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Hot Deals: Bond Lawsuit to Book
Judy Quinn -- 8/3/98
MGM's just-granted request to a federal judge for an injunction to block Sony from developing a rival James Bond film franchise pending further litigation is the latest twist in the 007 intellectual property saga, and will be just part of Live and Let Die: The Billion-Dollar Battle for James Bond, a book by Esquire film critic David Thomson and Los Angeles writer Andrew Olstein, just acquired by Knopf senior editor Jonathan Segal. Segal, who is rumored to have paid a significant $400,000 preempt for world rights to the book, got first look at the proposal from ICM agent Kris Dahl because Thomson is a longtime Knopf author (his previous was the Orson Welles bio Rosebud). No pub date is set, since litigation is ongoing. Bond book lovers may be interested to know that Putnam/Ian Fleming estate-endorsed James Bond franchise author Raymond Benson is expected to serve as an expert witness for MGM in the case. At press time, Knopf had already concluded a six-figure U.K. rights deal, selling the book to Little, Brown U.K., a longtime publisher of Thomson's work.

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