After Danny Boyle's exit from Bond 25, his longtime scriptwriting collaborator John Hodge also jumped ship – and without a script it's hard to make a film. A full-improv Bond could be quite interesting, admittedly, but sources suggest that old hands Neal Purvis and Robert Wade will step in to write the script instead.

"The Purvis and Wade treatment they wrote earlier was already signed off before the bromance with Danny Boyle and John Hodge began," a Hollywood exec close to the production told the Daily Mail.

The pair were originally hired to write Bond 25 before Boyle and Hodge got involved with the project, and had put together a comprehensive outline of the story which they'll now return to and transform into a full script.

Purvis and Wade have had a hand in writing every Bond script since The World Is Not Enough in 1999. That does sound quite reassuring, but it also means that they were at least partially responsible for Pierce Brosnan's Bond remarking while seducing Dr Christmas Jones: "I thought that Christmas only comes once a year."