Feature

How many words did SlashFilm write on the Bond non-announcement?

Ali Gray

26th July 2017

Place your bets! I'm going to say between 600 and 700. Let's go and have a look!

I was close! Because SlashFilm actually managed to write a total of 816 words on the announcement of the 25th James Bond movie, despite lacking the following information:

- The name of the movie
- The director of the movie
- The plot of the movie
- The studio who is releasing the movie
- Who is even playing James fucking Bond in the movie


For reference, here is the tweet from the official James Bond Twitter account that started the whole shebang (the 25 words below were not counted in SlashFilm's total).




This is the info we do have:

- It will be released in the United States on November 8th, 2019
- It will be released in the United Kingdom before that
- It's being written by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade
- That's it
- Seriously, that's it
- Okay: James Bond will be in it. Now that's it


SlashFilm are the masters of making turd mountains out of shitty molehills. Imagine being asked to spin off 800 words off a 25-word tweet (okay, 30 words if you count 'Neal', 'Purvis', 'and', 'Robert' and 'Wade'). It can't be done! FALSE. The people need to read SlashFilm winging it, adding words to the internet, vital words in an essential order, important words.

Here are my favourite bits from the SlashFilm non-Bond article.

"
"
"That's all the hard information we have, and the rest is pure speculation. But let's speculate anyway, shall we?"
This is the motto printed above the entrance to SlashFilm's office, except it's in Latin and reads: "Demum temere audent aequare ratiocinor" (translation: don't hesitate to speculate).

"
"
"Read on [to] find out everything we know about the still-untitled James Bond 25."
This, having already divulged all the major information in the story's headline.

"
"
"Will Daniel Craig Return?

Daniel Craig has been playing Bond since 2006's Casino Royale rebooted the franchise, and contrasted with Pierce Brosnan's suave and sophisticated spy, Craig has brought a much more brutal-"
Woah woah woah, I didn't ask for the man's Wikipedia page. The page header wasn't 'Here are some opinions on Daniel Craig'. You can't give me the answer to "Will Daniel Craig Return?" BECAUSE YOU DON'T KNOW. I like thinking of the writer pondering the question he's posed himself, sipping a brandy, gazing into the middle distance, smiling a smile to himself and thinking 'To answer this, really we need to go back to the Brosnan era'.

"
"
"Idris Elba (my personal favorite choice to take over the role)"
eye_roll.gif

"
"
"A more likely choice [to direct] is Lucky Number Slevin director Patrick McGuigan... I think he’d be a great pick for a Bond film (and considering he directed some episodes of Sherlock, the Scotsman clearly has experience handling titans of British pop culture)"
eye_roll_intensifies.gif

"
"
"Don’t forget about the rumor that the Bond producers might be interested in exploring a James Bond cinematic universe"
For those of you keeping count...



The last line, though, is my absolute favourite:

"
"
"James Bond 25 will be written by longtime Bond writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade and will arrive on November 8, 2019, four years and two days after Spectre."
That's right: they summed up the entire 816-word article in the last line, using just 29 words - and they even vamped a little at the end, with the whole 'four years' thing! Do you see, SlashFilm? Do you? Why? Why do you make me write these articles?

Fun fact: this feature came in at under 600 words.

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