Awesome: James Bond and Blofeld Can Officially Face Off Again

Blofeld

There’s a bunch of legal backstory involved but basically: one company now has all the rights to all the James Bond IP, which means we might see Blofeld again. Seriously.

Here’s the press release via [HMSS](http://hmssweblog.wordpress.com/2013/11/15/danjaq-mgm-reach-agreement-with-mcclory-estate/)

> Los Angeles, CA (November 15, 2013) – Danjaq, LLC, the producer of the James
Bond films, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), the longtime distributor of the Bond
films, along with the estate and family of the late Kevin McClory, announced
today that Danjaq and MGM have acquired all of the estate’s and family’s rights
and interests relating to James Bond, thus bringing to an amicable conclusion
the legal and business disputes that have arisen periodically for over 50
years.

So here’s the thing: when writing Thunderball, originally a screenplay, Ian Fleming worked with a guy called Kevin McClory. McClory actually created both Blofeld and SPECTRE, the persistent villain and his organization of the Bond universe. Thunderball eventually turned into a novel when the movie didn’t pan out and Fleming didn’t give McClory any credit at first. The novels became popular, the movies even more so, and McClory sued and won.

This is how we ended up with _Never Say Never Again_, basically a remake of Thunderball, in the 80s. Thunderball, and the characters and story therein, ended up being co-owned by EON Productions and McClory and while EON couldn’t use Bloefeld or Spectre again without McClory’s OK, McClory himself could do what he wanted with them. Hence _Never Say Never Again_ and why in the opening to _For Your Eyes Only_ the bad guy in a wheelchair with a cat doesn’t have a name.

Anyway, McClory passed away a few years ago and the company that now owns the rights to Bond has worked out a deal with his estate so that everything is now back under one roof. This means that in the future we could see James Bond facing off against his nemesis for the first time in over 30 years.

The question is how? Obviously they could just go all in with SPECTRE in a future film but they’ve already established Quantum as the bad guy group in the new films (curiously missing from _Skyfall_). Maybe Quantum evolved from SPECTRE. Maybe Blofeld will just have founded Quantum. Maybe Daniel Craig will dismantle Quantum over the next two films and the next Bond will deal with SPECTRE.

Either way, looks like a villain with a persian cat is in our future.