Written by Steve ‘Frosty’ Weintraub

Earlier today I attended the press day for Paramount Vantage’s upcoming film “Defiance”. If you aren’t familiar with the movie, it stars Daniel Craig and it’s based on the extraordinary true story of a group of Jews that banded together to survive in a forest in Eastern Europe during WW2. And while surviving would’ve been enough, they also managed to fight the Nazis and save over a thousand people. It really is an incredible story and in the coming weeks I’ll have interviews with most of the cast and director Edward Zwick.

But let’s get to the reason you’re here.

Since Daniel is the current James Bond, while talking with him about “Defiance”, we were able to ask a few James Bond questions and his answers told us a lot about the future of the iconic franchise.

As most of you know from an interview I did with director Marc Forester, when Marc made “Quantum of Solace”, he originally had a different ending in mind. The original ending made “Quantum” the middle chapter of a trilogy. But after their first screening, Marc removed the last scene (which ran about a minute) and ended the movie in such a way that it leaves the door open for the next filmmaker to decide what to do.

For the next film, they can either use the deleted ending as their start point, or they can pretend that it never happened and just begin fresh.

And according to Daniel Craig, that’s what they’re going to do. When asked if the next “Bond” would be part of a trilogy, he said, “No fucking way. I’m done with that story. I want to lie on a beach for the first half an hour of the next movie drinking a cocktail.”

While he was obviously kidding about lying on the beach for the first thirty minutes, I’m sure he meant every word about the next “Bond” movie starting fresh. In fact, he had a few ideas about what he wants to do and they sound really good. Here’s what he said:

“We’ve finished this story as far as I’m concerned. We’ve got a great set of bad guys. There is an organization that we can use whenever we want to. The relationship between Bond and M is secure and Felix is secure. Let’s try and find where Moneypenny came from and where Q comes from. Let’s do all that and have some fun with it.”

The way he’s talking about the future, the next film might feature a return to the technology that’s been missing in these first two Daniel Craig “Bond” movies. In fact, the introduction of Q could be a main part of the movie. Maybe Bond has to rescue Q from whatever bad guys are in the next movie and turn him. Maybe he’s a genius inventor that the entire world wants and that’s the way they can introduce his ability to invent gadgets for future movies. The possibilities are endless.

While this is me just speculating, one of the things I’ve loved about both Daniel Craig Bond movies are the way they’re set in the real world. They’re not loaded with sci-fi special effects. While I’d love to see Q enter into this new Bond universe, I just hope they find a real world way of using his technology.

Finally, when asked about his future plans and if he’d like to make another movie before the next “Bond” film:

"We don’t know when we’re going to do the next Bond. Nobody’s thinking about it at the moment. We’re giving it a rest for the moment. If I can squeeze something in next year I will…but I haven’t figured out what that’ll be yet. But nothing in the cold."

With the amount of money James Bond makes, I’m sure we’ll be hearing about the next film being greenlit sometimes next year. Until then…