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Casino Royale is next Bond movie
How cool is this? The next Bond film will be an adaptation of Ian Flemming's first 007 novel, "Casino Royale." It is the only Flemming story not used as inspiration for an "official" Bond movie.

There were two earlier versions of "Casino Royale." In the 1950s, before Sean Connery sipped his first martini on film, the story was produced as a live tele-play on CBS, featuring an Americanized "Jimmy" Bond (Bond's CIA buddy Felix Lieter was British in this version). Then in 1967, during the height of the Connery era, Columbia Pictures secured the rights to "Casino Royale" and produced it as a spoof of the spy movie genre.

I've never read "Casino Royale" (or any of Flemming's novels), but I'm told it was Flemming's most violent story. For a long time, Quentin Tarantino has expressed interest in making the movie and keeping it very faithful to the book.

Instead, it's being made by Martin Campbell, who directed "GoldenEye." The script is being written by the same team who worked on the last couple of Pierce Brosnan movies. It will be interesting to see if they remain close to the book or if it's turned into another big budget, big action spectacle that has made so many Bond purists critical of the Brosnan era (I'm not one of them).

Speaking of Brosnan, he will not be back for a fifth turn as 007. There is still no word yet on who will be getting the part.