ABC To Show 13 Bond Films

Reuters has reported that America’s ABC Network, searching for material to show during the upcoming ‘Hollywood Strike’ has bought three runs of each of the first 13 James Bond theatricals from MGM for a total license fee of about $30 million.

Eleven of the Bond titles, in chronological order from ‘Dr. No’ (1962), the first in the cycle, to the 1979 ‘Moonraker,’ are available to ABC immediately, with the two others, ‘For Your Eyes Only’ (1981) and ‘Octopussy’ (1983), still under contract to TBS, which has owned exclusive network rights to the Bond pictures for the last 10 years. TBS has ‘Eyes’ until May 2001 and ‘Octopussy’ through Jan. 31, 2002, according to cable sources.

Not part of the ABC Bond deal because they’re under contract for a few more years to TBS are 1985’s ‘A View to a Kill,’ starring Roger Moore, 1987’s ‘The Living Daylights’ and 1989’s ‘License to Kill,’ both starring Timothy Dalton.

One of the signs that ABC will use the Bond movies to fill its primetime schedule in the event of a writers and actors strike next summer is that the deal runs for an usually short term of less than two years, expiring in September 2002.

ABC hasn’t announced its strategy for scheduling the Bond titles, but sources say the movies will run consecutively in the Saturday-night-movie time slot, at a start date to be determined.

Good news for Bond fans in the US though no exact schedule has been released yet. When we find out though, we’ll let you know. For the full article visit Yahoo News. – Thanks to Andrew for the tip-off.