Bond 23: "Property of a Lady"
Not long ago, the James Bond website Mi6 collected a number of rumors about Bond 23 and offered up a piece with some SPOILERS on what they are saying will be The Property of a Lady, based on a short story by Ian Fleming.
As described by Wikipedia, the short story has James Bond investigating “a Secret Service employee, Maria Freudenstein, who is a double agent about to be paid by her Russian keepers by auctioning a clock crafted by Peter Carl Fabergé at Sotheby's in her name. The Russians have sent the Resident Director of the KGB in London to attend the auction and underbid for the item in order to push the price to the necessary value to pay for her services as a double agent. Bond attends the auction in hopes of spotting this man; after doing so the man is expelled from London as persona non grata. The core of this story - the auctioning of a Fabergé egg at Sotheby's to raise funds - was incorporated into the Octopussy film, with the story's title being uttered in dialogue by Bond. The plot element of a double agent within the Secret Service was later referenced with the character of Miranda Frost in Die Another Day as well as M's traitorous bodyguard, Craig Mitchell, in 2008's Quantum of Solace.”
The film version of Property of a Lady, again based on rumors, will be different, tying itself much more closely to the mythos as established in Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace.
It started with word that Rachel Weisz had been approached to play the villainous in the film. According to a report on Cinema Blend, via Mi6, she would not “take on the traditional Bond girl part, rather the head of the mysterious organization ‘Quantum’ that has been behind the plots in both of Daniel Craig’s two outings as 007 so far. Weisz is actually friends with Daniel Craig in fact they’re working together on the upcoming Dream House) and in the past she had a personal relationship with would-be Bond 23 director Sam Mendes.”
Although this was pretty much dismissed as nothing more than rumors, notes Mi6, “an interesting development took place a couple of days later that added to the intrigue. An established Rachel Weisz blog ran more details behind the rumor, including some basic detail about the film’s plot.
“The blog operated by Josh Mason, a 'long time friend and fan' of Rachel, passed on more details about the story. "The working title is The Property of a Lady. Some elements of the original story are used for the screenplay - among other things the name Maria Freudenstein for the villainous role - and the auction (Fleming wrote the story for Sotherby's magazine The Ivory Hammer). This auction will be seen in the pre-title sequence. It is a clandestine international auction that takes place during a conference in the United Nations headquarters in New York - a sequence similar to the opera scene in Quantum of Solace."
"They turn the usual Bond story upside down. Typically 007 chases a megalomaniac and restrains him from taking over world domination in the end. This time Bond has to learn just in the beginning that Quantum already has world domination. That also defines the title: The property of this lady is the whole world. And of course Quantum does it's best to go to war against Bond and MI6, with disturbing means. "They really shock the audience this time", the source said. This film will be the swan song for Judi Dench's M. One of the screenplay's topics is supposed to be genetic engineering and the swine flu."
Needless to say, this is all rumor at this point.
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EdGross
4/19/2010
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