Bond 25's goofy working title might offer a clue about the villain

By Britt Hayes | February 22, 2019 | 4:26pm

Aux Features Film

With Cary Fukunaga in the director’s chair, Bond 25 is gearing up to finally head into production–with Daniel Craig in tow–this April. And according to a new report from The Guardian, the latest installment in the 007 series is operating under the working title Shatterhand–which is not a new Scandinavian murder mystery on Netflix, although it probably should be. Most movies use working titles during production, usually to maintain secrecy. Sometimes these are random words that could be real titles (Return Of The Jedi was Blue Harvest), and sometimes they’re wacky jokes (Titanic was Planet Ice). But in the case of Bond 25, this working title is actually a reference to a series villain.

In Ian Fleming’s 1964 novel You Only Live Twice, “Shatterhand” is an alias employed by Ernst Stavro Blofeld–Bond’s longtime arch-nemesis, played most recently in Spectre by Christoph Waltz. Blofeld is to the Bond movies as the Colonel is to KFC: The character has been played by numerous actors over the years, which the movies explain away by depicting Blofeld as a villain who’s just really fond of changing his face. And sure, maybe Blofeld will be back for Bond 25 or Shatterhand or whatever they call it (probably not Shatterhand, to be honest), but it seems more likely that this is just a bit of misdirection–then again, that’s exactly what Blofeld would want you to think.