License To Make A Killing

Elsewhere, wars may be raging, natural disasters unfolding and killer flu epidemics brewing, but for awhile this past week it seemed like the most important event in the world was the arrival of a lesser-known British actor at a London dockside, CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips says.

By now, anybody who cares knows that Daniel Craig is the new James Bond. In fact, millions knew days before the announcement because Craig's mother let slip to the papers how thrilled she was for her son. But then, the whole secret spy thing isn't what it used to be.

It used to be that, in the movies at least, suave, dark men in immaculate suits confronted Commie or ex-Nazi, megalomaniacal villains bent on world domination and fell into bed with the girl along the way.

Over the 40 years of the franchise, five movie Bonds have come and gone, with greater or lesser success.

Yes, Sean Connery defined the role and Pierce Brosnan's Bonds turned the brand into even more of a money spinner, but who remembers much of Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton or, for that matter, the brief run of George Lazenby.

So there's a lot riding on the choice of Craig, Daniel Craig, the 37-year-old English actor whose credits until now include some notable supporting roles and well-received work in relatively low-budget British films.

The James Bond character is more just the longest running franchise in the movie business. More even than a British national icon. He's a resource, like coal or oil. He's an industry.

Much of it controlled from a building in central London from where the heirs of the original Bond author, Ian Fleming, and their business partners operate.

Matthew Fleming is Ian's great nephew.

Mark Phillips: Who owns Bond?

Matthew Fleming: It depends on what bit of Bond you're talking about. Say the publishing side. There's still very much a Fleming family concern. But, I think the whole Bond brand is very much conceived by us.

Ian Fleming, whose own wartime spying and lifestyle, with a little embellishment, is said to have been the inspiration for his 14 Bond novels, died just as the Bond phenomenon was really taking off. His heirs, and the producers to whom they've sold the movie rights, have reason to be grateful that Ian started scribbling spy novels for fun in his 40s.

Mark Phillips: What is the Bond name worth on a yearly basis to the -- to the front -- fronting family corporation?

Matthew Fleming: Emotionally a great deal (laughs).

Mark Phillips: And financially?

Matthew Fleming: Emotionally a great deal (laughs). I mean we're obviously not gonna divulge how big a business Bond is. But, you know for yourself, Bond is still a huge business.

The great thing about the Bond business is that, as well as reinventing it from time to time, you can actually make up more of it. Not accidentally, there's another new Bond around these days. The family has hired writer Charlie Higson, to write a series of new Bond books. Not another sequel, it's in the new fashion of prequel.

Higson's Bond is the 13-year-old schoolboy who becomes the spy. The first volume, Silverfin, about the young Bond's days at the posh private school of Eton is already selling well. And why not? The formula is no great mystery.

"The basic formula for a classic James Bond story is: James Bond meets the villain fairly early on. He's involved in some form of contest with the villain," Higson explains. "In 'Goldfinger' it's golf. In a lot of the films and books it's cards, gambling. Usually the villain tries to cheat and Bond beats him by outcheating him.

"Bond then spends the next section of the book finding out more about the villain, getting closer to him. He infiltrates the villain's lair. The villain captures him, tortures him," Higson says. "Bond escapes, comes back and gets his revenge. And somewhere along the way bond meets
a woman or two women. Usually two women the first of whom gets killed," Higson adds laughing.

It's no secret where the motivation for this child Bond comes from. Two words: Harry Potter. And the massive children's and teenagers' reading market that opened up.

Though translating the famously womanizing Bond to the child market takes some imagination.

"Yeah, I mean you have to have a Bond girl. And so there is a girl in it called Wilder Lawless who Bond meets in Scotland," Higson intimates.

"And because of the prudishness of publishers and of boys who don't want to read about kissing and cuddling and all that kind of nonsense there's not a lot of sex. But Bond and the girl do wrestle."

It all gets better and better, Phillips says. The child readers of the child Bond become the new adult readers of the adult Bonds and then everybody goes to the movies. Bond doesn't just have a license to kill. His is a license to make a killing.