James Bond is back

After a temporary hiatus that raised the possibility of Britain’s top secret agent permanently abandoning the silver screen, a new James Bond film has been officially announced by Hollywood studio MGM.

The 23rd instalment in the cult movie series is currently scheduled for release worldwide on November 9th 2012. Daniel Craig will return as Bond while director Sam Mendes will take charge of the project. The film will pick up where Quantum of Solace left off.

Activision will presumably be preparing an associated game release having acquired the rights to the franchise until 2014, way back in May 2006.

"Yet another James Bond video game, which also had been held up because of the uncertainty, recently got the go-ahead," Deadline writes.

Bond may have been MIA from cinemas for some time but he was on active duty on consoles over Christmas thanks to the release of 007: Blood Stone and Goldeneye. Who is handling the next Bond project, and whether or not Bond will make an additional appearance before his movie tie-in, is less clear.

Bizarre, the studio behind Blood Stone, was once said to be working on two Bond projects. However, considering the perilous position the developer is currently in, and the poor reception given to Blood Stone, that looks increasingly unlikely.

It was also rumoured last month that Activision-owned Raven Software was working on a secret Bond project. And, of course, Call of Duty developer Treyarch was the developer of Activision’s Quantum of Solace tie-in.