Forster and Wilson both revealed that an earlier idea for the film was scrapped when Forster came aboard to helm. "Once I signed on to do it we pretty much developed the script from scratch because I felt that it wasn't the movie I wanted to make and we started with Paul Haggis [the Oscar winner who rewrote Casino Royale] from scratch," Forster recalled. "And I said to him these are the topics I am interested in this is what I would like to say, what's important to me. And we developed it from there together. Then Barbara and Michael said they liked where we were going and they liked the script."

The Writers' Guild strike, which began just as Quantum of Solace was gearing up for production, did not impact the production as much as the industry trade papers had speculated. "The good thing is that Paul and I and Daniel all worked on the script before the strike happened and got it where we were pretty happy with," Forster said. "Then we started shooting and the only problems I had with the script we were shooting in April, May and June so as soon as the strike was over we did another polish with someone and it worked out with all this stuff coming up. So I was pretty happy with all the work we'd done in January and February so [there won't be any need for reshoots]."

Nevertheless, Forster did hire another writer, newcomer Joshua Zetumer, to polish Haggis' draft. "He's a very young writer and he only wrote two or three scripts. And I read a script of his that I was very fond of and Barbara and Michael liked it," the director explained. "There were a couple of polishes and changes that I wanted to do and I felt that he was very well suited and I thought that he would be good for it and that's why I hired him."


For Daniel Craig, the challenge is to improve upon the success of his freshman outing as 007, Casino Royale, which is the highest grossing entry in the franchise's four-decade history. "We're in a situation where the pressure is now on to make a movie that tops that and that's what we've set out to do. We've set out to make something that's going to be very different. The storyline's going to have a different thrust, but we're still going to have to make a successful Bond movie," Craig said.

"That was one of the reasons for getting Marc involved: to make sure we were still telling a really strong story. This isn't about me coming in and doing some character study. I'm playing James Bond. This is about creating as much reality in this heightened world as we possibly can so that the audience hopefully gets emotionally involved and gets a better ride out of it. That's why we got together this group of people so that we can continue what we started with Casino Royale."

Judging by what RT observed in Chile and from our conversations with the filmmakers and cast, Quantum of Solace is shaping up to be yet another solid Bond movie and a worthy sequel to the acclaimed Casino Royale. The team's dedication to exploring the emotional and psychological underpinnings of 007, and the otherworldly nature of its locations, suggest that Quantum of Solace could be a unique entry in the James Bond franchise.



But wait, there's more! Head on over to our friends at MySpace who have an exclusive video shot while we were in Chile. The guys over at IGN Movies also have done a bang-up job on "The Secrets of Quantum of Solace" which you can find right over here.