If you saw No Time to Die, you know that we won’t see Daniel Craig’s James Bond again. But, of course, the franchise has been going for half a century and 25 movies. We’ll see someone’s James Bond. It will just be a new actor and a new take on the material.
Who that actor will be and what that take will look like remains to be seen — and it’s going to be a few years before we see it. Bond franchise producer Barbara Broccoli spoke with Deadline this week and revealed that so far “nobody’s in the running” to replace Craig, and that the 26th Bond film is still several years away because they need to decide on a total “reinvention” of the character.
Here was her quote;
We’re working out where to go with [Bond], we’re talking that through. There isn’t a script and we can’t come up with one until we decide how we’re going to approach the next film because, really, it’s a reinvention of Bond. We’re reinventing who he is and that takes time. I’d say that filming is at least two years away.
If filming on the movie is at least two years away, that means you won’t see the movie until a year or two after that. Which means it could be until 2025 or 2026 before that new Bond film hits theaters.
Figuring out “where to go” with Bond is a huge deal. Billions of dollars potentially rests on the shoulders of whoever gets picked to play 007. And it’s not just one movie they’re choosing a direction for; it could potentially be three or four or more films when you factor in the sequels just about every Bond star makes. (Daniel Craig ultimately made five Bonds.) That kind of decision takes time.