IYER HEATH (ENGLAND) (TIP): James Bond will take on a sinister organization with links to his past in the next installment of the blockbuster spy series, which star director Sam Mendes said on December 5 would be called ‘SPECTRE’. Mendes unveiled a new cast and souped-up car — an Aston Martin DB 10 — but few other details about the 24th film in the series, that will see Daniel Craig return for his fourth outing as the dapper, martini-drinking agent. “We’ve got to be bigger and better than ‘Skyfall’. It’s as simple as that,” Craig said, referring to the previous film in the series.

He said he’d had a role in shaping the script, with Mendes and the writers. “I’m allowed free rein — what a gig,” he said. Austrian actor Christoph Waltz would play a leading role, Mendes added, without going into more details. Most commentators assumed the sadistic villain of Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Inglorious Basterds’ would play the baddie. Italian actress Monica Bellucci and French actress Lea Seydoux, who shot to fame in the erotic hit ‘Blue is the Warmest Colour’, would play “Bond girls”, Mendes added at a press conference at Pinewood Studios north of London. In a teaser description of the plot, Sony Pictures Entertainment said in a statement: “A cryptic message from Bond’s past sends him on a trail to uncover a sinister organization.

While M battles political forces to keep the secret service alive, Bond peels back the layers of deceit to reveal the terrible truth behind SPECTRE.” The title was a clear reference to the global criminal organization that Bond has battled since the first film in the series, 1962’s “Dr No”.