If you’ve been waiting for the next 007 film (currently known as Bond 23), you’ll have to wait a while longer. Pre-production on the continuation of Daniel Craig’s reign as 007, is on hold. The sequel to Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace is being help because the debt-ridden MGM is on the auction block. This means that EON Productions (who own the cinematic Bond) may have to wait for their distributor MGM’s troubles to end before they can begin.

So, while we’re waiting, how about some cool 007 trivia?

Michael G Wilson.

Executive Producer Michael G. Wilson has been associated with the James Bond series since 1972. Brought in by his stepfather, Bond producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, Wilson worked first in EON Productions’ legal department before taking a larger role, assisting Cubby on The Spy Who Loved Me.

In 1979, Wilson took a larger role in the making of the Bond films. He produced Moonraker and he was on his way. Michael G. Wilson, along with his producing partner and half-sister Barbara Broccoli, eventually replaced Cubby Broccoli as the hearts and minds behind the James Bond film franchise. Wilson also wrote or co-wrote five of the 007 films (starting with For Your Eyes Only and ending with License to Kill).

Perhaps Michael G. Wilson got his writing talent from his mother. Before Dana Broccoli married Cubby Broccoli, she was a novelist and actress named Dana Wilson. Her first husband (Michael’s father) was a man named Lewis Wilson.

Like his wife, Lewis Wilson, was an actor. He had some success in the 1940s, landing nameless, thankless roles in small, unremarkable films like The Racket Man, Sailor’s Holiday and Wild Women (co-starring with his wife). He starred in one TV series in the 1950s, Craig Kennedy, Criminologist, before he retired from acting to work for General Foods.

Here’s the cool trivia part:

If Lewis Wilson is known at all today it’s as the star of Columbia Pictures’ 1943 fifteen-chapter serial Batman, in which Wilson played the dual role of Batman and Bruce Wayne…making him the first actor to do so. Before Christian Bale, before Michael Keaton, before Adam West, there was Lewis Wilson…the father of Michael G. Wilson.

And there you have it:

The boss of James Bond is the son of Batman.

It does not get much cooler than that.

Posted in Trivia Den