Bruce Feirstein is an important name in the world of 007. He scripted Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), co-scripted GoldenEye (1995) and The World is Not Enough (1999), and adapted From Russia With Love into a computer game (2005). He’s now scripted two new computer games – a fresh adaptation of GoldenEye, and the original adventure James Bond 007: Blood Stone. “You dismiss videogames at your peril!” he tells Jonathan Wilkins.

Blood and Stone is your first script for Daniel Craig’s incarnation of Bond. How did you find writing for him as opposed to Brosnan and Connery?

The thing about every Bond actor is that they each brought something new to the role. Daniel Craig put his own imprint on the character, and I love what he’s done with Bond. I admire the cool calculated, hard spy tone he brought to him, and the writing had to follow that. And it was gratifying to write for the new Bond!

What are the biggest differences between writing for games and writing for movies?

Games tend to be more collaborative than movies, and the ones I’ve worked on have involved working with Eon, Activision, Bizarre and other developers. It’s a very long process, but it’s tremendously exciting and fun.

In movies, you suggest things and people might say “Oh, we can’t do that because of the budget.” But that’s not the case with games. At the beginning of Blood Stone, for example, it begins with the meeting of the G20 in Greece. In the conference call, we said things like, “Well why don’t we include the Parthenon? Or have him jumping off Athens harbour?” And in five minutes we had all agreed to it and could move forward. Because of the virtual world you can do virtually anything in the world!

Which was the more challenging – updating From Russia with Love or GoldenEye into a computer game?

They’re both equally challenging. In the case of From Russia With Love, you’re dealing with something that’s very holy in the canon of Bond, so you really want to stay very close to it and serve that. Plus we had Sean Connery! That was an amazingly great, delightful thing for me. So you can’t just go off and start inventing things!

In updating GoldenEye, we took some necessary liberties to modernise the story, because what was true 15 years ago is not necessarily true today. 15 years ago we were dealing with a world where the KGB had just ended and there were still remnants of the Soviet Union. 15 years later we now see Russian oligarchs buying British football teams, and we wanted to update and reflect that world. And also reflect the fact it was now Daniel Craig!


Do you actually play the games and are you any good?

(Laughs) Yeah, I play them, but I get frustrated like anyone else!

As a writer, as someone who speaks in contemporary culture, I think it’s absolutely mandatory to play games. Look at how the games business is now three times as big as movies – you dismiss videogames at your peril! The mistake that people who aren’t in this world make is that the gamers are all 18-year-olds sitting in their basements, with their mothers screaming, “Come up for dinner!” But when you look at the numbers, you realise this is an tremendously instructive, valid medium. My 10-year-old twins have no interest in movies but are always fascinated by games!

So I’m fascinated by games and I play them – but I gotta tell you that I’m not great! But I can go to my children, and they know how to get through the levels!

In terms of the movies, Bond seems to be in limbo at the moment. Do you think this could cause long-term damage to the franchise?

Well, you’re in an area that I have no knowledge of or exposure to, so I have no idea what’s going on with the new movie. However, I think it’s clear to say that after 50 years of Bond, the movies will survive. Remember that there was a six-year hiatus between Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan. So I’m certain that, in terms of the franchise, there isn’t any concern at all. When it works out it will work out.

You’ve written for Connery, Brosnan and Craig. Do you harbour any secret ambitions towards the remaining 007s?

(Laughs) Actually I really liked Tim Dalton – but I only want to write for him in Toy Story 3 when he played Mr. Pricklepants!

It seems to me that the first Bond you see is always the one closest to your heart. And I meet people who love Roger, but for me the first one I saw was one of the later Connery films. So it was really cool for me to write anything for him! And I could also say the same thing about Daniel Craig – I so admire and enjoy the stamp he has put on Bond, I felt very lucky to be able to write for him.


In terms of Blood Stone, was anything cut that you really missed?

Absolutely nothing! It’s funny because when you look back at the movies, there was about a 30 or 40 second scene in GoldenEye that we had to cut for time that I wish had been in there. It was about an Indian arms dealer who is trying to sell something to Zukovsky, the Russian spy. But it’s on the DVD! Then in Tomorrow Never Dies, there were little bits and bobs that I liked with Jonathan Pryce, but I think the movie’s better without them.

But in terms of Blood Stone and the GoldenEye game – no, nothing! You’re writing action scenes and levels and beats that you’ve already decided on, so you don’t have those, “Oh, I wish those bits could have been in it!” moments.

We even worked to put in dialogue for characters you might overhear – like if Bond was going to spy on someone. For example, at one point in GoldenEye, Bond needs to get into a casino owner’s office in Monaco. We wrote the dialogue of what you overhear as the two guards are talking outside! You wouldn’t write that for a movie, but it was great fun. We had another scene in GoldenEye, where Trevelyan and Bond pull up to this great dam in a truck, and we wrote the dialogue of the guards there. The player can stumble upon these things almost like Easter eggs – it’s great that you can write these things in games!

What’s your favourite Bond project you’ve been involved in?

Tomorrow Never Dies, because I’ve always worked in the media the world! And I think Michelle Yeoh and Jonathan Pryce were fantastic!

Was Jonathan Pryce’s character, Elliot Carver, based on Rupert Murdoch?

No, that’s a mistake everyone makes! He was actually based on Robert Maxwell! The giveaway for that was at the very end of the movie – Judi Dench says that he committed suicide off his yacht…

GoldenEye (Wii) and Blood Stone (Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Wii, PC, DS) are released on 5 November 2010.