Bond Team in No Rush to Ruin Franchise
'No Time to Die' wrapped production in 2019, but we're no closer to meeting the new Bond
Patience is a virtue, especially if you hold the keys to the biggest movie franchise … ever.
The Broccoli family oversees 007, AKA the James Bond film series. The saga began in 1962 with “Dr. No” and continued through Daniel Craig’s fifth and final outing as the super spy, “No Time to Die.”
That’s a staggering run for any film franchise, let alone one dealing with global conflicts and changing cultural mores. One hero. Twenty-seven movies.
Team Broccoli is in no rush to bring a new Bond to the screen.
The last Bond entry, “No Time to Die,” wrapped filming in 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic delayed the film’s release by more than a year – it finally hit theaters Oct. 8, 2021.
That means the Broccoli clan has known for more than four years they needed to find a new actor to play 007. Craig had been vocal that his fifth time in the Bond tux would be his last. And, given the physical pounding the franchise took on him, can you blame him?
Yet we’re no closer to that decision.
Producer Barbara Broccoli told The Guardian the series will be “reinvented” for the modern world and that they “haven’t even begun” that creative process.
“I go back to GoldenEye when everyone was saying ‘the cold war is over, the wall is over, Bond is dead, no need for Bond, the whole world’s at peace and now there’s no villains’ – and boy was that wrong!” she said, adding that modernisation is necessary whenever a new actor plays the part.
“Daniel gave us the ability to mine the emotional life of the character … and also the world was ready for it. I think these movies reflect the time they are in, and there’s a big, big road ahead reinventing it for the next chapter and we haven’t even begun with that.”
No rush, folks!
Does that mean the woke flourishes seen in the Craig era will be magnified moving forward? Will the saga take a cue from the recent Bond book, which is so comically woke it reads more like parody than anything Bond author Ian Fleming might conjure?
“Bond was struck by something. It was a long while since he’d been at any kind of function that was almost exclusively full of men. It felt strange. There was not even a pretense at diversity here,” the book wrote, later noting Aethelstan “hadn’t been the least bit concerned about ensuring that half of the people he’d hired to carry out his coup should be women, non-White, or disabled.”
Or will rumors that director Christopher Nolan will oversee the next film, and bring a throwback element to the saga, prove accurate?
We're no closer to the latest reinvention of #JamesBond suggests producer Barbara Broccoli, but the few hints she gives suggests the Christopher Nolan rumours may be wide of the mark.https://t.co/i3Dm06noXA
#007#ChristopherNolan pic.twitter.com/sZatrm5KCY
— Film Stories: magazines, podcast, live shows, web (@filmstories) October 23, 2023
On the plus side, we do have a new James Bond-themed reality show coming our way soon.
It’s called, “007’s Road to a Million,” a project near and dear to Broccoli’s heart. She’s actively engaged with the project and hopes to serialize the Amazon show, featuring “Succession” star Brian Cox, to other parts of the country.
Sorry. No reality show can match what the Bond franchise has built over 60+ years.
Bond films shouldn’t be rushed into production, of course. It’s a cherished property to be treated as such.
Why is the Broccoli team dragging its feet on starting the creative ball rolling, though? The 007 films require enormous considerations, both in regard to time and financial resources. Any new Bond actor will have to be tested, and considered, long before filming will commence.
It could be three to five years before we see James Bond again, optimistically speaking.
That’s assuming a script can be finished in a reasonable time period. To date, the Bond team doesn’t even know what kind of script it wants or what Bond will be fighting in the next installment.
Meanwhile, pop culture moves on without Bond. Video game adaptations are now the coin of the realm. Spy dramas like “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1” underwhelm at the box office.
Tom Cruise’s ‘Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two’ Delayed, Will Also Reportedly Get New Title After First Film’s Box Office Failure https://t.co/gSmjXmgN9t
— Bounding Into Comics (@BoundingComics) October 25, 2023
Nolan is the wild card in this conversation.
He’s the biggest directorial “name” in Hollywood, far bigger than even Steven Spielberg at this point in their respective careers. No one thinks he’d take the franchise down a woke road. His 2012 “The Dark Knight Rises” film featured Occupy Wall Street types as the villains.
If Nolan isn’t on board, it feels like the Broccoli family will wait, and wait, to find inspiration for a new Bond story.
By then, the culture may have moved on without 007.
When the MCU hits 60 years and is as iconic as James Bond..well. Plus, Bond is based on the real life experiences of Ian Fleming during WWII.
The new bond will most likely be a black trans person if current trends persist.
Fred, you clearly do not understand the economics involved. The budget cost and the box office take are only two factors in movie profitability and the box office returns are the lesser of that calculation. Marketing is by far the greatest expense a movie has. The common thinking is that a movie needs to triple its budget at the box office just to break even. With that calculus, both No Time To Die and Dead Reckoning were flops and rightly so. Daniel Craig’s Bond films have been the worst send ups since Roger Moore’s and Moore’s early films did great at the box office and his later ones did ok. The economics do not lie and the economics say quite loudly that going woke equals going broke. Budwiser learned that and now UFC, who tried to revitalize Bud’s image is learning the same harsh lesson. Know your audience! The wokesters have plenty of entertainment options, but since they are a vast minority, their options are limited. Non-wokesters are by far the vast majority everywhere and we just don’t want the garbage values pushed in our face. That is why Disney has suffered and will continue. There is a reason that classic Star Trek, Disney, and Bond films out-perform the new woke ones.
John M Stettner
Actually, Craig’s Bond films are the highest grossing in the franchise:
https://247wallst.com/special-report/2021/10/14/this-is-the-highest-grossing-james-bond-film-of-all-time/
You’re free to dislike Craig’s take on 007 or the direction of the films. But they clearly drew in LOTS of new fans to the franchise.
Craig’s film’s were the Edsels of the film industry. No spin offs and that is where the money is. There where so many new fans to the franchise that they were considering recruiting a black lesbian as a replacement. Now that’s what I call success that you don’t mess with.
Daniel Craig was great in Layer Cake but he’s no James Bond. This franchise has been dead and stinking for years. The Craig films may have made money but they are Bond films in name only.
I thought Craig was the best Bond, was glad to see the snark and dumb quips gone.
Exactly right and anybody who has been there since “Dr. No” knows it, even if they won’t admit it. Ms. Broccoli is in control and she knows that even if nobody wants a “reinvented” Bond, she will see how the winds blow for a few years before making yet another Woke Bond. Don’t forget how many writers were dropped or quit on that last one.
Daniel Craig was a woke Bond. He didn’t womanize, he didn’t smoke, and the plots after the first one were white men, most of whom had grudges against England a la Goldeneye. Middle Eastern terror? What’s that? I mean, oh dearie me, that would be racist!
Rick,
“Daniel Craig was a woke Bond.”
This post has issues. Let’s go through them.
“He didn’t womanize, ”
Wrong.
” he didn’t smoke,”
True. But that meant Craig Bond had greater stamina chasing bad guys.
“The plots after the first one were white men, most of whom had grudges against England a la Goldeneye. Middle Eastern terror? What’s that? ”
The villain in No Time to Die is a terrorist of Middle Eastern descent.
I wonder how many of those who criticize Craig era Bond films actually watched them.
Christian Toto, what is your obsession with woke? Seems to be all you think of and write about.
David,
I’m still baffled by Toto saying that James Bond is the biggest movie franchise ever. That’s incorrect.
The biggest franchise is the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU):
https://www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchises
The MCU may make the most bank, but Bond began in 1962 and is still, in theory, going strong. “Iron Man” kicked off the MCU in 2008 and the upcoming “Marvels” is looking like a flop amidst serious signs of superhero fatigue.
@Christian Toto
You should then be more accurate by saying James Bond is among the longest running franchises. It simply isn’t as big as MCU or Star Wars in terms of box office. (Avatar might join this list, but we’ll see.)
As for The Marvels, we shall see. This year has been full of surprises. Who would have guessed that the safe and “anti-woke” Mission Impossible 7 would make less money that “woke” films like Barbie, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, and The Little Mermaid.
And I already covered in a previous post how MI 7 made less at the box office than the “woke” No Time to Die.
What a laugh. In terms of movies made, viewers, endurance, Marvel is an infant. By the way the record has to be Sherlock Holmes in terms of films made, if not dollars made.
In 1960, the US population was 179 million. The world population was 3 billion, but I’m not sure how many countries showed Hollywood movies. In 1963, average ticket prices were 86 cents. It would take some work to compare the size of the audience by year, ticket prices by year, and take into consideration that in 1962, there was no streaming, VHS, DVD, paid cable, or significant merchandising (if any). https://www.natoonline.org/data/ticket-price/
I think it’s pretty simple: they know woke Bond won’t make money, but they also really want to please their woke corporate overlords. The corporations are glacially slow in changing their collective minds about activism, but the tide does seem to be turning somewhat. If that trend continues, look for a white, British, male, straight Bond in 2027 or 2028.
AJ,
The last Bond film, No Time to Die, made $774.1 M against a $250 M budget. So, the film was indeed profitable despite being branded by right wingers as “woke.”
Contrast this to Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning – Part 1, which only made $567.5 M against a budget of $291 M. This film was a box office dud, which likely disappointed “anti-woke” right wingers. The film did poorly because of the box office overperformance of the “woke” Barbie ($1.4 B) and Oppenheimer ($946.9 M).
So much for “go woke, go broke.”
P.S.
Hat tip to boxofficemojo.com for providing the box office stats.