Walking into the polished marble lobby of the Four Seasons for the press junket, I am directed to the elevators that will take me to the United Artists suite. A woman joins me in the elevator. We're heading to the same floor.

"Are you here for the "GoldenEye" junket?" I ask. "Yes," the woman replies curtly.

Elevators are miserably a difficult and awkward place to strike up a meaningful conversation.

"Did you like the film?" Inquires the woman. "Yes. Loved it." I respond, more than enthusiastically. "Oh, that's good," she says.

With that, the doors open and the woman is met by an army of pretty young twenty-somethings and ushered away. The penny drops. That was Barbara Broccoli, co-producer of the film.

It's round table time at the Four Seasons. Eight rooms set aside for a battalion of reporters to lobby their questions at the cast and crew of the film. Despite the endless supply of free soft drinks, the set-up has appearance of a court of enquiry - the stars being the expert witnesses giving their testimony. A sea of microphones cover the white linen covered round table - all leading the 'hot seat' where the rotating guests will sit through the cross examination. And a free-for-all cross examination it is - with each reporter trying to jump the gun on the next in the rapid fire question time.

MGW: We all start out to make the best picture we can - the best Bond film we can given the material we have. Certainly, Pierce gave us the opportunity to try out, try going in a different direction. He's very good at the action and the menace and the light comedy and romance - he's very romantic. That's how we evolve it.

Q: Did you have any question of going with other people? I heard Mel Gibson was offered the role.

MGW: Never. We didn't offer it to anyone else, although we did look for several months at a lot of different people. Pierce we had considered 10 years before, and the question was 'who else had come along in the meantime that we could consider?' Sometimes there are unknown actors who might be right for the role.

Q: I heard there was an idea to mix it up and make if 'Jennifer Bond.'

MGW: Not from us!

Q: Would you ever do that?

MGW: I think that would be a different situation. I think people have tried it -

Q: Tank Girl!

MGW: Not Tank Girl, but they've tried it with other women action characters.

Q: Can you recap the last six years? There was a lawsuit with MGM/UA and then Timothy Dalton dropped out. What was happening?

MGW: I can maybe clarify what happened with the lawsuit. Paretti took over MGM in a proposed leverage buyout situation. We brought an injunction to say if the leverage buyout went ahead the company would be bankrupt. The Federal court rejected the motion for an injunction and four months later they were bankrupt. And then we had about two years of negotiations. It took that long for the bank to take control and put in new management, we were then able to start afresh.

Q: Can you speak about the situation 10 years when your first choice was Pierce?

MGW: It turned out that Pierce got preempted before we could make the decision. We had some negotiations going on - but it turned out we got to the point where we couldn't make the deal.

Q: The six-year hiatus: Good thing or bad thing?

BB: Well it wasn't a good thing when we were going through it. We were really unhappy that we couldn't go ahead with the film. And people would come up to us all the time - especially with a name like Broccoli - and go "Bond! Why haven't you people made a Bond film?" And so that's been going on for a few years and it seemed to us there was a huge demand for a Bond film and it was sort of frustrating that we couldn't make one. But now we are here at this point I think we just have to look at it most positively and say that the anticipation is very high, we hope that they will like it and we think that they will.

Q: What did it cost? $70 million?

BB: No. Just under $60 million.

Q: Is that the most expensive Bond film?

MGW: In real terms but not Moonraker, 15 years ago was $33 million

Q: Barbara, can you talk about growing up as a little girl - what were the Bond girls like?

BB: Oh I such a great childhood because I met and knew all these wonderful people who worked on the movies - and I have kept friendly with many of them. It was just a wonderful way to grow up.

Q: What did being a Bond girl mean to you - it must have been the icon to aspire to growing up?

BB: I don't think I thought of it in those terms. I could only associate who the real people were and I thought they were great women - I knew them all very well. And they were all very nice to me.

Q: Do you remember Lotte Lenya?

BB: Vaguely, yeah.

Q: Barbara, can you tell me what you think Pierce brings to the role?

BB: Well I think he has all the qualities one would expect. He's handsome, he's a very good actor, he's witty, he's sophisticated, he's charming, I think he's appealing to both women and men. And I think he's great in the action stuff. He has enough of self-depricatory sense of humor that men will like him - and he's a romantic, sexy guy for the women. So I think we've hit it absolutely on the button with him.

Q: He says that he thinks women really like these movies. What's your perspective?

BB: I think women will like this movie very much. I think the two leading women in the film are very interesting characters and are played very well by both the actresses. And I think they're far more accessible to men and women and should play to people across the board.

Q: Can you talk about the pressures of making a $60 million movie that is a come back for both the series and for your family. The last two performed badly in the US and there was talk of the series being written-off.

BB: We were never talking about the series being written off. And those two films were VERY successful by our standards and the standards of the studio - because otherwise they wouldn't have been made. Traditionally these films have done better overseas. And certainly on those two movies they did enormous business overseas.

MGW: We also do very well overseas. On those films we did 35% domestic - the rest overseas. We have a successful series and of course you're always on the line - every picture. The next picture we do we'll be on the line again. You're never not on the line. You can't ever relax, you can't ever sit back. This picture is probably more important for the studio than it is for us in the sense of financial impact it will have.

BB: My father always remembers a time when after the third film ("Goldfinger") that Judith Crist said it was the end of the Bond series. And his response to her was 'Your paper will fold before the Bond series folds' and he was right! Six months later her paper folded. People have always predicted the end of the series.

Q: It's still the same formula since "Dr. No." How do you keep it fresh?

BB: We just try to make a really good movie. You find that when you try and do this, maybe we should change the formula - you find people come up to you and say, "So where was M? Where was Moneypenny? Why didn't you have the 'thing'" So you keep what you think is important in the formula and make the best movie you possibly can.

MGW: When you think of it as a formula - you have to ask yourself 'how does Bond really differ from any other action adventure film you're going to see?' And I think you'll find that the differences are superficial. Sure we have a 'Q' scene. Ok. But if you look at the substructure they are quests, action-adventure quests. That's what they are at the very bottom.

Q: In the intervening years there have been some big spy films.

MGW: When I first started to watch "True Lies" I thought, 'My gosh, they're ripping us off.' But after the first half hour I realized it was an homage, a tribute to James Bond. Slightly took off in a different direction entirely.

Q: We hear that MI is going to be a James Bond film.

MGW: Well, good luck!

Q: At one time the family was looking to sell it's interest in the Bond films.

MGW: We did consider, at one time, evaluating the company that way when we were stymied and had problems with MGM.

BB: But we had real concern as to what was going to happen to the studio at that point, and I think that had a lot to do with it.

Q: What would selling Bond mean?

BB: It would put us out of a job.

MGW: We have a relationship with the studio that is a contractual relationship.

Q: Isn't United Artists a 50% partner in the Bond franchise?

MGW: They own some part of them but not the majority. If they were going to go bankrupt we were concerned about our position.

Q: The suits are saying that with GE there was an attempt to bring the series up to date. Was this genuinely a concern of you guys?

BB: I think we have a lot of competition out there. Bond in a way created the genre, so there has been a lot of imitators, theres been a lot of competitors. So I think it's healthy for us to try and keep up with all of the elements so we don't disappoint the audience - audiences come to these movies expecting to see spectacle and stunts. So we just try to make the best film we can and hope that they like it.

MGW: We hope we have a good story to tell. And this one has underneath it a treason and betrayal theme.

Q: What's with the PG13 rating? Will Bonds ever be R?

MGW: Never.

Q: Do you envision a day when Bond can cross over to R rating territory, so he can smoke and really have blood on his hand?

MGW: I don't think that's a PG 13 thing. Language is, and nudity is in the US. But we also have considerations abroad as every country has it's own collection of what it considers to be appropriate for different age groups. It's a concern to us. We've always made family movies and the idea of these films is that any member of the family can say 'I want to see a Bond film' and the other members of the family don't groan.

Q: To what degree do you, as producers, do you put a line there that you don't cross?

BB: You've got Martin coming in next, you can ask him.

MGW: You can ask him how many times we asked him to get some cover on that and do it another way.

Q: Did Barbara always intend to go into the family business - did you ever have ambitions elsewhere?

BB: I don't think I've ever known a time before James Bond. I was born in 1960 so as far back as I can remember James Bond has been a huge part of my life. And I just loved watching my father go to work and do what he did. And so it's always been very appealing to me. So from a very early age I would hang out, work on the films as a kid. And then officially since "Octopussy." So I can't imagine doing anything else.

Q: Is he in semi-retirement now?

BB: He's taken a bit of a back seat but he still has a lot of influence.

Q: Liked your cameo - have you always appeared in the films?

MGW: Yep. From "The Spy Who Loved Me" on. We all did it, Cubby, Lewis Gilbert and I are all in Moonraker.

Q: And Barbara?

BB: Uh-uh. I don't even like having my passport photo taken.

Q: What was the biggest nightmare on this movie?

BB: It was all pretty difficult. When you have five film units shooting in different parts of the world simultaneously - logistically its quite complicated. Tom Pevsner is a master of coordination. All of the units had something that was difficult.

MGW: The thing on this picture that was difficult was that we had to make a studio out of an old Rolls Royce factory.

BB: And as it turns out Pinewood would not have been big enough for GoldenEye.

MGW: St. Petersberg was 517 feet long. The runway was the runway that they used to fly planes in on. We had a backlot of 200 acres.

Q: Was there anything that $60 million couldn't buy you? Anything that you couldn't get into this picture?

MGW: Only time constraints?

Q: What happened to the car?

MGW: Nothing happened with the car.

Q: Yes, we noticed. Why not?

MGW: It just didn't seem to have a place

Q: What happened to the DB7?

MGW: We considered the DB7. Did we have a DB7 in the promo reel? Your memory is better than mine.

BB: We were trying to figure out which one to use. We opted for the classic.

MGW: Whenever you deal with a classic car you worry about whether they'll be reliable.

Q: Michael, why did you step out screenwriting?

MGW: I haven't really stepped out. It's just the way this one came out.

Q: Did the passing of Richard Maibaum present any problems in developing this one?

MGW: Dick was just great. He was always useful for either giving us a story or bringing him in at the end. He was a wonderful guy. Cubby worked with him since, before Bond. He and I were collaborators for twelve years.

Q: There was some talk of Sean Connery coming back as Bond's father?

BB: Several people talked about that, but we've never heard that.

Q: Given the long pre-production cycle, are you working on the next Bond film already?

MGW: We've met writers but we haven't really started.

Q: What about 'Colonel Sun' by Kingsly Amis?

MGW: 'Colonel Sun?' Are you suggesting that? We haven't bought it. We have an option, but we haven't bought it.

Q: Did you think of bringing back the original Moneypenny?

MGW: It's been suggested but

BB: Lois Maxwell retained the Moneypenny name and still writes a newspaper column in Toronto?

And with that, time was up and the twenty-something publicists brought the brief encounter to an abrupt halt.

More than a dozen questions never were asked, that being the hit and miss nature of a round-table session. But what was clear was that this time out, the producers were part of the celebrity stable of talent. The buzz had the publicists firmly in control as "GoldenEye" was the hot ticket in town.

Barbara Broccoli was fearless and certainly was not taking any nonsense. Michael Wilson was the conciliatory, the more thoughtful of the two. Both were in their stride and taking on all comers. They knew that they had a good product on their hands and the initial buzz was very positive. On that October day the news was that James Bond was back, and the world was a lot happier for it.

The lessons of 1989 appeared to be learnt and there was going to be no mistakes with this film. Like "The Spy Who Loved Me" in 1977, this was a comeback film despite their statements to the contrary. The good news was that unlike "Licence To Kill" in 1989, the confidence was not misplaced. Not since the days of "Thunderball" or "Moonraker" had the U.S. attendance for a Bond film been so high. It was not without good reason that Michael Wilson could appear so confident and at ease.

But just two years later things would be different.