This column is premised on the claim that we have recently had diverting mutterings on what is to become of James Bond. You remember him. Tough guy. Fond of the ladies. Got blown up on some island back when we were still wearing face masks to the pub.
The Daily Express tells us “James Bond fans told to expect major announcement on new film ‘in weeks’”. Over at Venice International Film Festival Daniel Craig, outgoing Bond, was suffering the press conference for Queer, Luca Guadagnino’s adaptation of an early William S Burroughs novel, when a journalist popped up to ask the sort of question journalists ask about the venerable franchise. Could James Bond be depicted as gay?
Craig must be used to it by now. Pierce Brosnan, who last played the role more than 20 years ago, still gets asked about potential successors. Elsewhere in Venice, Jenna Ortega, star of Netflix’s Wednesday, was denying any interest in fronting a Bond spin-off. “I don’t want to see Jamie Bond,” she said.
The truth is that there is always gossip about the next 007. The Express’s story quotes “entertainment lawyer, and Bond superfan, Ajay Chowdhury” as suggesting a formal announcement on the next project could emerge in November as Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson, the series’ producers, pick up the Irving G Thalberg Award. Well, anything could happen. Remember when an announcement on Aaron Taylor-Johnson securing the role was imminent? You don’t? Well, it was six months ago. So your haziness is excusable.
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This column is really here to wonder what the hell happened to the most durable film sequence in the medium’s history. Suddenly everyone is asking that question. “Why it’s taking so long to find the next James Bond”, Robbie Collin explains in The Telegraph. “Where’s James Bond gone?” Jack Malvern ponders in The Times.
The entertainment world has been staring down the track for the past three years without detecting even the whiff of an incoming train. It really was September of 2021 when No Time to Die premiered at the Royal Albert Hall. And that film was already hugely delayed by the pandemic. Shooting began nearly three years before punters caught sight of Craig at the wheel of his Aston Martin.
That presses home how, even in an era without lockdowns, we could be looking at a yawning gap between episodes. If the project were announced tomorrow, the earliest we could hope to see the 26th Bond film would be sometime in 2026. It feels more likely we will have to wait until 2027.
This would less surprising if the Craig era had gone out with a whimper. But No Time to Die made $774 million, or almost €700 million, at a time when people were still nervous about going to the cinema. Among English-language titles, only Spider-Man: No Way Home took more that year. Spidey and 007 were credited with saving cinema.
Jack Lowden, born between the last Timothy Dalton Bond and the first Brosnan, now seems like a plausible candidate. Our policemen get younger and younger, right?
The producers brought back the venerable “James Bond will return” line at the close to, one presumes, reassure punters that only this incarnation had died in the missile strike. He would not be returning in feminine form as the then barely known Ortega. No other agent would take his place. Some other Bond would be inserted into a rebooted franchise, much as happened when Craig arrived in Casino Royale.
Most fans assumed the wheels would begin rolling within six months. Folk who don’t understand the process of ageing argued for the imminently quinquagenarian Idris Elba. It has taken so long that Henry Cavill and Tom Hardy are now also probably past it. The likable Jack Lowden, born between the last Timothy Dalton Bond and the first Brosnan, now seems like a plausible candidate. Our policemen get younger and younger, right?
The delay has been attributed, in part, to MGM, long Bond’s boss, being sold to Amazon about six months after the emergence of No Time to Die. Broccoli, seen as the franchise’s driving force, has had other projects to handle. One feels, however, that the announcement of a director and star has to come within months.
Is that really what we want? The continuing, unstoppable gossip is almost more fun than the films themselves. And nobody can contain it. I remember, six years before the last Craig film, hearing Broccoli patiently declare “There is no vacancy” when asked who would next take the role. The Bond interregnum – the longest so far being the six years between Licence to Kill and Goldeneye – is the period when all Bonds are possible.
Will they set it in the 1960s? (Sadly, no chance.) Will we have a person of colour in the role? (Quite possibly.) Will they reuse one of Ian Fleming’s few unused titles? (I wouldn’t bet against The Hildebrand Rarity.) It’s better to travel hopefully.
