On Thursday morning, Amazon founder and executive chair Jeff Bezos posed a question to his X followers: “Who’d you pick as the next Bond?”
Just one day prior, that inquiry may have felt a bit presumptuous: while Amazon’s $8.5 billion MGM acquisition in 2022 gave it the rights to distribute the Bond films, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson had long been the heads of Eon Productions and the franchise’s custodians. That gave them an unprecedented level of artistic command regarding all things 007.
But in the early morning hours before Bezos’ tweet, Amazon MGM Studios announced a new joint venture with Wilson and Broccoli that would give the studio creative control over James Bond.
“We now live in a world that we’ve never lived in before with this franchise, and that’s the Broccoli family not having the final creative say,” Fandango director of analytics and Box Office Theory founder/owner Shawn Robbins tells Variety. “This is a new frontier.”
In the years following Daniel Craig’s final turn as the charismatic, womanizing superspy in 2021’s “No Time to Die,” Broccoli and Wilson were clear about the parameters of their search for the next Bond: he would be played by a British man young enough to stay in the role for at least 15 years.
“The Barbara Broccoli group had a very realistic idea of how the franchise should continue. In other words: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Bond fits a certain profile, and you don’t want to mess with that too much,” film history lecturer and Bond expert Max Alvarez says, suggesting 41-year-old “Poldark” alum Aidan Turner as a fitting 007. “One of the reasons the series has been hanging on for so long, for so many decades, is that they didn’t mess with the formula too much.”
But with Amazon now holding the martini-soaked reins, what does the next Bond look like?
“What I feel like is probably the smartest bet, and something that Amazon would be wise to embrace, is going younger,” Robbins says. “They’ll probably lean toward a 30 to 40-something actor.”
Alvarez similarly makes the case that, like 007s of yore, the newest superspy should be given ample time to mature along with Bond – both in age and star power. “We tend to forget that all the Bonds were not big stars in films when they were hired for that role,” he says. “Hire a comparatively unfamiliar face to grow into the part and to become well-known in the role. It seems to have worked in the past.”
As for the type of actor, “James Bond: The Man and His World” author Henry Chancellor suggests taking some inspiration from Ian Fleming’s original novels. Fleming once said he designed Bond to be “rather anonymous” to allow readers to identify with the character. That said, he’s also got some distinctive (and glamorous) traits: namely, his impeccable taste in cars, clothing, women and cocktails.
“He’s always been this strange mix of blank tough guy and high-living secret agent, and that is the juggling act of casting Bond. Too much tough guy, and it’s just another action movie. Too much expense account snob, and you are just dying for Blofeld or some other megalomaniac villain to take him down,” Chancellor says.
But while Fleming may hold the key to the character, his well of stories has largely run dry. “No one knows better than Eon productions how brilliantly to exploit the original Fleming source material,” Chancellor adds. “And I’m sure they also know how little there is of it left. Barring a couple of short stories, it’s all been used in some way, so this is indeed the start of a new chapter.”
That new chapter could prompt Amazon to finally cast the franchise’s first non-white Bond. Idris Elba has remained a top internet fancast for years, but the actor admitted in 2023 that racist backlash turned him off from the iconic role. But even if he has a change of heart, at 52 years old, Elba seems an unlikely choice to take up the mantle at this stage.
Still, Chancellor says that, as the Commonwealth has diversified over the years, so, too, can 007. “All [ethnicities] would be plausible in modern Britain. We’ve just had our first Hindu Prime Minister, the current Leader of the Opposition is Black. And Bond is, for better or worse, a symbol of Britain. He parachuted into the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games with the Queen, for God’s sake!” Perhaps this changing attitude could pave the way for younger Brits like Regé-Jean Page, Damson Idris, Aaron Pierre and Lucien Laviscount, who have emerged as popular choices among fans.
While Bond may sound like the role of a lifetime, “The Movie Business Podcast” host and USC School of Cinematic Arts Professor Emeritus Jason Squire says it’s actually a double-edged sword, especially from an agent’s perspective. “The positive side is that you get your client to be James Bond. Terrific! The negative side is that the client is tied up and may be typed as James Bond. It’s very tough to get out, especially if the client wants to show range,” he says, adding that Craig has expertly navigated this challenge with his performances in films like “Knives Out” and “Queer” that showed different sides of his talent. He cites Andrew Scott and Barry Keoghan as two particularly well-rounded actors with the chops to suit up as 007 while maintaining fulfilling creative pursuits elsewhere.
Craig indeed left a big, impeccably tailored tuxedo to fill, whether it be by Amazon or Eon. “Ultimately, the legacy of Daniel Craig and his run of films was something Bond had never done before,” Robbins says. “How do you follow that? That was going to be the question, no matter what happened in terms of creative control.”