -- what I'd really like to see is an Expendables-like roundup of all the older actors who've played iconic spies -- Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Gary Oldman, Liam Neeson and Stellan Skarsgard. The difference would be that this movie would emphasize intrigue and elaborate caper-like planning, more along the lines of Mission: Impossible.
3) If Kiefer Sutherland joins the cast of Clooney's movie, the film will hit a sort of spy quintifecta -- Bond, Bourne, Bonisseur de La Bath, Barnes, and Bauer. (Barnes, of course, being the name of Clooney's CIA agent character in Syriana.
Connery & Moore came thisclose to working together in "A Bridge Too Far". From Roger's autobio..."I wasn't too sure when things might kick off with the film(TSWLM), so when Richard Attenborough offered me one of the leads in A Bridge Too Far I had to say I was unavailable. However, when things dragged on a little longer than anticipated in setting up the Bond, suddenly I became available again. My agent got word to Dickie, who replied saying that there was only one role left to be cast, that of General Brian Horrocks-which I thought was very interesting as Brian Horrocks had been a general when I was serving in Germany. 'He has approval,' said Dickie when he called me up, 'and, unfortunately, he doesn't approve of you!' The part went to Edward Fox." Thanks, Brian.
The Monuments Men sounds like an interesting project as long as they play it serious and not tongue-in-cheek. I would hate to see a WWII Ocean's Eleven.
Really, Bob? 'Cause I'd love to see a WWII Ocean's 11 movie! But I don't get the impression that's what this is.
Yeah, Bullseye!... What a missed opportunity. I was SO excited for it when it finally came on HBO after reading about it a few years prior when it was going into production... and so disappointed. But it sure would have been great to have had Connery, Moore and Caine all together in something. I think they came the closest in A Bridge Too Far, as Delmo mentions. Don't suppose there was a part for Caine in The Sea Kings, Quiller? That's very interesting though! I'd never heard of that project. Yeah, an Expendables of spying would be awesome. (Again, you need Michael Caine though!) Ronin was sort of that (though not with real icons) back in the 90s...
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