If you don’t know what to get the 007 obsessed person in your life for Christmas, you should go for "Some Kind Of Hero: The Remarkable Story Of The James Bond Films." Written by Matthew Field and Ajay Chowdhury," the book features over one hundred new interviews with the stars, directors, writers, filmmakers, studio executives and all manner of Bond insiders. Quite a few new juicy stories have already been unveiled.
We’ve already learned about the "lost" Bond movie that eventually became "Skyfall," which would’ve seen the secret agent kill his boss M. The team behind the book has shared a couple of those anecdotes, including Pierce Brosnan‘s revelation of how coldly he was dropped from the franchise after "Die Another Day."
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“I was in the Bahamas, working on a movie called ‘After The Sunset‘ and my agents called me up and said, ‘Negotiations have stopped. [Producers Barbara Broocoli and Michael Wilson] are not quite sure what they want to do. They’ll call you next Thursday’ " the actor says in the book. "I sat in Richard Harris’s house in the Bahamas, and Barbara and Michael were on the line —‘we’re so sorry.’ She was crying, Michael was stoic and he said, ‘You were a great James Bond. Thank you very much,’ and I said, ‘Thank you very much. Goodbye.’ That was it. I was utterly shocked and just kicked to the curb with the way it went down.”
According to the authors, Brosnan’s asking price to star in his fifth Bond movie was high, and the producers were already looking to do a gritty reboot, leading to the actor’s exit from the series.
Meanwhile, the late Amy Winehouse was originally tapped to sing the theme song for "Quantum Of Solace," but unfortunately, she did not a chance to contribute. “I’d sketched out an idea musically, and I didn’t want to really do a lyric, because I thought [Amy’s] got to sing it so it would be a good idea for her to write it," composer David Arnold says. "She had notes. Mark Ronson put together a rough track with a couple of layers. His love for [longtime Bond film composer John] Barry, the period and obviously with Amy’s style was coming out as a contemporary post-sixties piece. It was all the more upsetting when she couldn’t finish it, because I think it would have been something really special. Sadly it wasn’t to be."
‘Some Kind Of Hero’ is now available.