Islamist Terrorists Invade French Casino

007 fan site MI6 is reporting that the villain in the upcoming Bond film will likely be an Islamist terrorist.

Daily Telegraph are echoing earlier reports that the villain of the next James Bond film, "Casino Royale", will be a terrorist leader.

With Daniel Craig now confirmed to play James Bond in next year's Casino Royale, I hear the film's producers have come up with a very modern villain for 007 to pit his wits against.

"Barbara Broccoli wants to work an Osama bin Laden-type character into the script," says my source. "In Ian Fleming's book, the main villain is a Russian agent called Le Chiffre. But in the film, they want to replace Le Chiffre with a wealthy Islamic fundamentalist who provides funding for terrorism."

The producers had originally coined the idea for the previous Bond film, Die Another Day.

"The last film was going to feature a baddie called bin Sane," adds my source. "But it was deemed to be too soon after the 9/11 atrocities, so the character was canned."

Casino Royale is one of the three Fleming novels that I've actually read at the time of this writing. I was wondering how they'd get around the fact that the entire storyline revolves around an early Cold War plotline. In films like Moonraker (one of the other Bond novels I've read), they pretty much circumvent the entire story; the book is about England's first ICBM system, while the movie is about space shuttles and a space station. If they're able to keep some of the basic storyline of Casino Royale, and change Le Chiffre (whose mission is to win money to fund covert Soviet operations in Western Europe) with an Islamist (who would, in theory, be trying to win money to fund terrorism), I'd be extremely impressed. This would be just the kind of storyline that, if employed correctly, could put Daniel Craig in solid standing as the new James Bond.

Or, they could make the storyline politically correct (Le Chiffre could be replaced with a Neo Nazi character, as they did in the film version of The Sum of All Fears), or just completely screw it up like they did with A View to a Kill and Die Another Day, the two worst Bond films ever made in the history of the franchise. Doing so would most likely make Daniel Craig the next George Lazenby, an underrated actor who never got a chance to truly shine as James Bond due to circumstances beyond his control.

I'll keep you posted. So far, even though I'd hoped for Matthew MacFadyen or Jude Law as the next 007, I'm encouraged that Casino Royale may just be the great film we 007 fans need in order to get over the travesty that they subjected us to in 2002.