Blofeld Back For BOND 23!?!?

Beaks here...

At first, I thought there was a great deal of credibility to this morning's report in The Guardian that Michael Sheen is currently in talks to play Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the twenty-third James Bond film. Then I read the story and realized The Guardian was just passing along a tabloid rumor cooked up by Daily Express. Here's an excerpt:

"Michael is hot property right now and it is felt that he's the right man to bring Blofeld back to life," an unnamed source told the Daily Express newspaper. "Michael was a Bond fan in his youth, so this would be a dream role for him."

I've done some checking around today, and have been told to treat this as you might any other rumor from the Daily Express. I must say that this does seem suspiciously convenient, what with Sheen's good friend and frequent collaborator Peter Morgan just being announced as co-writer on BOND 23. So while I think Sheen would make a deliciously sinister Blofeld (even though, physically, he's not quite what Ian Fleming initially envisioned), let's wait until we get an official confirmation/denial before we get excited or incensed over this bit of speculative casting. For something Sheen-related that's not grounded in rumor (for now), I've been hearing great things about his performance as soccer coach Brian Clough in THE DAMNED UNITED. It was released in Europe last March, and is scheduled to open in the U.S. on September 25th.