A newly discovered Moonraker screenplay was penned by 007ās literary creator and jettisons a surprising number of the seriesā iconic elements.
A lost screenplay has been discovered that gives an insight into Ian Flemingās cinematic vision for the character of James Bond. The 007 franchise has spawned 25 official films that have introduced many staples into the long-running series. However, if the discovered manuscript is anything to go by, Fleming ā the author of the 007 novels ā would have created a markedly different cinematic incarnation of the English superspy.
The long-lost 150 page
Moonraker script was unearthed by a couple of London bookshops specialising in rare tomes, and gives a fascinating glimpse into Flemingās vision for the characterās big screen debut. Penned in 1956, some six years before the release of the first EON
Bond film,
Dr No, Flemingās
Moonraker would have adapted his then most recently written novel. The details that have emerged reveal that there would have been no Moneypenny character, no gadgets from the Q Branch, nor would Bondās boss have been codenamed āMā.
Whilst Flemingās take seems more grounded than the version we eventually got in 1962ās
Dr No, the version of
Moonraker that would make it to the screen in 1979 would be among Bondās most far-fetched adventures. Jon Gilbert, a resident book expert at Harrington Rare Books, one of the shops that found the manuscript, has described it as āfascinatingā although he also added that itās āfar too descriptive” and an experienced scriptwriter would have āfocused more on that dialogue.ā
If nothing else, itās an interesting
Sliding Doors-style look at what might have been, but whether Flemingās screen version of the character would have made it to 25 films in such rude health, weāll never know.
Indiewire
ā
Thank you for visiting! If youād like to support our attempts to make a non-clickbaity movie website:
Follow Film Stories on Twitter here, and on Facebook here.
Buy our Film Stories and Film Stories Junior print magazines here.
Become a Patron here.