'Bond 25': The troubled timeline of Daniel Craig's final 007 film

James Bond is known as a slick operator. Whether he's one step ahead of the villains he fights or seducing a bevy of invariably younger women, 007 always looks as if life comes pretty easily to him.

If only that were the case for Bond 25.

To retrace its steps, it’s worth heading all of the way back to the last time Bond popped up on cinema screens.

October 2015

The film has seemingly been plagued by chaos ever since Spectre landed in cinemas. Despite a mixed critical response - it's at 64% on Rotten Tomatoes - it marauded through cinemas en route to a mammoth box office haul of $880m (£687m) and held the UK box office opening weekend record (£41.3m) until Avengers: Endgame arrived on the scene.

Read more: Endgame smashes 144 box office records

Daniel Craig, however, was on irascible form throughout the press tour for the film. Having just finished his fourth, gruelling outing as Ian Fleming's spy, he infamously told Time Out that he would "rather break this glass and slash my wrists" than play the role again and advised his successor simply: "don't be s**t".

These comments were quickly seized upon as Craig's retirement from the iconic tuxedo, triggering the usual speculation about whether his replacement would be Idris Elba, Tom Hiddleston or even Tom Hardy.

2016

Throughout 2016, numerous eye-watering figures were rumoured to have been offered in order for production company Eon to keep hold of Craig. The Daily Mail reported in May 2016 that Craig had turned down a £68m offer to star in two more movies, while celebrity news website Radar suggested in September that the even more astronomical figure of $150m (£117m) was on the table.

In October, Craig denied that he had been offered this enormous sum and told a Manhattan festival crowd that playing Bond was "the best job in the world".

Read more: Broccoli discusses chances of a female Bond

Meanwhile, Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson were presiding over a bidding war for the distribution rights. Sony Pictures had been responsible for pushing out every movie of the Craig era, but their contract expired with Spectre. A five-way scrap ensued with the New York Times reporting that Sony, Warner Bros, Universal, Fox and upstart wildcard Annapurna were in the frame for the lucrative deal.

March 2017

Pre-production on what was then known as Bond 25 - and indeed still is - began in March 2017, with regular Bond writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade set to pen their seventh consecutive 007 outing.

A shortlist of directors soon emerged, featuring ‘71 filmmaker Yann Demange, Hell Or High Water director David Mackenzie and Denis Villeneuve, who quickly ruled himself out due to his commitments to adapting Dune. Christopher Nolan, who has been speculated for every Bond film in living memory, also made it clear he wouldn’t be involved.

August 2017

It took until August 2017 for Craig to publicly announce a decision, revealing on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that he would return for his fifth Bond film. He didn't say it would be his swansong, but hinted that “I think this is it” - unless, presumably, those gargantuan piles of cash could somehow grow even more.

February-May 2018

By February, the name at the top of the Eon wish list was Trainspotting director Danny Boyle. He began working on a script with regular collaborator John Hodge, which got the formal green light in May 2018.

As Boyle’s take on the film moved forward, it was reported that Universal had emerged victorious in the studio bidding war, providing Bond with a new home.

But first, they needed a film to release.

August/September 2018

Everything seemed to be going swimmingly, with filming set to begin before the end of 2018 and a November 2019 release date set. In August, though, Boyle left the project citing the old chestnut of “creative differences”. He has since described pressure on his “partnership” with Hodge as the reason behind his exit, saying “you have to believe in your process”.

Shortly after, in September, the official James Bond account on Twitter announced that True Detective and Beasts of No Nation director Cary Fukunaga would become the first American filmmaker to helm a Bond outing.

Fukunaga’s hiring was a surprise choice, but it seemed that Bond 25 had finally got itself back on the rails. The release date was shunted into 2020, as expected, but casting speculation soon began in earnest and production started early in 2019 with some second unit work in Norway.

The script, meanwhile, passed through a lot of hands in the latter half of 2018. Purvis and Wade were brought back on board after Boyle and Hodge departed the project and The Bourne Ultimatum scribe Scott Z. Burns also took a crack at the screenplay. More eye-catchingly, Fleabag creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge was also later brought in to inject humour into the script, at Craig’s request.

April 2019

All was quiet on the Bond front for a little while, until Eon held a glamorous press conference from Ian Fleming’s Goldeneye ranch in Jamaica.

Fans were prepared for a title announcement at the very least, but they merely got confirmation the film was due to shoot in Jamaica and the announcement of some new cast members including Rami Malek as the film’s villain, Ana de Armas and Captain Marvel star Lashana Lynch.

The disappointment was palpable.

Read more: Is 007 going woke?

The press conference also provided fans with a synopsis, hinting at the movie’s plot.

It read: “Bond has left active service and is enjoying a tranquil life in Jamaica. His peace is short-lived when his old friend Felix Leiter from the CIA turns up asking for help. The mission to rescue a kidnapped scientist turns out to be far more treacherous than expected, leading Bond onto the trail of a mysterious villain armed with dangerous new technology.”

May 2019

Since then, there has been a steady drip of unfortunate news from the film’s set.

Just weeks after the announcement, a source said there wasn’t a completed script and that the title was still up in the air. There are rumours that the script is being “endlessly re-written” by Waller-Bridge, Fukunaga and even Craig himself during the shooting process. A straight-talking source revealed that “the crew reckon they’re working on a well-polished s*** show”.

Read more: Fukunaga says Jamaica filming has finished

This week, the woes continued as production on the film was reportedly halted after Craig suffered an ankle injury while sprinting. The 51-year-old was shooting an action scene wearing a fancy suit and shoes when he “slipped and fell quite awkwardly”, prompting him to angrily throw his suit jacket on the ground “in sheer frustration”.

The report stated that production was set to make the move to Pinewood Studios in London, but has been put on hold in order to allow its leading man to recover.

At the time of writing, Craig’s injury is not expected to affect the movie’s release date of 8 April 2020 but, given the chaotic road this film has walked for the last three years, there may be a handful of surprises still to come.

June 2019

In early June disaster struck the Bond 25 set once again. An ominous post on the official 007 social media accounts announced that a controlled explosion had injured a crew member at Pinewood Studios.

Photos of the accident show wall panels on at least two faces of the iconic 007 Stage were blown outwards of the 59,000 sq ft building, littering the floor surrounding area, and leaving the building exposed to the elements.

The 007 Stage was built in 1976 for the production of The Spy Who Loved Me at a cost of £1.5 million.

It burnt to the ground on 27 June, 1984 towards the end of filming of Ridley Scott's Legend. It was rebuilt, and reopened in January 1985, with the new name, Albert R. Broccoli 007 Stage, in time for filming to start on A View to a Kill.

Another fire occurred on 30 July, 2006 after production wrapped on Daniel Craig’s first Bond film Casino Royale, and the whole building had to be knocked down and rebuilt from scratch.