It took them a while, but late yesterday EON Productions affirmed via social media that Daniel Craig had indeed suffered an ankle injury while shooting Bond 25 in Jamaica, and requires what is described as minor surgery with a fortnight’s rehabilitation. The message notes that production is continuing with no anticipated impact on the film’s release date.
Presumably this confirmation is intended to get ahead of any pictures of Craig on crutches post-surgery, the news falling somewhere between The Sun’s initial report and a later story which seemed to walk back the severity of the injury and suggestion that production had been halted. As those stories note, it’s not the first time Craig’s needed treatment during a Bond production, most recently incurring a knee injury on the SPECTRE shoot which similarly required surgery and a two week hiatus which didn’t delay the film’s release.
Whatever rescheduling has taken place, work on the film is progressing on at least two fronts. MI6 reports that the second unit has continued filming an action sequence in Jamaica this week, while director Cary Joji Fukunaga has again been active if cryptic on Instagram, posting a photo of himself looking at a monitor showing a beach scene and also a brief video segment captioned “Saturday scouts” taken from a helicopter flying over a rainy landscape suspected to be in Norway, where further photography is expected to take place at the beginning of June.
Meanwhile, returning Bond Girl Léa Seydoux neatly sidestepped the ankle question when interviewed by Variety on the red carpet at yesterday’s Cannes Film Festival premiere of Arnaud Desplechin’s Oh Mercy. She did allow that she hasn’t yet started filming on Bond 25, which is supported by her absence from paparazzi photos from the Jamaican location shoot and maybe hints at exactly how Fukunaga’s promised deeper exploration of her character will play out.
Over to you: got any hot ideas about Swann’s role in the finished movie or definitive IDs of that rainswept coastline? Stories of your own production rescheduling or ankle injuries to share (nothing too gory, thanks)? Sound off in the comments below.
As of this writing, Bond 25 will be released in the UK on April 3rd 2020 and April 8th 2020 worldwide.