Timothy Dalton was still cast as Bond. Writing Initial writers included John Cork, Richard Smith, and novelist Donald E. Westlake. In 1995, Westlake wrote two story treatments in collaboration with Wilson, both of which featured a villain who planned to destroy Hong Kong with explosives on the eve of the city's July 1997 transfer of sovereignty to China. Westlake used some of his ideas for a novel he completed the next year, though it was not published until 2017 under the title Forever and a Death. Director Spottiswoode said that, in January 1997, MGM had a script also focused on the Hong Kong handover; however, it could not be used for a film opening at the end of the year, so they had to start "almost from scratch at T-minus zero!" Bruce Feirstein, who worked on GoldenEye, wrote the initial script. He claimed that his inspiration was his own experience working with journalism and viewing both Sky News and CNN's 24-hour news coverage of the Gulf War, stating that he aimed to "write something that was grounded in a nightmare of reality." The script was handed to Spottiswoode, who then gathered seven Hollywood screenwriters in London to brainstorm, eventually choosing Nicholas Meyer to do rewrites. The script was also worked on by Dan Petrie, Jr. and David Campbell Wilson before Feirstein was brought back for a final polish. Although Feirstein retained sole writing credit in the film and publicity materials, Meyer, Petrie and Wilson were given credit with Feirstein on the title page of the film's novelization by Raymond Benson. While many reviewers compared Elliot Carver to Rupert Murdoch, Feirstein based the character on Robert Maxwell, with Carver's reported death bearing similarities to that of Maxwell's, that is, "Missing, presumed drowned, while on a cruise aboard his luxury yacht," as stated by M at the end of the film. Wilson said, "We didn't have a script that was ready to shoot on the first day of filming", while Pierce Brosnan said, "We had a script that was not functioning in certain areas." The title was inspired by the Beatles' song "Tomorrow Never Knows". The eventual title came about by accident. One of the potential titles was Tomorrow Never Lies (referring to the Tomorrow newspaper in the plot), and this was faxed to MGM. However, due to a typing error, it became Tomorrow Never Dies, a title MGM found so attractive