007 producers say Bond 23 development will be delayed indefinitely

In a joint statement made earlier today, 007 producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli of EON Productions have announced that development on Bond 23, due to the financial issues surrounding MGM of late, has halted.

“Due to the continuing uncertainty surrounding the future of MGM and the failure to close a sale of the studio, we have suspended development on ‘Bond 23’ indefinitely. We do not know when development will resume and do not have a date for the release of ‘Bond 23.'”

Bond 23 was originally looking to be released in 2011/2012, an admittedly wide timeframe that’s now nevertheless completely up in the air. Of course, this doesn’t mean we’ll never see another Bond again; Once the studio irons its shit out, you can bet Bond 23 will immediately get back on track. But for the foreseeable future, though, don’t expect any forward progress on the longest running franchise in film history.

The questions now are: What happens to director Sam Mendes? What happens to the script from FROST/NIXON writer Peter Morgan? Morgan’s work exists and it may or may not be retained. None of that will be known until development restarts. But Mendes on the other hand isn’t a script that’s just lying around waiting to be used or not. The director had just recently dropped PREACHER in order to tackle Bond. Will Mendes now go back to that or perhaps move on to another project?