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THE 21st James Bond movie – christened Casino Royale after the Ian Fleming novel of the same name – will be released worldwide on November 17. The movie is based on the Bond creator’s first novel, which introduced Her Majesty’s secret agent and one-man army to the world. What started with a hugely successful Dr No in 1963, the Bond series of movies have all reaped rich dividends at the box office, except for an occasional whimper. Casino Royale is already being touted as the biggest Bond movie ever, with producers talking of releasing a never-before 500 prints in India; almost 200 more than the current record-holder Spider-Man-2. The movie will mark the debut of Daniel Craig, a not-so-well-known actor, as the secret agent 007. Incidentally, Craig will also be the first Blonde Bond. Stepping into the shoes of Pierce Brosnan, who did four Bond movies before being shown the door despite his popularity with millions of Bond fans across the globe, will be a tough task for the new Bond. Craig is the sixth actor to play Bond, the previous ones being Sean Connery (6 Bond movies), George Lazenby (1) Roger Moore (7), Timothy Dalton (2) and Pierce Brosnan (4). Craig’s Bond debut is a movie where 007 has still not been bestowed the licence to kill. The novel Casino Royale is a tale of the secret agent’s first mission, which comes after he has had too "kills" and therefore gets the coveted 00 status. Set in picturesque Bahamas, Casino Royale is the story of a mission where Bond is given the task of financially crippling the main agent of Communist Russia in France, Le Chiffre, who bankrolls majority of Russia-backed terrorist organisations. The novel has Bond trying to outwit, and defeat the villain Le Chiffre at a high-stake game of Baccarat at Montenegro’s Casino Royale. When Bond loses the 25 million Francs, a huge sum in the late 1940s and 1950s, sent to him by the MI6, the British secret service, Felix Leiter, a CIA agent, comes to his rescue by offering him some more money. How Bond outwits Le Chiffre, only to get caught in a bloody revenge plotted by the villain is the crux of the novel. Incidentally, Casino Royale is one of the few Bond novels where the American agency CIA’s secret agent rescues Bond and another MI6 agent - Vesper Lynd – and not the other way round. Ever since the movie was announced, critics and Bond aficionados have had a debate over the subject. Questions whether the present-day moviegoer will lap up a subject as old as Russian-West rivalry and whether the producers and the directors should take liberty with the original story to make it more saleable in the present conditions have been often raised. Incidentally, even as the 21st Bond movie is still to be released, pre-production work on the next movie, which will also start Craig, has already begun. Casino Royale is directed by Martin Campbell, who also directed Golden Eye, Pierce Brosnan’s first outing as Bond. The movie was a big money-spinner. The jury will be out on Casino Royale on November 17.
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