By It looked like the Bond franchise was going to hop from one fantastic director to another with Bond 25 as Sam Mendes moved on and Danny Boyle was set to tackle the next film, which will probably be Daniel Craig’s last. However, it seems “creative differences” have gotten in the way. In a tweet today the Bond producers and Craig announced that the director had left.
Michael G. Wilson, Barbara Broccoli and Daniel Craig today announced that due to creative differences Danny Boyle has decided to no longer direct Bond 25. pic.twitter.com/0Thl116eAd
— James Bond (@007) August 21, 2018
Creative differences in the most milk toast excuse Hollywood has for anything so we really don’t know what the hell is going on, but I’m honestly a bit surprised about this. The Bond films might operate on a formula, but their most successful films are the ones that play with it, and Boyle is fantastic at playing with formula. Broccoli and Wilson aren’t averse to risk-taking or revamping when needed so maybe the conflict was whether that was needed. I’d argue that while Spectre was a definite step down from Skyfall a full rebirth wasn’t needed at all, and Specter’s conclusion clearly needed to be sorted out in the next film. However, considering Boyle was working on the screenplay with John Hodge this is the best guess at a reason I can come up with.
Whatever the reason is, this puts the film, which still currently has a U.K. release date of Oct 25, 2019, in dire need of someone to helm it so it can get out on time. The movie was still in casting and pre-production, but that doesn’t mean losing its directing won’t set them back. Indie darlings, including Denis Villeneuve, were all floated as possible directors previous to Boyle coming on board so they may go back to some of the names on that short list. They’re all creatively different and have their own visual style, which is another odd twist to the idea that producers would can Boyle for creative reasons.
