Although the life of Ian Fleming has been adapted for TV a couple of times, one of which even starred Sean Connery’s son, Jason, as the 007 creator, no big screen biopic of the man has ever been made. Well, that may be changing, as according to Pajiba, a $40 million movie about the man is in the works, and it has James McAvoy attached to star in it.
At the moment the project is going under the rather unimaginative title of ‘Ian Fleming’, and will focus on the years that gave him his inspiration to create the character of James Bond. As a young man Fleming struggled to escape the shadow of his MP father and his increasingly well known writer siblings, however his experiences during the World War II changed all that.
During the war, he divised outlandish schemes to help the allies, such as an aborted operation to get hold of German Enigma machine documentation by crashing a plane into the English Channel, and an attempt to trick the Nazi leadership into establishing contact through occultist Aleister Crowley. He was also the planner for a specialist division of Commandos, trained not only in combat but in gather specialist intelligence. In fact it may be this part of his life that’s given impetus to the new film, as they were kind of like spy version of Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, with Fleming even referring to what they were after as ‘scalps’ and the men as his ‘red indians’. It was these experiences that informed Fleming’s creation of the suave secret agent, and many elements of what he did during the war ended up in the James Bond novels.
The proposed film will be based on the book Ian Fleming: The Man Behind James Bond by Andrew Lycett and scripted by Matt Brown. It’s being put together by Palmstar Entertainment and Animus Films, who are financing it independently of the studio system. It could certainly be an interesting film, not just because it’s about Fleming, but also becauseWorld War II counter-intelligence was often bizarre and rather fascinating.
However if McAvoy does play Fleming, it would rather put him out of the running to play Bond himself when Daniel Craig steps aside. Perhaps James thinks he wouldn’t get the 007 role anyway, and so this is his best shot.