Daniel Craig

Calcutta, Aug. 29: Daniel Craig may not after all get to Bond with Sabarmati.

Despite co-operation from the railway ministry, the Sam Mendes-directed Bond 23 — the working title for the next James Bond film — may have to be rerouted from Sabarmati to a not-so-busy train line.

Team Bond needs to shoot seven to eight hours a day for seven days on a railway track. Something that wasn’t possible without hampering the Western Railway timetable in Ahmedabad when they got the permission back in July. Now, Agent 007 will have to do his chase and stunts on a lighter route elsewhere in India.

At a meeting between railway minister Dinesh Trivedi and shooting crew representatives today, Team Bond was asked to submit a shooting plan in the next couple of days. “Once we get the details, we will recommend an alternative route,” said a ministry official. “They want to shoot in Gujarat, Mumbai and Goa with the train sequence near Sabarmati. But it’s a busy route and trains can’t be stopped there for the shoot.”

The Indian line-producer for the MGM-produced film sounded confident about a solution. “The meeting with the railway ministry was very fruitful,” Parvesh Sahani of India Take One said. “Yes, the technical issues need to be sorted out but we are expecting some kind of a solution by the end of this week.”

In an email interview with The Telegraph, Craig had written: “We are working on the schedule for India and yes, it’s always exciting to play James Bond and this time is no different.”