CARTE BLANCHE… To Call Bullshit On The New BOND Title

As the resident BAD Bond dork, I think I might hold the record for the most untrue stories (not counting Sam Strange’s “The Week In Fake Movie News” column) posted on the site. That’s the nature of James Bond movie news, unfortunately; as a huge international franchise, the series is prone to gossip, premature reports, and straight-up bullshit from all corners of the globe, and this week is no different.

Bleeding Cool  has latched onto a report from Blic Online (yeah, me neither) about a Serbian cellist who’s been tapped by EON Productions to do the “opening score” for Bond 23, according to Blic’s badly translated prose. According to the site, Bond 23‘s producers and director (Michael G. Wilson, Barbara Broccoli and Sam Mendes, respectively, and who Blic doesn’t bother to name) heard Jelena Mihailovic playing at Cannes and hired her “on the spot” for the new Bond film which, they casually mention, is called Carte Blanche.

Hold the phone! Some red flags: EON is not in the habit of announcing the titles of their new Bond films via the hiring of session musicians; Carte Blanche is the name of a new Bond novel by Jeffery Deaver, released mere months ago; EON has not adapted a Bond novel this close to publication since, maybe, You Only Live Twice in 1967, three years after its publication; they’ve also never adapted a Bond novel by anyone other than Fleming.

Putting all these unlikely elements with the dodgy translation in the original article, and it sounds like a fair bit of confusion on the part of Blic Online. Just in case, though, here’s Amazon’s description of Carte Blanche:

James Bond, in his early thirties and already a veteran of the Afghan war, has been recruited to a new organization. Conceived in the post-9/11 world, it operates independent of MI5, MI6 and the Ministry of Defense, its very existence deniable. Its aim: To protect the Realm, by any means necessary.

A Night Action alert calls James Bond away from dinner with a beautiful woman. Headquarters has decrypted an electronic whisper about an attack scheduled for later in the week: Casualties estimated in the thousands, British interests adversely affected.

And Agent 007 has been given carte blanche to do whatever it takes to fulfill his mission . . .

I say bullshit. What do you think?