[Image: Befunky]
After acquiring the rights to the 007 franchise, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos recently posed a question to his X followers: “Who’d you pick as the next Bond?”
Yes, Amazon will now get to decide who plays the world’s best-known spy after Amazon MGM Studios announced a new joint venture with Wilson and Broccoli that would give the studio creative control over James Bond.
Amazon’s $8.5 billion MGM acquisition in 2022 might have given it the rights to distribute the Bond films, but Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson had long been the heads of Eon Productions and the franchise’s custodians, which gave them artistic control over all things 007. But no more.
“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.”
Who’d you pick as the next Bond? pic.twitter.com/u7nBaRROlf
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) February 20, 2025
While Bezos gets to pick the next Bond, the internet has already come up with their favourite picks. While names like Tom Hiddleston and Tom Hardy have been offered, it seems the two favourites for the next 007 are Aaron Taylor Johnson (the kid from Kick-Ass), and our personal favourite, Henry Cavill.
Can we all agree that Henry Cavill would be the best James Bond? pic.twitter.com/o3QeyUw4US
— Justin Thiel (@Justin_Thiel) February 20, 2025
After Daniel Craig’s stint as the charismatic, womanizing superspy, 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 agrees, saying “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 Jeff Bezos now also owning the rights to choose the next Bond, all bets are off.
“What I feel like is probably the smartest bet, and something that Amazon would be wise to embrace, is going younger. They’ll probably lean toward a 30 to 40-something actor.”
While Cavill and his peers seem obvious choices, many film critics believe the franchise should look for an ‘unknown’ actor to step into the spy’s shoes. The idea is to allow the newt superspy 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.”
“James Bond: The Man and His World” author Henry Chancellor suggests taking some inspiration from Ian Fleming’s original novels, whereing he described Bond as “rather anonymous.”
“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.”
While Ian Flemming may have created James Bond, his well of 007 tales has pretty much run dry by now. Most of the books, short a few short stories, have already been incorporated into Bond films, so perhaps with Amazon, there is the chance to create something completely new.
Amazon might even go the diversity route and cast a non-white Bond. Idris Elba has remained a top internet choice for years, but the actor admitted in 2023 that racist backlash turned him off from the iconic role. Elba is also 52-years-old, which may pose an issue.
“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.”
Whatever Amazon chooses to do, let’s take a moment to appreciate what an excellent Bond Daniel Craig was. He injected a sense of mystery into a character that had grown more boring ever since Sean Connery hung up the tux. The big question is whether Jeff wants Bond to endure for another few generations, or if he just wants to make a buck and pander to public opinion.
If you are a regular reader you might remember we jumped the gun a bit on this one a few weeks ago (our bad), but Henry Cavill remains our choice – the guy even auditioned for Bond when he was 22.
Just do it, Jeff.
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[Source: Variety]
