As Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson announce that Amazon MGM will “lead James Bond into the future,” a few thoughts on what it means for 007.
Where does James Bond go from here? It’s been a question floating around in various forms for five years – and the recent announcement that Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson are stepping back from the franchise only muddies the waters further.
In a statement, Amazon MGM says that it and veteran producers Wilson and Broccoli have “formed a new joint venture to house the James Bond intellectual property rights, and those parties will remain co-owners of the franchise.”
In their own statements, however, Broccoli and Wilson appear to suggest that it’s Amazon MGM that will make the decisions over Bond.
Wilson, for his part, said that he’s “stepping back” from 007, adding that, “it is time for our trusted partner, Amazon MGM Studios, to lead James Bond into the future.”
Broccoli also talks of her long tenure on the Bond films in the past tense, and says “it is time to focus on my other projects.”
It’s a conciliatory-sounding choice of words, particularly in light of recent rumours that EON has been at loggerheads with Amazon MGM, which owns the production company, over the path James Bond should take next. No Time To Die, Daniel Craig’s final outing as 007, came out in 2021; Amazon purchased MGM – and as part of the package EON – the following year (having agreed the deal in May 2021), and the Bond series has been oddly quiet ever since.
In the place of a new Bond movie, we’ve had a game show – 007: Road To A Million, which is getting a second series this year – but no news of who will place Craig, or an idea of when a new outing might go before cameras.
A Wall Street Journal report published in 2024 suggested that there were major creative differences between Broccoli and heads at Amazon Studios, with the latter floating ideas of a Moneypenny spinoff or a TV series about a female 007. Broccoli was said to have nixed those suggestions, and bristled when executives at Amazon referred to the Bond franchise as ‘content’.
Given those rumours, it’s tempting to think that Amazon simply gave Wilson and Broccoli enough money to quietly take their leave – though, of course, it’s impossible to know from the outside what happened behind closed doors. But the timing of the WSJ’s report and this announcement certainly suggests that the creative impasse between Eon and Amazon was such that both parties had to eventually come to some form of agreement.
Previously, the biggest gap between Bond movies was six years, which will almost certainly be beaten by the time Bond 26 comes out. Both Eon and Amazon will be keenly aware that, the longer the super spy remains out of public view, the more likely it is that he’ll cease to be relevant. Bond is a globally-recognised brand, but all the same, history is littered with once-loved fictional characters who’ve dwindled out of fashion. The 007 franchise is worth millions both at the box office and licensing, so it’s in nobody’s interests to let him go the way of, say, Raffles the gentleman thief.
From a film fan’s perspective, the fear is that Amazon will now be free to exploit – or, as business-type people prefer to say, ‘leverage’ – Bond in all the ways Broccoli had previously shut down. If that’s true, expect a Miss Moneypenny TV series, more gameshows (Going for Goldfinger?), perhaps even some sort of James Bond Cinematic Universe.
The Bond franchise has had its ups and downs over the decades, but for better or worse, Eon was essentially a family business. It was co-founded by Albert R Broccoli and Harry Saltzman in 1961, a year before Dr No made its debut. When Albert died in 1996, his daughter Barbara and Wilson, her half-brother, took over. Their stewardship of Bond has been remarkably restrained, all things considered, having taken a hands-on approach from casting to choosing directors. Broccoli once said that choosing the right actor to play Bond was as “as serious as choosing one’s spouse,” according to that WSJ report.
Only time will tell whether producers at Amazon MGM will take quite so much care over Bond. But with this deal perhaps brought about to end a creative impasse, the company will almost certainly be moving quickly to find a new Bond actor and finally get a film into production. That film could look rather different from anything Broccoli ever envisaged. She was said to be open to the idea that Bond be played by a person of colour, but long argued that the actor should be British and male; Amazon MGM may have other ideas in that regard.
It’s said that Amazon will be much more inclined to cast a major star rather than risk hiring a lesser-known actor like Daniel Craig. Though given Craig has suddenly and rather dramatically quit the starring role in Luca Guadadagnino’s DC comic book movie, Sgt Rock, conspiracy theorists among us might suggest that the timing’s rather odd. With Broccoli and Wilson now having taken a step back, has Amazon dumped a huge truck of money on Craig’s driveway and lured him into returning as James? Again, that’s purely a conspiracy theory on our part.
What is definite, though, is that it’s the end of an era for an iconic character. James Bond will return, but the producers who’ve been his secret handlers for decades are now – creatively at least – appear to be out of the picture.
From autumn 2024…
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