New York magazine’s Vulture has a piece (via Film Junk) that describes how Paul Haggis, a screenwriter for Quantum of Solace (and the writer/director for the Best Picture-winning Crash), almost created a child subplot for the next Bond film. According to Marc Forster, Solace’s director:

Haggis had an idea they weren’t fond of, and I didn’t know if it would work or not…The idea was that Vesper in the last movie, maybe she had a kid, and there would be an orphan out there. It wasn’t anything to insult the franchise. But they felt it wasn’t particularly Bond — him looking for the kid. I think Paul thought he just leaves the kid, he doesn’t deal with it. But [the producers] thought that would be really nasty, too, because Bond was an orphan himself. If he would find a kid, would he just leave it? They were so vehemently against it. That was the only time I saw, really, “No, we can’t do that.” They said, “Once he finds the kid, Bond can’t just leave the kid. It’s not right.”

Having spawned from the mind of Haggis, this idea doesn’t really surprise me, but it almost definitely would have been a horrendously executed. What possible positive outcomes could there have been for this scenario? As my /Filmcast colleague Devindra put it, either he keeps the kid and ruins the franchise, or he leaves the kid and is a much bigger asshole than we could have possibly imagined.

The franchise most fresh in my mind that played with this type of thing was Indy 4 and your feelings towards that film as a whole will probably inform how successful you feel that relationship was. But can we all agree that a James Bond Jr. would, as a general thing, be a terrible idea?

Discuss: Would you want to see a Bond film where he deals with his child? What action movies have dealt with father/son relationships satisfyingly?