Pierce Keeps 007 Role: Producers

By Stephen M. Silverman

07/02/2001 at 01:20 PM EDT

Pierce Brosnan gets to keep the Astin Martin. Reports that the onetime Remington Steele, 48, was about to be replaced as screen superspy James Bond just aren't true, producers of the 007 movie franchise have been forced to announce. Stories had circulated on the Net, as well as on CNN and in the British press, that producers were courting Scottish actor Gerard Butler, 32, as Brosnan's immediate replacement. Butler even went so far as to confirm the CNN report in Monday's edition of Scotland's Daily Record of Edinburgh. Like the original Bond, Sean Connery, Butler, who gave up a law career to make his movie debut in Wes Craven's "Dracula 2000," is a Scotsman. (Stateside there were even stories that Jude Law, 28, was under consideration for the role.) "It just isn't true and I wish these rumors would stop. We have been inundated with calls all week," a spokeswoman for the Bond producers, Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, told Reuters. "Pierce Brosnan will play James Bond in the forthcoming production and for the foreseeable future." Brosnan, who has so far played Bond in three outings, is due to begin filming the next adventure -- as yet untitled -- at London's Pinewood studios in January.