Consider us both shaken and stirred – according to an unnamed source, Kick-Ass' Aaron Taylor-Johnson has been offered the role of James Bond. It’s real this time, we promise.
After what’s probably been close to a decade of speculation, an insider claims Eon have chosen their next suited super-spy, according to The Sun.
The British media outlet (which a 2023 YouGov poll found was the second-least trusted national paper, three points ahead of The Star) dropped the news from an unnamed source yesterday. To be fair, if we’d leaked the most-anticipated news of Barbara Broccoli’s career before the star had even signed on the dotted line, we’d want to stay unnamed too.
Taylor-Johnson grew to fame in Matthew Vaughn’s punchy, sweary comic book adaptation, Kick-Ass, and its 2013 sequel (directed by Imaginary auteur Jeff Wadlow), and is set to star in the much-delayed Kraven The Hunter from Sony Pictures. His name’s been hovering around the bookies’ list of likely Bond replacements for a while, but speculation reached ahead when reports emerged that he’d wowed the producers at a secret screen test, as reported by *checks notes* The Sun. Funny that.
In any case, the 33-year-old Brit certainly fits the casting profile, age and nationality wise. He was also a lot of fun in 2022’s Bullet Train – fingers crossed his 007 is a comedy cockney.
Other recent frontrunners to take over from Daniel Craig’s 15-year stint in the role have included Tom Hiddleston, Tom Hardy and Idris Elba – who ruled himself out on a recent podcast appearance on the grounds of online vitriol about his race.
At 33, Taylor-Johnson would be (by our maths) the third-youngest actor to put on 007’s product placement-friendly watch (fourth if you include Lashana Lynch in her brief adoption of the number in No Time To Die).
Stop us if you’ve heard this one before, though. We’ll wait for official confirmation before we get too excited.
