Posted on 12/02/2004 6:32:50 PM PST by aculeus
A leading black actor, 6ft 4in Colin Salmon, emerged last night as a front-runner to replace Pierce Brosnan as James Bond in the next 007 adventure.
Noted for a deep, commanding voice, the 41-year-old actor already has a recurring role in the Bond series as Charles Robinson, M's suave chief-of-staff.
The chance to promote him, while startling, would not be unexpected. The Broccoli family, who are casting the film, the 21st in the series, are said to fear that the films have become anachronistic.
They told Brosnan they wanted to "go in a new direction".
Initially, this was taken to mean that they were turning away from the special effects and high-tech gadgetry to update Casino Royale, Ian Fleming's first Bond book.
The feeling is that despite the vast profits from the last movie, Barbara Broccoli, whose father Cubby made the early Bonds, and Michael Wilson, her step-brother and partner at Eon Productions, are anxious to make a more hard-boiled thriller.
Speculation about Salmon, who was born in Luton, stems from a sudden rush of unusually large bets on him. Warren Lush, a spokesman for Ladbrokes, said yesterday: "They have come out of nowhere, with sums like £500 apiece. These are huge bets for what is really a novelty wager.
"The suspicion is they may be being placed by people, or spies out there, in the know. So we have temporarily closed the book on the next Bond, as we don't want to get out fingers burned."
Until now, the favourite was Dougray Scott, whose play, Becket, closes in London's West End in a fortnight. Ewan McGregor was also a runner until he accepted his latest stage role.
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The article doesn't quite explain where they are getting this idea; vague references to "bets" tells me that this is all coming from online betting websites or whatever. If so, it means NOTHING. Remember on election day when Bush contracts were down to 20 or so on Tradesports? Did Kerry win?
Actually, I'd have no problem with making a series of Bond spinoffs featuring this guy... I don't know whether he's Double-O-6 or Double-O-9 or whatever but there's no reason they can't make interesting films about other agents, if they're charismatic enough.
But please. A black James Bond? And using a guy who's already been another character in the series? It's just absurd on the face of it.
Personally I wish they'd go the "back to basics" route myself: Make a true version of Casino Royale, with an actor in his late '20s/early '30s, have it set in the original time period, and go from there.
(And please please please go easy on the "gadgets"!!)
Didn't they make a movie with a black James Bond in the '70s? I think it was called Shaft.
Quentin Tarantino's Next Movie,http://quentintarantinosnextmovie.blogspot.com/
How about Gary Colman call him .007
This is not a good pic of him. He's a hunk! Very elegant in bearing - wears clothes well. He's the only reason I kept watching those "Prime Suspect 2" edpisodes with that god-awful Helen Mirren.
Shut yo' mouth!
(I'm jus' talkin' 'bout John Shaft?!)
Bill Clinton...SHAFT!
The only two Bond men I will recognize are Sean Connery and Roger Moore.
What a fun change.
He's probably too classy to be popular
with the home boy NBA loving crowd.
Wasn't Dougray Scott the bad guy in
Mission Impossible 2?
He was rather fetching in Ever After, though.
I know that Roger Moore wanted that guy from Jerry Maguire to play Bond, that guy named after the communist country, Cuba. Me personally I think it should be Jason Alexander.
Debbie Boone, Foxy Brown.
cyborg wrote:
The only two Bond men I will recognize are Sean Connery and Roger Moore.
..........................................................
Hey, cyborg, are really that old? LOL, just kidding.
No offense, but no. It would be like Michael Jackson in reverse... LOL
If it's okay for Bond to be black..
..is it therefore okay for white girls to play the role of Kim in Miss Saigon on Broadway?
I would love to see a different type of James Bond. Mel Gibson would be my man of choice, but I can think of others as well.
Simpson is not available, he's still out looking for the killer(s) of the mother of his children and Ron Goldman. That's a fulltime job, you know.
Second, no matter how seriously they try to recast Bond as black, it will never escape the stigma of politically correct pandering (which it is) thus providing a film that is perpetually compared to the SNL skit about Lamont Bond.
"T[he Broccoli family] told Brosnan they wanted to "go in a new direction"."
OJ would be a new direction, to say the least. But can he afford to spend time at the studio? I thought he was looking for the killer....
Shaft...Johhhnn Shaft. I'm a baaad mutha...
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