A proper screenplay, not a pub conversation
Image: TMDBWork on the next Bond adventure gathered momentum after Licence to Kill, with a new film planned for 1991.
Michael G. Wilson and Alfonse Ruggiero Jr. developed the story, initially in a treatment dated May 1990. A full screenplay followed: 135 pages, dated 7 July 1990.
That July draft is the version with the hang-gliding opening. Later work by William Osborne and William Davies changed aspects of the adventure, which explains why accounts of "Dalton's third film" sometimes describe different scenes.
There was no single, finished shooting script waiting for a director to call action. There was a developing project, with successive attempts to work out what Bond should do next.
And the answer, at this stage, involved considerably more machinery than Franz Sanchez had ever needed.
