geekosystem

It has to be hard when you're an actor trying to promote something, but all anyone wants to talk about is another project. When Harrison Ford appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live last night, he took questions from the audience, but refused to talk about Star Wars Episode VII. He went on to answer a few questions before being confronted by an old friend.

Though its future was uncertain for a while, the 23rd film starring Britain's top secret agent James Bond is not only in the can, but already has a teaser trailer. The film, called Skyfall, still has Daniel Craig in the lead role and director Sam Mendes at the helm, but looks to be taking a bit of a different track from the last two films.

With a burst of hopeful feeling for The Hobbit and the James Bond franchise, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer announced today that it has found new management and can finally tuck itself into the ugly chrysalis of bankruptcy proceedings and emerge as a bee-yutiful production company. Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum (founders of Spyglass Entertainment) will become its new CEOs, effective as soon as its bankruptcy proceedings have been worked through.

MGM has been staving off bankruptcy and looking for a buyer for going on a year now, and the process has just been extended. The studio's new deadline to either pay off its creditors or go bankrupt is September 15th.

Why is this relevant to our interests? Well, because until MGM gets its act together, it's very unlikely that The Hobbit or the next James Bond movie will see production.

The Mirror reports that MGM Studios, as part of its continuing money struggles as it tries to find another studio to buy it, has axed plans and pre-production for the 23rd James Bond film.

A glum insider said: “Members of the production crew have been told the Bond film has been canned.

“There is a lot of bad feeling as a lot of time, money and hard work has already gone into this.”

Indeed, the movie already had Sam Mendes lined up to direct and Daniel Craig to star.