License to wait

James Bond 21 - Delayed
The folks at MGM have admitted the inevitable and announced they are delaying the release of the next Bond movie because no director has been hired yet (not to mention, Pierce Brosnan, or any other actor for that matter, hasn't been signed). Sony's buyout of MGM is also a factor in the delay.

For the November 2005 release they were planning on, they would need to start filming in January. That won't happen without a director in place now to work on preproduction.

All of this is despite the fact the writers of the last two Bond movies have already turned in a first draft of the script.

So the question is, when will the next movie come out? They're looking at either summer 2006 or winter 2006. The last Bond movie to come out in the summer was Timothy Dalton's "License to Kill" in 1989, which was clobbered at the box office. I'd place my bet on a winter 2006 release.

Either way, this will be second longest gap between Bond movies, following the six-year wait between "License to Kill" and 1995's "GoldenEye."