No Time to Die brought Daniel Craig's tenure as 007 to a close, and fans of the character are keen to know who will follow in the actor's footsteps. There have been a lot of discussions about a female Bond, be it "Jane Bond" or even Lashana Lynch's newly introduced 00 agent.
However, for longtime Bond producer Barbara Broccoli, there are some very specific parameters that the next actor who plays the iconic Ian Fleming creation needs to meet.
"I think it will be a man because I don’t think a woman should play James Bond," she tells THR. "I believe in making characters for women and not just having women play men’s roles. I don’t think there are enough great roles for women, and it’s very important to me that we make movies for women about women. He should be British, so British can be any [ethnicity or race]."
Actors like Henry Cavill and Tom Holland remain popular choices to take over the role, though there's also a lot of enthusiasm to see a diverse actor cast as 007. It's about time that becomes a reality, but for Broccoli, the priority is keeping the spotlight on Craig's time as James Bond...for now, at least!
"I want to let this film play and really celebrate Daniel’s incredible achievement that he has done over 16 years," Broccoli added. "People always ask, ‘Oh, who’s the next James Bond?’ It’s like asking a bride as she’s going up to the altar who’s her next husband going to be. I don’t really want to think about who is going to be the next person until I absolutely have to."
Later in the interview, Broccoli said Amazon's acquisition of MGM hasn't had any sort of impact on how they approach the James Bond franchise, adding that she's not met with Jeff Bezos as of yet. Her belief is that the company won't push them into expanding the franchise, and said that "as far as we know, [Bond 26] will be an MGM film under an Amazon banner." Despite that, we can't help but think Amazon will want to do more than make one movie every three or four years!
The future of Bond remains up in the air, but we are expecting some casting news to drop in 2022.