James Bond: The True Story Of Quantum Of Solace's Failure
3. The Problems Arise...
With the title decided, the other 99% of the movie had to be made. As Casino Royale entered postproduction in July of 2006, it was announced that Quantum of Solace would be released with a confirmed date of May 2008. With a very tight schedule of 18 months to write, cast, direct, edit and promote the movie, Quantum of Solace was delayed until late 2008.
This was a reasonable decision however other external forces threatened the movie’s production even further: The Writer’s Guild of America Strike from 2007-2008. The strike demanded that the writers, Paul Haggis and Robert Wade as well as Marc Forster who was the new director hired for the movie write the movie extremely quickly before the strike happened. According to Haggis, the script was completed two hours before the writer’s strike. It is possible that this method of writing the script incredibly quickly in order to avoid the writer’s strike as well as the tight deadline affected the overall quality of the final product. However, one could also argue that the choice of director for Quantum of Solace also negatively impacted the movie.
Marc Forster had never watched any of the Bond movies aside from Casino Royale and, therefore, had never been particularly interested in pursuing the career as director for 007 until the movie’s release in 2006. Forster’s time as director for Bond was chaotic as a result of this writer’s strike.
Forster’s script had to be constantly altered and, due to the tight deadline, rewrites had to take place hours before scenes were filmed with both Forster and Craig writing just to make ends meet. In an interview with Time Out, Craig remarked that "There was me trying to rewrite scenes – and a writer I am not. Me and the director [Forster] were the ones who had to do it. The rules where you couldn’t employ anyone as a writer, but the actor and director could work on scenes together. We were stuffed."
The writer’s strike had resulted in inconsistencies that went against what Forster wanted to make. Due to the Forster’s vision for the movie, it's likely that the script had to be altered to accommodate. One of Forster’s main visions was to have Quantum of Solace move ‘tight and fast – like a bullet’ as he viewed that Casino Royale’s length was too long. Therefore, scenes were cut in addition to the constant rewrites going on too.