The previous installment wrapped filming in October 2019. By the time any new Bond adventure makes it to the big screen, the gap will have been bigger than the gap between Licence To Kill and GoldenEye.
Rumors persist that there is a creative impasse between Eon Productions and Amazon, the new owners of MGM. The rights are owned 50/50 between them, but Eon has the final creative say. According to the scuttlebutt, Amazon executives want to modernize the character, expand it, and treat it as “content”. Meanwhile, Eon is holding firm that the core of the character is what has made the franchise so enduring, and the value lives in scarcity.
None of this has stopped the non-stop speculation as to the next actor to take on the role. The most recent rumor was Challengers, The Crown, and God’s Own Country star Josh O’Connor.
At 34-years-old, British, and very close to the physical literary description of the character from Fleming, it was his casting in the next Knives Out film alongside Daniel Craig that seemed to start the talk.
Deadline asked him directly while at Sundance, and he shot down the rumors:
“I have no thoughts, really. The truth is that … I think in the space of a week, I made a joke about, wouldn’t it be funny if I played Bond? Then, me and Daniel [Craig] did an Actors on Actors, and then something else happened, and then suddenly I was James Bond. If I am Bond, I don’t know about it.”
Producer Barbara Broccoli has the final say on casting and has been determined to keep the character male, stamping down on any “Jane Bond” push from certain quarters.
O’Connor has a lot of work booked, working with Paul Mescal on The History of Sound, Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind, and a Spielberg project all on his schedule for the next eighteen months.
Nothing will move on a new Bond until Amazon and Eon find some common ground. That sounds like it is far away from the noises coming out of Hollywood.