16 hours ago
3
The ink could hardly have dried on the contract between Amazon MGM and Eon Productions, the legendary Bond film company run by Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson, before Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos put up a social media post that went to the heart of the conundrum faced by one of the film industry’s most lucrative franchises: “Who’d you pick as the next Bond?”
The reality underlying Broccoli and Wilson’s decision to cede control to Amazon, the company that has since 2021 been responsible for co-producing Bond films after its purchase of MGM, is that since it became apparent that Daniel Craig wanted to leave the role, the franchise has been struck by a kind of creative paralysis. We are used to increasingly long gaps between their release, but with no new lead actor in sight, Bond 26 has still not even reached the starting gate. Eon kept the quest for a new Bond behind completely closed doors, like a sort of state secret, but Bezos’s first act has been to throw the gates open, with an Elon Musk-esque act of quasi-crowdsourcing. It may be just a PR-grabbing gesture, but it demonstrates that Amazon is planning to do things differently from now on.
The focus, understandably, is how Amazon might develop the franchise. Eon’s method has been to protect the brand like hawks, pouring all their efforts into one huge film, and refusing all suggestions of spin-offs, adaptations, remakes. And it worked: every Bond film has been a box office giant, meaning that this 60-year-old spy-movie series is still bigger than Batman, Lord of the Rings or X-Men. (The only time Broccoli and Wilson caved in to the pressure of a TV spin-off was Amazon’s poorly recieved challenge show 007: Road to a Million, which they presumably felt was far enough removed from the core Bond purpose that it couldn’t really dilute it.) Amazon will be undoubtedly looking to other mainstream “cinematic universes” as a model, and seeking to imitate Star Wars and Marvel’s mix of “main narrative” feature films, standalone spin-off films (Moneypenny: The Early Years and the like), and streaming shows (Rosa Klebb’s Adventures in Space/Time, with any luck) to extend the reach of the storylines.
Of course, picking a new Bond is vital, and who Amazon settles on will determine the nature of what follows. Eon, to outsiders, seemed caught between keeping the traditional audience on side by picking someone not dissimilar to previous incumbents (ie British, white, male, in early middle age) and following its own liberal instincts by installing an actor outside that demographic (towards which they made a tentative move giving Lashana Lynch a role as 007 in No Time to Die). Idris Elba for years was touted as a possible replacement but, as the actor himself said in the past, the blunt truth is that, at 52, he is probably to be too old. The bookies’ choices are more traditional: Happy Valley’s James Norton, Aaron Taylor Johnson (Kick-Ass, Kraven the Hunter, Nocturnal Animals etc), and Babygirl’s Harris Dickinson. Will Bezos go down the progressive route? In the current political climate it’s – frankly – become much less likely.
However, Amazon’s first order of business isn’t casting; it’ll have to appoint an executive (or team) to supervise the franchise. (Experience has shown that even the biggest movie operations need focused figureheads to run things, a la Kevin Feige at Marvel, Kathleen Kennedy at Star Wars, and James Gunn and Peter Safran for DC.) What Amazon is really after, in common with the other standalone giants Netflix and Apple, is to crack the blockbuster movie business, something that for all its prowess in delivering product, it has never really managed – in sharp contrast to the streamer’s conquest of high-end TV. All the while the established Hollywood studios, led by Disney and Warner Bros, have used their film-making prowess to make inroads into the streamers’ core business, using their own bespoke players (Disney+ and Max respectively). Purchasing expensive IP, as Disney did with Star Wars and Marvel, as Netflix did with Narnia and Amazon itself with Tolkien, is the main weapon.
The way Bond films are financed will probably change also. Eon was the master of the brand partnership, with which it accrued vast amounts of production funding: leaked emails revealed that Heineken paid £28m to be involved in Skyfall; in return, they got Craig for a huge global advertising campaign. With less need to focus on individual films’ finances, Amazon may feel less obliged to continue Bond’s brand-stuffed aesthetic, and may feel less inclined to cast a lead who looks good holding a beer can. But it remains to be seen how far Amazon will go in developing Bond as a “universe”; Eon made its own tentative attempts to establish a set of potential spin-off villains in Spectre, but appeared to retreat from that back to winding up Bond’s personal narrative in No Time to Die. There is a finite amount of original Bond material to draw on, however, and that point seemed to be reached several movies back, with Quantum of Solace the most recent title actually taken from a Fleming story. (All practical possibilities seem to have been exhausted; we’re never likely to see films called The Hildebrand Rarity or Risico.)
The timing of the deal means that Broccoli and Wilson have chosen to bow out as the series is at a crossroads; decisions made now will affect it for years. Having shepherded Bond together since 1995, the half-brother and sister team have overseen two major transformations (to Pierce Brosnan, and then Craig) and can look back with complete satisfaction. The keys to the Bond kingdom are now entirely in Amazon’s hands.
