While Sam Mendes was announced as the director of the next Bond movie last December, there’s been a lot of confusion over whether he would actually do it, partly due to the financial confusion over at MGM and partly because of a reluctance on the part of the Bond producers to say 100% Mendes was their man.
However now The Daily Telegraph reports that producer Barbara Broccoli has officially confirmed Mendes for the job, although Peter Morgan (The Queen), who’s been working on the script, may leave and get replaced by playwright Patrick Marber. Just to confirm that Mendes is serious about Bond and is setting aside everything else to work on the film, it’s been revealed that he’s left the comic book adaptation Preacher, which he’d been slated to direct.
Producer Neil Noritz told Collider that “We now have a terrific script that John August wrote. We were originally talking with Sam Mendes about doing the movie. Sam Mendes is going to go off and do the Bond movie, so theres another director that were talking to right now.” Who that director is isn’t known, although some speculate it may the screenwriter John August himself, who made The Nines in 2007 and has expressed interest in taking on Preacher.
The comic is about an ex-preacher who’s pissed of with God, and so sets off into the wilderness with his new vampire friend to give the Alimighy a piece of his mind.