Rogue Bond producer Kevin McClory rumoured to be warming up rival 007 movie project - again

Not a year seems to pass without some kind of media story around rogue Bond producer Kevin McClory trying to fire up another 007 project based on his Thunderball rights.

This time Gossip Monkey claims that McClory is on the hunt for an actor to line-up a possible Thunderball remake. Last time McClory tried to launch a movie to rival Eon Productions official series, Sony left him high and dry when stiching up rights with MGM for Spiderman. In return for not making a rival Bond movie, MGM reportedly signed over any partial rights they had to the web-spinner so that Sony could launch a new franchise. The irony is, of course, that Sony now control the part of MGM that used to own Bond.

[Gossip Monkey] heard from a comrade at Sony, that Kevin McClory might be – but admittedly, when hasn’t he been? – interested in doing a second remake of “Thunderball”. You’ll remember that McClory has the remake rights to that film, and that film only, and has already redone it once – as 1982’s “Never say Never Again”. What’s amusing is that my Sony contact - I can tell you that he’s an executive producer on something out soon - tells me that all the folks that were ‘runners up’ for “Casino Royale” – a.k.a ‘the official Bond’ film – are being considered for the role of James Bond in the new “Thunderball”. They include everyone from to Dougray Scott to Joel Edgerton and …… Pierce Brosnan. Yep, apparently there’s some serious talk that the opposing crowd might – like they did with Sean Connery – be trying to sway Brosnan into doing another Bond movie. That would be a real kick in the teeth for EON, wouldn’t it?

Thanks to `Fro` for the alert.

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