Neal Purvis and Robert Wade
| Neal Purvis | |
|---|---|
| Born |
9 September 1961 United Kingdom |
| Occupation | Screenwriter |
| Robert Wade | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1962 (age 54–55) Penarth, South Wales |
| Occupation | Screenwriter |
Neal Purvis (born 9 September 1961) and Robert Wade (born 1962) are British screenwriters who co-wrote the five James Bond films from The World Is Not Enough to Skyfall, as well as other works. After an initial announcement that they would not be involved with future Bond films, they returned to co-write Spectre with John Logan and Jez Butterworth. The two have been called "one of Britain's most successful screenwriting partnerships".
Purvis' father was a photographer, and as a teenager, Purvis was in a film club that focused on 1940s cinema.
Wade was born in Penarth, South Wales, and lived there until he was 11. His mother was an artist, and from an early age he wanted to be a writer and began making home-made films as a teenager.
They met each other while they were going to school at the University of Kent, when they were assigned as room-mates. They began playing in a band together, which they continued to do for at least 20 years. Purvis left Kent and completed a BA in Film and Photo Arts. Wade graduated from Kent and moved to London where he was later joined by Purvis. They spent six years writing scripts together as well as ghost writing for music videos.
Wade and Purvis' screenplay for Let Him Have It (1991) (based on the true story of Derek Bentley, a young man who gets caught up in street gangs in post war London and is later controversially hanged), displayed the writers' "outrage toward a system hell-bent on vengeance" and was called "first rate, no non-sense".
Barbara Broccoli, producer of the James Bond films, hired Wade and Purvis to write their first Bond script because she had seen their film Plunkett & Macleane (1999) and liked that it was "dark, witty, sexy and inventive". Purvis described their approach when they joined the Bond franchise as to "come in with ideas, things we've found in science magazines, on the internet, interesting weapons and what's happening in technology. Then we find a journey for Bond to go through." In their Bond collaborations, Wade generally does "all the verbiage at the beginning of the script." They created a novelisation of their Bond script for The World Is Not Enough in collaboration with Raymond Benson. Wade and Purvis also wrote a script for a Bond spin-off featuring the Die Another Day character Jinx (Halle Barry), which was attached to director Stephan Frears, but nixed by MGM for budget concerns and "creative differences".
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