Like a seasoned croupier brushing the felt off everyone’s chips, Amazon MGM Studios boss Jennifer Salke revealed this week in an interview with the Guardian that there is absolutely nothing to worry about with regard to the complete and utter absence of any significant sign of a new James Bond movie, any time soon. “The global audience will be patient,” she said. “We don’t want too much time between films, but we are not concerned at this point.”
In an era of constant content, of three Marvel movies and at least a couple of related Disney+ shows a year, it has to be said this is quite a refreshing perspective, until you remember that Amazon MGM is really the backseat-driving M to Eon Productions’ go-getting 007. It is the latter’s Barbara Broccoli, daughter of Bond legend Albert, who truly controls the creative direction of these films, and given Salke reportedly got told off for having the temerity to suggest that Her Majesty’s favourite spy might one day be seen on the small screen, it is quite clear who’s in charge.
Salke better hope that Bond fans are going to be patient, because she is not going to be able to do much about it if they’re not. If Broccoli wants to take her own sweet time over deciding Bond’s next direction, it’s unlikely anyone will (or could) attempt to stop her. Eon shepherded 007’s latest Daniel Craig-essayed iteration smartly through a five-movie, largely well-received run, culminating in 2021’s thrillingly climactic No Time to Die.
The series now stands alone as pretty much the only major film saga that has not diverted, at least temporarily, to the small screen. No Bond-themed TV show here centred on the young Q in his Oxford days, inventing gadgets to bamboozle the dons while quietly imagining a future of international espionage and bagpipe flame-throwers.
We haven’t even had a sniff of a whiff of a mention of a “Bond universe”, which means that when the next 007 flick does eventually roll around, it will feel like a glorious throwback to an earlier era of global event movies. None of the best Bonds – Goldfinger, From Russia With Love, Live and Let Die, Craig’s Casino Royale and Skyfall – would have been improved by the addition of an animated Netflix comedy spin-off in which Blofeld, having retired from the world of evil plots, opens a luxury pet spa catering exclusively to the animal companions of major supervillains.
On the other hand, by the time we do get to see a new Bond, sometime in … let’s say 2027 (if we’re lucky) might the whole shebang not run the risk of looking distinctly old-fashioned? In an age when audiences can easily binge-watch entire TV shows in just one weekend, waiting six years for another Bond flick feels a mite indulgent. While a return to 007’s 60s heyday is probably preferable to a sci-fi Bond in which Q invents apps that hack the metaverse and the bad guy hopes to destroy the world via the power of social media algorithms, there is no guarantee that either approach will bring us an epoch-defining super-spy to make us all forget we once thought Craig was the best actor to ever inhabit the role.
There is an argument that the recent films’ relatively modern and realistic approach to Bond is about as far as it’s possible to push this creaking cold war saga before it teeters over the edge and crashes down into a pool of crocodiles. A female M, Moneypenny getting to escape desk duties (at least temporarily), a black, female 007 who puts Bond to shame. All these things happened since Casino Royale ushered in the Craig era, and the only thing notable about them in five or 10 years’ time is that the average film fan won’t even notice in retrospect that these amounted to “woke” additions.
Perhaps that’s the secret to Bond in the 20s or 30s – put him in the hands of a film-making team so youthful that they don’t recognise the difference between the 1960s and the 00s, and are therefore able to deliver a genuinely revolutionary 007 that nobody over the age of 25 remotely recognises. It sounds like a terrible idea, but if Broccoli and team wait too long to get this thing moving, they might end up with a gen-Z Bond whether they like it or not.