James Bond still fulfilling fantasies

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal">LOS ANGELES: With the Hollywood studios scrambling to create fresh new franchise series so that they — and the global media conglomerates that own most of the studios — can promote them on everything from books to lunchboxes, the time is ripe to take a look back at the granddaddy of them all for clues about what it takes to keep a franchise going.<br />“James Bond is one of those heroes that all guys feel they could actually be like,� said Pierce Brosnan, who has played the agent in the latest four films. “He loves women, he loves booze, he loves great cars. I mean, from time to time, we all get to dress up in a tuxedo and feel like we could be James Bond.� Apparently so.<br /><span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Die Another Day</span>, the 20th 007 adventure, opened on Friday to some of the series’s best reviews and earned an estimated $47 million in its first three days, the biggest opening ever for a Bond film. (It took over first place from<span style="" font-style:="" italic=""> Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets</span> which, in its second weekend, earned $42.4 million, down by 52 percent from its debut, a common drop for such blockbusters.)<br />When Bond first appeared on screen John F Kennedy was in the White House, Gene Chandler’s Duke of Earl was on the radio and a loaf of bread cost about 20 cents.<br />And in the 40 years since Sean Connery first uttered the immortal words Bond, James Bond in <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Dr No, 007</span> movies have sold more than $3.4 billion worth of tickets. Four other actors have played the dashing, womanising and vaguely sadistic British secret agent. Connery played him six times, George Lazenby once, Roger Moore seven times and Timothy Dalton twice. <br />And there were two other, spoofier takes on 007 — Casino Royale, with Woody Allen as Jimmy Bond, in 1967, and <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Never Say Never Again</span> in 1983, with an aging Connery in a reprise of the role in an economically threadbare Britain —but neither was part of the official series.<br />“Why does the James Bond series endure when so many others have not?� said Michael Wilson, a producer of Die Another Day who has worked on each of the 007 films since <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">The Spy Who Loved Me </span>in 1977. <br />“That’s what everyone wants to know.� Wilson would like to think it has something to do with having a hands-on team of producers who are with the project from Day 1. Another reason may be that while the 007 movies are released by MGM (and, before that, its United Artists subsidiary), they are essentially a family business.<br />(NYT News Service) </div> </div>