Cary Fukunaga takes aim at Bond 25 rumors about Blofeld, Q

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Keeping up with all the hubbub around BOND 25 has been a difficult task, but all you need to know now is that previously on-board director Danny Boyle is out and TRUE DETECTIVE and MANIAC helmer Cary Fukunaga is in. The director is already hard at work at mapping the movie out and is wasting no time shooting down rumors, and in a recent interview addressed some unfounded reports that actors Christoph Waltz and Ben Whishaw would be returning for this new outing.

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Fukunaga was speaking with Inquirer.net recently when he was asked about reports out there that Waltz would be returning as his SPECTRE character, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, and Whishaw would be returning to play smart guy Q, the man who supplied Bond with his array of gadgets in SKYFALL and SPECTRE. To that, the director is curious to who the hell is saying this stuff, as they are still knee-deep in the scripting phase.

“Who is saying those rumors? We haven’t finished the screenplay, so there is no way that anyone could know that. Those are two extraordinary actors, so if there is space for them in the story, I would absolutely want them there. But I don’t know yet what it’s going to be.”

So, what it sounds like Fukunaga is saying is that the guaranteed return of any character except Daniel Craig’s Bond is still up in the air at this point. When Boyle left so did the script by John Hodge, and the idea was that studios MGM and Eon would return to the script by longstanding Bond writers, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade. Maybe that’s still the case to some degree, with Fukunaga perhaps doing some tinkering as well. Either way, it sounds like the story is still coming together, so anything else you read about it is purely a rumor, lest it comes from the filmmakers themselves. 

Waltz himself also said this year that his character wouldn’t be coming back, when asked last year said, “No, I'm sorry. I'm really sad, but that's the tradition, that there is a new…name. Sorry. I would've liked to."

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What Fukunaga can say about this movie is that it will continue the arc of Craig’s Bond as started in CASINO ROYALE (2006), but as is expected the character will go through some changes.

“In terms of what I can bring to change the character, Bond is on a character arc that started with ‘Casino Royale,’ and I will be carrying that on. There will be changes, I am sure. As in any story, a character has to change in order [to have] a narrative.”

As much as I disliked SPECTRE I would like to see Waltz take another crack at his big villain. He's too talented of an actor to be left to the dustbin of that movie. As for Q, how are you going to leave him out? Bond needs his toys, and there's nothing wrong with getting some PADDINGTON vibes every now and again. Then there's the matter of that arc Fukunaga was talking about. It seems things were reset a bit with SKYFALL, and then SPECTRE was, you know, whatever, so where does his character arc go from there? I guess we will have to wait and see…and SPECTRE wasn't good.