The Casino Royale official website is now live, and it's packed with material with a very nice interface, and includes a cool film blog carrying its first update.

The Casino Royale site looks really smart, and contains a whole host of interactive content. You can even play poker. There's some interesting background material, stills, and the usual film stuff, but what is most interesting is the production blog itself.

I've just added it to the Filmmakers Feed List so you can keep track of the updates. The first entry has some vieled digs at the press and non film-marketing bloggers, but also contains promise of information to come.

CASINO ROYALE was Fleming's first Bond book and the film has stayed true to the shape of the novel so if you know your book, you won't be expecting to see a featured role for Moneypenny or meet Q.

In this film we'll see Bond get his 00 status, his licence to kill. What will happen to him in this story will inform all the Bond stories that followed. But it's not set in 1953 when the book was published - it is a contemporary story with a much more realistic feel than some of our previous outings. No villains in hollowed out volcanoes but more pain and danger for our hero.

There's also a nice little video intro with some behind the scenes footage and word from Craig himself.