Eva Green Will Not Appear In 'Bond 22'

In a superb cover story in The Observer Magazine, Casino Royale‘s Eva Green revealed that, contrary to earlier speculation, Vesper Lynd will not reappear in next year’s Bond 22.

While her fate in Casino Royale is unequivocal, reports suggested she would reappear in some capacity; in particular, a “pre-recorded video message” was mooted.

“There will be pictures [of Vesper] and things like that. I don’t know who the Bond girl’s gonna be. I’m a bit jealous! I hope it will be terrible,” Green said, facetiously. “I will be the love of his life!”

The article goes on to state that the threads of Casino Royale remain and that James Bond will have his revenge in pursuing Vesper’s traitorous Algerian boyfriend (Green herself suggested this late last year, while Bond 22‘s screenwriter Paul Haggis recently refused to deny the report).

The actress discusses her time on Casino Royale with pure excitement in the in-depth article. “My agent called and said it: ‘Oh, it made how-many-millions in the opening weekend in America.’ This is how it works. We were promoting it somewhere, in New York I think, and Barbara Broccoli was excited because the journalists had responded well to it. And to Daniel! Because of all the shit that was happening at the time, so they were very relieved. But yeah, in England it was,” Green whispered, ‘the best Bond ever!'”

Additionally, Green expressed praise for Daniel Craig, with whom she also co-stars in the upcoming film, The Golden Compass. “He’s working like a dog. He really wants to prove that he can do other stuff. He’s working on [second world war resistance drama] Defiance at the moment. It’s great for him. I mean, everyone wants him. Independent movies, Jim Jarmusch, anything. He doesn’t have ‘the Bond curse’ at all. He’s great. He deserves it.”

Green herself feels the lucrative offers are flowing in, but she is very selective about the roles she accepts. “It’s so difficult to find good parts, really, really hard. People don’t know how to place me. Now I receive a lot of… Like, I received something so similar to the Bond thing: ‘she ends up in an elevator under water’ – it’s a f***ing joke. ‘She’s very mysterious…’ No no no no no!”

“I need to earn some money,” she sighed.

For the full article, check out this week’s Observer Magazine.

Meanwhile, in an interview with the New York Daily News, Daniel Craig discussed the intense pressure while making Casino Royale and what it means for Bond 22. “[Casino Royale did all right,” Craig laughed. “But therein lies the rub.”

“I’m not getting quite so much abuse from the English tabloids – but that could still change! But the pressure is there. If I only make a couple of Bond films, I’d like to be able to look back on at least one of them and think ‘Oh, that was a good [one].’

“I know that sounds like a simplistic way of looking at it, but in terms of moviemaking, we want to make something that looks beautiful, looks stylish. I want this to be a Bond movie, and Bond movies, to me, are Dr. No and From Russia With Love – they had a style about them that was amazing and different.”

“I was very happy with the outcome [of Casino Royale]. I saw it on the small editing screens with no sound effects, no music of any sort and watched it from beginning to end and thought, ‘The story works.’ At that point I thought that we were going to be okay. ‘Cause when you start adding the music and the special effects, the movie starts expanding out – and it did. [It] pulled together in a way that I don’t think people were expecting… That was where we set the bar. Now we have to go for it again. And hopefully go higher.”

In one last brief snippet, Oscar-winning screenwriter, Paul Haggis revealed to Variety that Bond 22‘s production start date was shifted from December to January “for production reasons”.

According to the trade paper, Haggis, currently on strike with the Writers Guild of America, was unable to complete his final polish of the picture’s script, “mostly to adapt it to locations.”

Daniel Craig’s second James Bond film, for which he is currently rehearsing stunts, will now begin filming on 4 January 2008.

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