Many fans of Austin Powers know that the character of Dr. Evil was inspired by Lorne Michaels, the producer of Saturday Night Live. But Dr. Evil was of course also inspired by Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the villain from Thunderball, who was played by Donald Pleasance. While we may never see another Austin Powers movie again, there may be the possibility that Blofeld could come back to the James Bond franchise.
As Collider and HitFix tell us, a decades long legal battle over Thunderball has finally been cleared up, and as Collider tells us, “This deal means that classic Bond villain and the nefarious organization SPECTRE are now back in the official library.” So does this mean the villain could be reinvented for a future Bond movie?
Collider feels this is “kind of like Warner Bros. finally getting the rights to Lex Luthor,” but at the same time, when have we seen a villain been repeated in any James Bond film? Not to mention now that Blofeld was parodied in Austin Powers, it may be hard to take Blofeld seriously again, unless he’s totally reinvented from the ground up.
As Collider suggests, maybe there will be an Easter Egg at the end of the next Bond film, which is due on November 6, 2015. It would be a trip to see 007 follow the Marvel films and have a hint at the end of the movie for what’s coming up next, although at the end credits of the ‘70’s Bond flicks they would usually tell you what the next Bond flick would be with a credit like, “Look for the Man with the Golden Gun next year.”
BTW, for those who don’t know the old school Bond, SPECTRE, which was the evil organization 007 fought, stood for Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion.
