The New James Bond Movie Will Also Be a Travel Guide to India

Also in movie news: Francis Ford Coppola's 3D vampire movie has a European distributor

In your Hollywood roundup: The new James Bond movie is reportedly planning a location-heavy India shoot, Dick Ebersol returns to 30 Rock, and Francis Ford Coppola's vampire movie secures a distributor in--wait for it--Europe.

• The Times of India is reporting that the country's Information and Broadcasting Ministry has given producers of the untitled 23rd James Bond permission to film in multiple locations in Gujarat, Delhi, and Goa. Anyone planning a vacation to the country could do worse than simply relying on the daily call sheet for the Sam Mendes-directed film. According to the report, the Delhi filming will take place in "the cheek-by-jowl streets of Daryaganj, Sarojini Nagar market and Ansari Road marketing hub." North Goa will be the backdrop to the movie's beach scenes. The filmmakers' request to use the "tunnel at Dudhsagar (south-eastern railway) and Zuari rail bridge over Zuari river (Konkan railways)" in Goa was turned down "due to security concerns," but there's still a chance they can work out a deal with the railway ministry. In the western state Gujarat, they'll be filming in the "relatively unknown Navagam town near Ahmedabad," which the paper notes is "close to installations like Torrent Power limited, ONGC and IOC." Could these installations have something to do with the top-secret plot of the film, which according to Worst Previews, the Internet is now insisting will be called Carte Blanche? Could be. It wouldn't be a post-Sean Connery Bond movie if it didn't involve a sinister public works project of some kind or another. Filming is scheduled to begin by the end of the year. [Times of India via The Hollywood Reporter]
• Former NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol's self-imposed, summer-long exile from 30 Rock is over. He's back with the network as a consultant. What will he be consulted about? The network's NFL and Olympics coverage, says Ad Week. The move comes less than 24 hours after Bill Carter and Richard Sandomir reported in The New York Times that Today show producer Jim Bell would executive produce NBC's coverage of the 2012 London games, replacing Ebersol, who has orchestrated NBC's coverage of every Olympics since 1992. Bell isn't giving up the Today top post, so bringing in reinforcements probably makes sense. Ebersol left the network in May after 22 years in charge of the sports division when negotiations on a contract extension collapsed. [AdWeek]
• Director Francis Ford Coppola's Edgar Allen Poe-inspired, possibly autobiographical 3D vampire movie Twixt has had its international and French distribution rights picked up by Pathe International. No word on how much the French "mini-major" distributor paid for the film, which premieres at the Toronto Film Festival next month. After watching the film's trailer again, it does seem like the kind of thing that would be huge in Europe. [Variety]

• A source briefed on the deal tells Bloomberg that former Walt Disney Studios chairman Dick Cook, who abruptly resigned from the company in 2009, supposedly with a helping hand from Disney CEO Bob Iger is trying to raise $625 million from private equity firms, hedge funds, and "wealthy individuals" to "make and distribute family oriented films." Cook is generally credited with landing Johnny Depp and being one of the first believers in a Pirates of the Caribbean project when he was at Disney, but it has to be scary--or even a tad depressing--to know that $625 million would just barely cover the cost of two Pirates sequels. [Bloomberg]