James Bond to finally make China debut

James Bond has made his official debut here with "Casino Royale" stars Daniel Craig and Eva Green attending the first Chinese premiere of a 007 film in the franchise's nearly 45-year history.

Director Martin Campbell joined Craig and Green, the latest "Bond girl," at a posh Beijing cinema for the premiere Monday, a day before the film opens in more than 1,000 Chinese theatres nationwide, the biggest-ever foreign film opening in China.

"After 21 Bond films it is pretty obvious that it is very significant to be the first Bond film to be shown here," Campbell told journalists.

If the film proves a success here, then it would not be unthinkable that a future Bond movie may one day be filmed in China and that a Chinese woman would play the "Bond girl," he said.

"It would depend on the subject matter, but obviously it would be a wonderful place to come and shoot," Campbell said, while adding that he would not likely be directing the next Bond film despite the global success of Casino Royale.

Said Craig, "It would be wonderful to come here to do a film ... this is a stunning place and there would be unlimited places (to film)."

Craig, the latest in a long line of James Bond actors, said he was a big fan of Chinese film and would love to work with leading Chinese actresses like Gong Li or Zhang Ziyi.

"I'd love to work with them ... I'm a huge Gong Li fan, I could happily watch (Chinese Kung fu star) Jet Li until I'm blue in the face," Craig said.

Casino Royale is already the top-grossing 007 film ever, with a box-office take estimated to be in excess of 500 million dollars.

Western film companies have been trying to break into the China market for years despite widespread pirating of movies and restrictions only allowing 20 foreign films to be shown in Chinese cinemas each year, and often with censorship.

"The fact that we got through without any censorship cuts at all seems to me to be a significant achievement," Campbell said.

Violent scenes of Casino Royale were cut in the United States and England, but in China "they don't seem to mind the violence," he said.

During a day of shopping in Beijing, both Craig and Campbell said they were disappointed to find pirated DVDs of Casino Royale in the markets.

"Of course you don't want to lose the revenue," Campbell said.

"To spend all that time on the movie and you work to make it as pristine and as high quality as you can, only to see some grubby copy of it on some pirated DVD, is, to put it mildly, disappointing."