Last month I mentioned that Charlie Higson will be in Nettlebed at the Nettlebed Village Hall on September 22 at noon as part of the Henley Literary Festival to talk about the challenges he faced when asked to write the Young Bond adventures. Well, on September 21 at 6pm at the King’s Barn biographer Andrew Lycett will also be attending the Henley Literary Festival to talk about his most recent book and study, Arthur Conan Doyle. Andrew Lycett should be well-known by Bond fans for writing one of the best biographies on Ian Fleming. If you’ve never read it be sure to check it out at Amazon.

So a little while ago we all found out that Hurricane Gold would not have any proofs unlike the previous Young Bond novels. Well, that’s false. It would appear Puffin made a last second change of mind and now for the right price you can find one of these rare copies on eBay. Of course you can also find early copies of the first edition hardcover on eBay too.

As Paul Haggis hits the press junket for his new film The Valley of Elan, we’ve been hearing from him a number of new developments on Bond 22. First off, those rumors that you may have heard that Bond 22 will be “jokier”? Not true. I always thought that rumor (#6) was rubbish considering the colossal success of Casino Royale, but it’s good to have confirmation just to put the mind at ease.

Anyway, as the title of this post states, Bond 22 will not be based on a story by Ian Fleming like Casino Royale previously was, although Haggis says that it will be based on Fleming’s ideas. Whatever that means. God knows that there is tons of unused Fleming material that could be harvested for the film, but I think this is the old song and dance where they try and tell the fans that the next adventure will be grounded (too) and faithful enough to Fleming’s stories and character. Of course after Casino Royale, I believe him. Currently Haggis is on page 22 of the script, which in comparison to the last film means that Bond just met Dimitrios and is about to get himself a nice shiny 1965 Aston Martin DB5 (i.e., Haggis has a ways to go).

To read the interview with Haggis, check out The Collider and ComingSoon.net

The Young Bond Dossier reports that Charlie Higson will not be going on tour to promote the latest Young Bond novel, Hurricane Gold. He will however be attending a few events such as the upcoming trip to Nettlebed on September 22 and obviously he’ll be at the launch all-gold party to read and sign copies of Hurricane Gold on September 6 which takes place at Waterstone’s Piccadilly.

The release date for Hurricane Gold’s audiobook has also been briefly delayed according to Amazon.co.uk. It will now be released on September 27th.

…there was Young Indiana Jones.. though technically that follows James Bond Jr. (1991) and R. D. Mascott’s 003½: The Adventures of James Bond Junior (1967), which are technically (again) nephews (though Bond is an only child) and not younger versions of the adult characters like Young Bond or Young Indy. Anyway, Paramount and CBS are finally getting ready to release The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles on DVD come October 23rd in the United States. The first release, titled “The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones” and subtitled “Volume 1” is a 12 disc set. I’m not quite sure how many episodes are in the set, but the series ran for 44 episodes (8 of which went unaired) plus documentaries and features that George Lucas has been promising fans for years. In total there will be 3 sets with “Volume 2” following in January 2008 and “Volume 3” sometime around the release of Indiana Jones IV in theaters.

For Bond fans, unfortunately, we’ll likely have to wait till “Volume 2” to see Daniel Craig’s episode, “Palestine, October 1917”. (Funny that two Bonds have appeared in the Indy franchise)

Box art for The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles was recently released and the whole boxset can now be pre-ordered from Amazon.com. While Amazon doesn’t currently list a price, it would appear the set will retail at $117.99.

The first extract from Hurricane Gold, the upcoming Young Bond novel by Charlie Higson is online over at The Times. Additionally The Times and Charlie Higson are running a competition in which readers download a PDF file they’re calling the Young Bond Dossier (sounds … familiar) and read the opening chapters of the first three Young Bond books (SilverFin, Blood Fever, and Double or Die) and then answer some questions. If you win you’ll receive a set of all the books thus far released in the series including Hurricane Gold. Check out the competition page here.

Further extracts will likely be revealed soon on the official Young Bond website as previously announced in a recent Danger Society newsletter. With the exception of sporadic updates in the news section, the website really hasn’t been updated since the release of Double or Die unfortunately. I’m sure it’ll happen soon. Less than 2 weeks to go.

I completely forgot about this after having mentioned it earlier this month, but John Gardner’s final novel No Human Enemy was published on August 27th in the UK. Gardner passed away on August 3rd. No Human Enemy is the fifth book in the Suzie Mountford series that he started in 2002 with Bottled Spider. I’ve actually never read a John Gardner novel outside of his Bond series so I’m not even really sure what to expect from this, but Gardner writing thrillers in and around WW2 sounds rather promising.

The book can be picked up on Amazon.co.uk. Thanks to CBn for the reminder.

Taking a break from, I gather, writing the fifth and supposedly final Young Bond adventure, Charlie Higson took a stroll around London with two of his three sons in tow to follow the footsteps of young James Bond from his adventure Double or Die.

Mr. Higson writes about this walk in an article for The Guardian. Locations include Highgate East cemetery, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and Regent’s Park among others. Previously, IFP published The Young Bond Rough Guide to London that does pretty much the same thing. It gives a little background on Young Bond then does a good Rough Guide (hence the title) on the locations of London that are featured in Double or Die. If anyone hasn’t picked that up yet, you should.

P.S. Charlie, if anyone suggests I do anything other than play video games over the weekend I moan too – and I’m in my twenties. :)

Activision’s newest blockbuster franchise (their words) just got two new video game developers. In addition to Treyarch, Beenox and Vicarious Visions are being brought in to develop the next James Bond game currently expected to be an adaptation of Bond 22. One platform will be the PC, but everything else thus far has not been announced.

In the past, Activision has taken other franchises and sorted out the workload between different developers. EA did this as well with games such as Nightfire which was developed by Eurocom, JV Games, and Gearbox Software. The likely scenario here is that Treyarch will develop the game for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, Beenox will handle the PC version, and Vicarious Visions will handle the Wii, DS and/or PSP port. This is exactly what happened for Spider-Man 3. More as I get it.

Lately I’ve been attempting to be more of a literary focused site and therefore a lot of the movie news just hasn’t been covered here. Not to say I won’t cover movie news in the future, but there are a lot of good sources for that sort of thing anyway and the idea is that every so often I run a “007 Wire” report and give you all the latest Bond news that I didn’t cover.

Anyway, a lot of Bond 22 rumors and reports came out in the past week or so. First up, filming began at the Palio di Siena horse race in Siena, (Tuscany) Italy. The crew was there for what appears to be mostly a documentary type of shoot as they weren’t really allowed to do anything else. The whole shoot however was quite controversial due to the nature of the race where jockeys are allowed to whip other horses or knock other riders off their horses so this got a ton of activists all riled up because by being in a Bond film they feel that it will glamorize the event. The Italian newspaper Il Giornale claims that the sequence that was shot will be part of the climax of the film and will involve the villain in a chase. Daniel Craig showed up at the event, but he didn’t take part in the filming. Lastly there are even newer reports that further Bond 22 locations will involve Italy.

• Another obituary for John Gardner. This time by The New York Times and replicated for the Chicago Tribune.
• Cinematical did a piece called “Seven Pieces of Advice for the Maker’s of Bond 22.” IMO: 1) Not necessarily. 2). Yes. 3). Maybe 4). Absolutely, though I wouldn’t be against a down to Earth Armorer like Dr. No or From Russia with Love. No to Moneypenny, though. 5) Not necessarily. I’m not a fan of The World Is Not Enough or Die Another Day, however, Purvis and Wade are great idea guys. It’s not bad to have them write the rough draft, but continue to follow them up with someone on a higher level. Haggis was and is a great choice. There are others too if you need fresher ideas. 6) I agree, but I think this whole news story was blown out of proportion, which is why I didn’t cover it. 7) Not necessarily. Keep him happy so that he’ll stay around, but he’s an actor not a writer. Brosnan got his hands dirty during parts of his tenure and it didn’t work for us if you ask me. Remember Lee Tamahori? He was terrible and his ideas are frightening to me. Good potential, I guess, but yeah, IIRC it was Brosnan who pushed for him.
• I was doing some reading and I came across this article at MSNBC. They start off showing a connection between Ian Fleming and this corporation called Jardine Matheson. They get this connection by back tracking to Robert Fleming’s (his grandfather’s) bank Robert Fleming & Co.. Anyway, not really a big deal, but there’s even a better connection here in that the idea clearly is associated to the literary world of Bond. In what way? Well doesn’t it kind of sound like the Thackeray’s from Zero Minus Ten? Specifically the heroin dealing, and the 1997 Hong Kong transfer of power? Perhaps it was inspiration for Raymond Benson.
• One of Roger Moore’s Walther PPKs from his Bond days was sold at an auction house in California for approximately £5771 – about $11,000 dollars. The same went for a suit worn by Sean Connery in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Both were however beaten by Ewan McGregor’s lightsaber from Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace which fetched £24,527 – almost $50,000 dollars.