Spectre: studio left 007 stirred, but not shaken, in rewrites

The latest James Bond release, Spectre, was substantially doctored by studio execs, including giving 007 a different sex scene and a new finish.

Daniel Craig as Bond was given a new finale in Spectre.

James Bond must deal with hit men in helicopters and sadistic villains, but at least he is spared the ordeal faced by scriptwriters at the hands of opinionated studio executives.

The release of Spectre exposes how senior figures in Hollywood got their way in making changes to the script. The film previously had a different ending and a different sex scene for Bond. It also included a lesbian henchwoman called Irma Bunt.

Disagreements over the final third of the film became public in December when a draft of the script was released by hackers who had broken into the server used by Sony, the film’s distributor. The extent of the changes have only become apparent after the film’s release in Britain ahead of the Australian release next week.

Gone is the “lesbian bad lady”, Irma Bunt, who in the original script makes overtures towards Madeleine Swann, the Bond girl played by Lea Seydoux. In the draft, Bunt, whom executives in the leaked emails described as a sidekick to Christoph Waltz’s villain, offers to help Swann get dressed but the rewritten scene has Swann on her own.

Bunt was based on a character in two of Ian Fleming’s books and she was portrayed in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service by Ilse Steppat. Swann’s relationship with Bond also has been altered in the finished film so that she does not fall for his charms so quickly.

The identity of Waltz’s character was more ambiguous in the earlier version, with an alias, Heinrich Stockmann, that does not feature in the finished film. There were also substantial changes to confrontations between Bond and the villain, and the role of Q, the quartermaster played by Ben Whishaw.

The most substantial alteration is to the last scene, which in the finished film takes place on Westminster Bridge and features a principal character making a moral choice. Without spoiling the plot for people who have not seen the film, the character made the opposite choice in the draft version.

The action sequence that precedes the final scene also has been changed and shortened so that Waltz’s character has a more substantial role and Bond is no longer required to dispatch the villain’s lieutenants in a prolonged chase.

The leaked draft contained notes by several executives including Elizabeth Cantillon, a Sony producer, who objected to “overblown and familiar” action sequences in the final reel. “There must be a more dynamic set piece to come up with that doesn’t involve myriad henchmen … while (the villain) is in another location,” she wrote, according to a summary of the leak on the website Defamer.

Jonathan Glickman, president of the film division of MGM, which is owned by Sony, declared that the draft script was “fantastic” for the first 100 pages before falling flat. “You guys set me up for a let-down on climax so I was not surprised,” he wrote.

It is unclear whether the writers — John Logan, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Jez Butterworth — saw this advice or whether they were briefed in a different memo.

The executives’ concerns over a film that cost them an estimated $250 million to make appear to have been vindicated. Spectre’s takings on its opening days have broken British box office records.

The Times