Who will own James Bond?

Earlier in the week, we reported the news that MGM had staved off interest payments on its debt to allow it to stump up its half of the cash to press ahead with production on the two Hobbit movies, that Guillermo del Toro is set to direct. Its involvement in the project had been thrown into some doubt by the revelation that the studio's financiers were not best pleased with the level of debt that it was carrying, and the lack of any imminent incoming new project to help attack it. The lacklustre box office performance of the Fame remake has done little to help
matters.

But while The Hobbit - in conjunction with the Warner Bros-owned New Line - is now safely funded, there's the small matter of the 007 franchise, which is arguably MGM's most lucrative. For much of the 90s, the only sniff of a hit that MGM had - outside of Hannibal and the Legally Blonde movies - was the succession of Bond movies that kept making more and more cash than the last. There's an argument that without 007 on board, there wouldn't have been much of an MGM left to even talk about.

Yet could MGM now be forced to sell its prized asset to help keep the boat afloat? Strong rumours at WeAreMovieGeeks suggest that it's doing a deal that would see the marketing and distribution for the next Bond movie, at the least, being handled by 20th Century Fox.

Fox, for the last two Bond films, has handled non-US work on the franchise as well as home DVD and Blu-ray distribution, and this broadening of the deal for at least the next project may just give MGM the breathing room it requires.
MGM will still be involved in the Bond saga, though, given its involvement in the production of the movie. And the next Bond movie is still being lined up for a release in 2011, once more with Daniel Craig on board.

If this turns out to be true, then the official announcement is reportedly due any day now. There certainly seems to be a strong whiff of credence to it all from where we're sitting...