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The dragon tattoo who loved me?

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Daniel Craig’s official commitment to “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” drives home, in case it wasn’t driven home enough, just how far away a new James Bond movie is from hitting the screen.

Craig will shoot David Fincher’s crime remake after he finishes his current film, “Cowboys and Aliens,” with production no doubt stretching reasonably deep into 2011. Even if by some bizarre miracle the MGM quagmire that has sunk Bond #23 can be resolved and development can pick up again, Craig would, at the absolute earliest, not be able to make the new spy movie until late 2011. Which would put it in theaters, also at the absolute earliest, in late 2012, four years after the last Bond movie came out.

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And really, even that is a serious long shot; more likely it’s much longer before we see the script Peter Morgan helped write hit the big screen.

Besides, even at the most accelerated schedule, it would still mean one of the longest gaps between Bonds in the franchise history. Bond anthologists will recall that there’s been only one delay longer than four years -- a six-year gap between Timothy Dalton’s “Licence to Kill” and Pierce Brosnan’s “Goldeneye.” (The other four-year gap was between Brosnan’s “Die Another Day” and Craig’s “Casino Royale.”) It would be hands-down the longest gap between Bond movies that star the same actor.

But there’s a small silver lining in this for Bond fans. The Ian Fleming franchise and Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy do share some commonalities. Mikael Blomqvist isn’t driving Aston Martins or shooting pen guns. But both properties derive from globally bestselling books, involve a likable hero who’s frequently on the run, showcase a woman who possesses a not inconsiderable amount of power (at least in the last 20 years of Judi Dench’s M) and feature characters who track conspiracies with the help of technology (and a stiff drink). And Blomqvist, at least in Larsson’s book, notches a Bond-ian level of female conquests.

Yes, that about ends the similarities. But with James Bond M.I.A., fans will at least find the actor battling evil ... somewhere in Europe.

-- Steven Zeitchik

http://twitter.com/ZeitchikLAT

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