Tradecraft: Boyle Leaves Bond

Deadline and other trade outlets reported today that director Danny Boyle has exited Bond 25, according to an announcement made on the official James Bond Twitter feed credited to producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, and star Daniel Craig. The typical "creative differences" were cited as Boyle's reason for leaving what is slated to be Craig's final appearance as Agent 007. That's somewhat surprising, since the original (somewhat unusual) agreement as reported in the trades was that Boyle would only be hired if the producers were happy with John Hodge's script based on his specific idea. When they were happy with it, they jettisoned a previous version drafted by regular Bond scribes Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, and proceeded with Boyle and Hodge. It seemed like that would have been the time to iron out any creative differences. Now, with Boyle's departure, it's unclear what script EON, MGM, and domestic and international distributors Annapurna and Universal will move forward with. If they still hope to make their December production start, presumably it would make sense to proceed with the Hodge script that Boyle instigated, based on which pre-production was already underway. If that script is so personally tailored to Boyle that there's no point continuing with it with another director, they still have that Purvis and Wade Bond 25 script to fall back on. But presumably that would mean starting from scratch in pre-production, which could delay the start of the shoot, which could in turn delay the previously established fall 2019 release dates. I wouldn't be surprised if we ended up with some hybrid of the two scripts. Personally, I'm quite disappointed by this turn of events. I was really looking forward to seeing what Boyle brought to Bond... and what his supposedly unique idea for the character turned out to be.