By Thanks to a listing in Production Weekly, it appears that the current title of the next Bond film is Shatterhand. Before you go running around exclaiming what a stupid name Shatterhand is, let’s all calm down for a second and realize that working titles are often changed and that Bond movie names are pretty silly on the whole anyway. Shatterhand, which is derived from an alias that Blofeld uses in Ian Flemming’s You Only Live Twice, is definitely up there in the silly department, though.
Instead of mocking it let’s talk a bit about what this may actually mean for the movie, which will begin shooting in April despite still going through rewrites once again. We were all pretty sure that the movie was going to pick up where Spectre left off but this all but confirms it as the working title basically proclaims that Blofeld is returning despite Christoph Waltz saying that he isn’t returning. Could they be recasting the Bond villain? Possibly. Blofeld has never been played by the same actor twice so it isn’t out of the question. Whatever the plan, Shatterhand is going to see the fallout from Spectre return as Craig gives the spy one more go.
More important to all of that, is the fact that they could actually be adapting the incredible plot of You Only Live Twice. See, the Connery film of the same name, which was written by Roald Dahl, had almost nothing to do with the book. In the book, Bond is on a revenge mission after Blofeld has killed his wife in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and it takes him to Japan where the evil villain has constructed a garden of death and a castle full of traps to kill anyone who comes close. It is one of the most Bond novels ever, while also dealing with the emotional trauma suffered by Bond well, and it is criminal that it has never been fully adapted into one of the films. With Craig’s more introspective take on Bond it makes sense they’d tackle this story as his farewell.
With a delayed release date to April 2020, we probably won’t be learning anything more any time soon.
Shatterhand: new James Bond film’s working title revealed [The Guardian]
