Javier Bardem has confirmed the rumor that he will be playing a villain in the upcoming twenty-third James Bond film scheduled to begin production later this year.
In an interview with ABC’s Nightline, Bardem stated –
I am very excited. My parents took me to watch the movies, and I saw all of them, so to play that is going to be fun. They chose me to play this man, but I cannot give you many details.
Unfortunately, one of those “details” is the character’s name, which will now only fuel speculation that Bardem will be playing the classic Bond villain Blofeld. Although a presence in the early years of the franchise, he hasn’t been seen since 1981’s For Your Eyes Only, when Bond dispatched an unnamed, wheelchair-bound man who shared Blofeld’s characteristic penchant for stroking a white cat.
This rumor is most-likely wrong, born more out of fan wishes than any actual possibility of it happening.
To fully understand why it is highly unlikely that Blofeld will show up in the series anytime soon, you need to know that the James Bond franchise’s producers, EON Productions, don’t own the rights to use the character or the global criminal organization he ran, SPECTRE. Those two elements were created for an original Bond film for producer Kevin McClory. When the film didn’t happen, Fleming folded many of the story ideas into the novel Thunderball. Lawsuits followed resulting in McClory getting a producer credit on the Thunderball film adaption and owning the remake rights to the book. Although Blofeld was able to appear in subsequent novels and their film adaptions, it appears that the rights to use the character in new stories lie with McClory’s estate. (McClory died in 2006.)
Never let it be said though, that the fandom rumor mill ever let something like facts get in the way of a good story. And it is tempting to see where the character of Blofeld could be fit into the franchise’s current continuity as the head of the shadowy terrorist organization Quantum that Daniel Craig’s Bond has slowly been uncovering over the course of Casino Royale and Quantum Of Solace.
I just don’t see it happening.
Via Coming Soon.
