Reports from the casting of 1,500 extras for the shooting of the 22nd James Bond movie in Bregenz are in, and there were three times as much applicants as needed: 4,500 (55% male, 45 % female). After the first, slightly chaotic day on Friday (with a certain lack of safety precautions), there was a huge run on the casting on Saturday, and a more quiet final day on Sunday.

Not only people from Austria, Switzerland and Germany were waiting up to 4 hours in line for their turn. Karin Gmuer of the local production company Unicorn who undertook the casting, reported that they even had email requests from Holland, Belgium and Scandinavia. The Swiss James Bond Fan Club, lead by president Daniel Haberthuer, showed up with 44 members.

Once people got inside (in groups of 5-10), they were handed a questionaire to fill in. People’s measures were taken, especially head sizes. "It could happen that the director gets the idea that he could use a number of policemen fo a scene, and instead of searching fitting uniform hats for those extras, it’s easier for use to pick extras with the correct head sizes to wear the hats we already have." says Unicorn boss Leonard Gmuer. Everyone got their mugshot taken, holding a card with a number in their hands. A set of captioned pictures on the casting process has been kindly contributed by German fan Erik Wunderlich (click on thumbnail pictures to enlarge)

As to the "casting" of cars, one could learn that te production company is looking for about 40 luxury cars, Mercedes Benz S-Class upwards.

It’s intersting that during the whole process, officials always emphasized that the casting is for a "possible shooting", as contracts for shooting the ‘Tosca’ scenes at the floating stage still aren’t signed. There have been rumours a while ago that this is because of the fact that the original opera cast was hired for stage performances but not an eventual appearance in a movie - and now they demand higher wages for it.

An intersting number of other tidbits came to light during the casting, some of which may be considered as spoilers, so if you don’t want to know anyting of those, stop reading HERE!

You still with us? Okay, the first bit is not really a spoiler. During the "cars casting", it became clear that there’s one brand that won’t be used as "extra car", as the movies bad guy (Mathieu Amalric as Dominic Greene) will use it: a Jaguar. Feldkirch will double as part of Bregenz, only a short driving scene will be shot there - no action, just something like an arrival scene, in which 007 will drive a Volvo.

As to the Tosca scenes, it was reported that the opera perfomance will be interrupted by 007 chasing a bad guy across the grandstand, through the audience. The chase will then continue in the Bregenz Festival House. The entire scene will take about 5 minutes.

Other sources report that there will be a boat chase on Lake Constance. While this may be a speculation related to the pictures of Daniel Craig practising on a speedboat, there is a bit of more solid information on boats: Leonard Gmuer told German newspapers that none of the locations scouted in Germany were picked for the movie, but that a German ship on lake Constance will play a small role.

CommanderBond.net will keep you updated with all the latest news and details on Bond 22.