Booked and busy: The next Bond actor will have to commit to the role for a decade
The 007 producers are looking for a long-term replacement following Daniel Craig's exit from the franchise last year
Aux News Elizabeth II
The next actor to shake and/or stir up the James Bond series will have to be less of a commitmentphobe than the famous spy. Ahead of the 60th anniversary of 007's film debut, Variety sat down with producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, who revealed that they are looking for an actor who will return to the role for 10 to 12 years, following Daniel Craig’s recent send-off in No Time To Die.
“A lot of people think, ‘Oh yeah, it’d be fun to do one,’” Broccoli says. “Well. That ain’t gonna work.”
Most Bond actors have had multi-picture runs, though George Lazenby infamously played the role in just a single installment, 1969's On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Craig appeared in five films, starting with Casino Royale in 2007.
Earlier this summer, Broccoli told Deadline that “nobody’s in the running” and that it would be at least two years until filming begins on a follow-up. The producers see each new actor as a way to reinvent a role that has been regularly seen onscreen since 1962.
Variety notes that Broccoli is very active in the U.K. chapter of Time’s Up and has been working to create more in-depth roles for women in a franchise that has historically seen Bond girls as being as much of a classic accessory for the spy as his gadget watch. No Time To Die was praised for minting Ana de Armas as an action star and featuring Lashana Lynch’s character taking up the 007 title.
“It’s an evolution,” Broccoli says. “Bond is evolving just as men are evolving. I don’t know who’s evolving at a faster pace.”
Many viewers have also called for more racial diversity in the series, with Idris Elba as a long-running favorite to sit behind the wheel of 007's Aston Martin. Though Variety reports that the producers are quick to show their support for him, the Three Thousand Years Of Longing star doesn’t have much of an interest in the role himself. Actors including Riz Ahmed, Daniel Kaluuya, and Regé-Jean Page have also become popular amongst fans.
Though it is unclear when the interview took place, it does not address an even more burning question: following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, will Bond still be working for her majesty’s secret service?
45 Comments
Stone-cold take: Craig was a great Bond and Casino Royale is a top 3 Bond movie for me, but man did those films confuse “serious” with “dour.” I don’t need Roger Moore dressed as a clown, but No Time to Die really laid on the “sad Bond” pretty thick. Hope future films have more a sense of adventure.
I thought Craig made a great Bond too, but they seriously sucked the joy out of Bond by the end of his run. I want a Bond that’s goofy, yet serious, but not that serious. Honestly, I thought the Pierce Brosnan films accomplished that.
Brosnan was the first Bond I saw in theaters, so I have a soft spot for him. I find it difficult to separate my own personal bias from how good he actually is, but I do think that tonally the Brosnan Bond movies worked well (except for Die Another Day, which was just really bad).
Same here…I think Bronsan had one great movie (Goldeneye) and then movies that had a lot of great elements but were on the whole dissapointing. Like, it’s not that far of a leap from The World is Not Enough to Casino Royale but I guess the late 90s wasn’t ready for that yet.
A lot of Bond’s charm is that the films are somewhat aspirational. Fast cars! Beautiful women! Exotic locales! Some of that is dated now (especially the treatment of women) but the fact remains is that Bond was someone a lot of the viewers wanted to be and watching the films was exciting escapism. Craig’s stories outside of Casino Royale (and to a lesser extent, Skyfall) had a real DCEU “I am a God doing this stupid stuff for you shitty people so be thankful since I would rather be anywhere else” grimdark feel.
For sure…honestly I liked how Casino Royale and (as reviled as the move is) Quantum of Solace tried to balance the wish-fulfillment element of Bond with the idea of how deeply fucked up/tragic he was as a person. But Skyfall leaned hard into “James Bond is a dinosaur and not needed” which is a boring beat at this point…I can’t really remember what Spectre was “about” besides the plot points…and No Time to Die just seemed to crank that DCEU energy past 11.
No one needed Roger Moore dressed as a clown.
I agree with almost all you said but I never found the “Craig Bonds” dour, definitely serious and more dramatic than others (I assume thanks to Daniel Craig’s influence), but I enjoyed them a lot more than the “Moore Bonds” which I loved as a kid (my secret shame LOL) but now only cringe at. But it was a BIG mistake to saddle him with a kid in No Time To Die (or kill him for that matter; you know, even if the producers offer you shit-tons of money to do a job you hate that causes you physical pain, you can just say no LOL).
That’s fair, and tbh I think the “dour” really only applies to No Time to Die. I also enjoy a more “serious” take on Bond and how it re-introduced the character as a human being who was seriously fucked up and had to do some pretty fucked up stuff as part of his job. There’s just something about that last movie that felt so joyless that it put me off.
I have never read Ian Fleming’s Bond novels but I read a review of the first Daniel Craig Bond movie and it mentioned that it brought back the “cruelty” of the books and for some sick reason that’s what I liked about the Craig movies *that I did like*, because they weren’t all winners IMO (I felt like introducing Blofeld was such a mistake even when done by the great Christophe Waltz; it kinda underscored that if wants to win more Oscars, he should really stick with Tarantino). Crow-barring a romance with a child into the last one was so un-Bond like that it really tempered my enthusiasm for the whole thing (not to mention that they seemingly felt compelled to draw it out an hour longer than it needed to be just to wring all the Bond-ness out of him LOL).
This doesn’t seem that surprising in an era where people are signing up to play superheroes for 10 movies, 5 tv shows, and an unspecified number of cameos in other projects.Craig did it for 15, if not for covid it would have been 14. Roger Moore did it for 12 (although that included a couple of films past his prime).
Disney is actually shifting away from those long-term contracts, ironically.
Not all years are the same.
Craig did 5 movies in 14-15 years. Moore did 7 in 12. Connery did 6 in 9 years.
There was a Bond film out every year from 1962-65 and two of those, From Russia With Love and Goldfinger, are still in almost any thinking fan’s top 5 list.
Part of that was COVID and part of it was the usual legal shit that keeps popping up now that Cubby is dead. But another part was also them having to drag Craig back to the franchise each time with more money and time off.
They could have just waved goodbye and then gotten Idris or Fassbender or snatched up Cumberbatch before he said yes to almost every other franchise or gotten Tom Hardy or rescued Cavill from the Snyderverse or saved Eric Bana from whatever Taco Bell in Melbourne he’s working at now and Dominic West from playing various levels of sleazy historical British men.
Instead, they kept chasing Craig.
Honestly, I’m sure it’s going to be more akin to an option than an ironclad guarantee on either side. I’m sure it’ll be full of caveats and likely provide some amount of negotiation around scheduling as is the norm for most of these long term contracts when they happen. They’re not going to try to stop anyone from being a box office draw or a prestige award winner when that will only help them. They just don’t want to negotiate every movie.
Roger Moore’s last Bond film was like a PSA against the dangers of getting a facelift.
That pretty much puts Idris out of the running. He really didn’t want to do it anyway, but playing Bond in your 60’s. ugh. They really should cast someone in their late 20’s and reboot the whole franchise with an origin story and three or four follow up films. Recast everybody. M and Q in their forties. Moneypenny in her early thirties. Let them all age in real time.
Eh, they brought Judi Dench back for Casino Royale even though that was a pretty hard reboot. A new Bond is a given, but the rest of the MI6 supporting cast would still work well if they wish to come back. It’s not as if audiences haven’t been able to accept the tonal shifts and conflicting realities over the past 60 years.
Plus, this supporting cast is outstanding. I’ll take Ralph Fiennes, Naomi Harris, Ben Whishaw, et al for as long as they’ll sign up.
I mean, if they wanna go the reboot route again, easy solution now: On His Majesty’s Secret Service. Also fitting because that was the first time they recast Bond.Also, what actor actually thinks “oh it’s be fun to do one Bond film”? It’s the franchise of franchises.
“They really should cast someone in their late 20’s and reboot the whole franchise with an origin story and three or four follow up films.”Except for the age thing, that’s what the Daniel Craig movies were.
Elba would still make a heckuva Bond villain
Must suck for up and coming actors being shoe-horned into 10+ years commitments in a fickle market when your livelihood depends on personal relevance.
Wut?
Must suck for actors to know they’re signing up for 4-6 movies that should be on pretty set schedules, to play one of the most iconic and legendary characters of all time, that will almost assuredly not bomb at the box office regardless of how good the movies are?
If you’re an up and coming star who dreamed of playing James Bond it’s great, sure, but if you’ve always wanted to be a next level movie star with multiple Oscars under your belt possibly having your entire career typecast as a single character starts to lose it’s appeal. I’m reminded of the recent story about DiCaprio’s advice for Chalamet, telling him not to do drugs, and no superhero movies…
Closer, but I still disagree. There’s enough time in-between for you to pick up at least one film, maybe two, and then there’s your entire career after. The next person could always be Connery good (Oscar winner, knighted, etc.)
Wait. Are we allowed to respectfully disagree on the internet? This may be a world first… Thanks!
I mean, it will be His Majesty’s, the monarchy is unfortunately not going anywhere anytime soon. Anyway, go young and fun. Make movies about awesome women with Bond as a Fury Road Mad Max-esque supporting character even if the franchise bears his name and number. And for the love of Jesus, stop making him the go rogue. I want cut and dried missions, not personal vendettas. And bring back Wishaw. Wishaw forever.
Unless they decide to make retro-Bonds that actually take place during the time-frame of the source material.
“Bond is a period piece now, deal with it.”
I hadn’t considered a period piece Bond movie. And it would be topical to make the Russians the bad guys again.
While I don’t have anyone in mind for the role, I really hope they go back to the goofier, joyful version of Bond we got when Pierce Brosnan played the role. Craig was great, but the gritty realism really started to drag by the end of his run.
Can I just say, that Craig’s dinner jacket in the picture above is the wrong colour, the wrong style, and the wrong material for a dinner jacket (in my humble opinion), and yet the bastard still makes it work! If I dressed like that, I’d look more ridiculous than Roger Moore as Bond in an actual clown suit.
No Time To . . . Turn on the light in the closet before selecting a jacket.
Maybe it’s just not a dinner jacket? If it doesn’t look like a duck, doesn’t walk like a duck, and doesn’t quack like a duck, maybe it’s not a duck.
At the rate that they make Bond movies these days, they’ll only be playing the character for 2 or 3 movies tops so it’s still not that big of a commitment.
Few random thoughts:
* Lazenby had a six-or seven-picture deal, but asked out of it after one and the producers, hearing that Connery was possibly gettable for a return, were like, “Sure!”
Dalton also had a three-picture deal, but the legal studio wrangling got in the way and he asked out/was asked to leave. Put him in Goldeneye with that plot and you have an amazing film. (And Brosnan was very good in it)
* 10-12 years used to be 5-6 films in Bond world, but now it is like 3 or 4, so in those terms, that isn’t too out of line with what the MCU actors do.
* This isn’t all that new. 00s Hugh Jackman, 80s Mel Gibson, 60s Cary Grant and a few others all would have loved to do just one.
* Brosnan was 42 when he started and 49 when he finished, so it’s not out of the question you could look at guys who are in their mid-30s now. Richard Madden is 36. He’s still my top choice now that they’ve fucked around and let the Fassbender moment go by.
* BUT… Bond can be black, Latino, Asian, Middle-Eastern, LGBT, female, trans, or any other box you want to check. However, it is a requirement that Bond be fucking fun for once and not a god damn slog.
If they feel like they have to keep apologizing for the Bond movies in the 1960s and the British Empire in the 1890s, then just shut it down.
Someone on another board mentioned it, but I would love to see Dev Patel. He’s 32, so a long commitment would bring him into his 40s, which is still pretty young. It seems like he prefers smaller projects as well, so he could still do those while being Bond.
He would be fantastic.
I’ve heard his name bandied about on boards — hell, I may have done so myself — and am still stunned by how great a bit of casting that would be.
A decade-long commitment probably rules out most or all of the fancast Bonds (and definitely someone like Idris Elba – he’s got plenty of work). It’d be nice to get “fun Bond” back. Bond is a really shallow character – if you strip away the womanizing, the one-liners, the British posh charm, and the gadgets, there’s not much left there (something which was absolutely true with Craig-Bond despite the attempts to give him depth and a back-story).
I think Idris is too old to take it on for 10-12 years. I don’t mean his physical body is too old to accomplish the role, but just that I can’t see someone wanting to commit to playing an action star into his 60s. Someone who’s not Tom Cruise or Liam Neeson.
this might be anathema to true Bond fans, but why couldn’t they ape the Mission: Impossible movie styles, give him an ensemble that traveled with him directly, etc.? Maybe it’s just Tom Cruise’s charisma or indifference to death or pain that makes those work LOL but his last 3-4 Bond-esque movies have absolutely killed at the box office and creatively.
Said it before and I’ll say it again, Jack Bannon.
Young enough for Barbara to screw around and somehow only get 3 movies out of 30 yrs (/s) and playing Alfred in Pennyworth has basically been a multi-season long audition. He’s the image of literary Bond to a tee and has the on-screen charisma.
A decade? So that’s maybe three movies?
Alright, I’ll do it then