With 17 years having passed since the last search for the next James Bond, speculation continues to be rife over who Daniel Craig’s successor will be after his explosive exit from the franchise in No Time To Die. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the 007 films, so surely this is the best time to announce the next star to take up the Licence to Kill? Now, industry insiders have teased the wait for the big news may actually not be that long away after all.
Deadline’s Justin Kroll tweeted: “While it’s been crickets on the #BondWatch scene, making it seem like this will be a long process, one source with a couple clients in the mix told me something interesting recently of when a decision may come down the pipeline, “I think we he[ar] who it is after the Oscars.”
The 94th Academy Awards take place on March 27, 2022, so this could be alluding to the end of that month or the beginning of April.
He clarified: “Obviously taking this with a grain a salt as putting an ETA on these types of decisions never works out but interesting that some believe this won’t be an all year wait. Again this a ‘could hear a name’ by spring not a guarantee to.”
Interestingly, Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson have said they’ve been so focused on No Time To Die, which is currently being plugged for awards season, that they’ve not even thought about the next Bond yet.
Speaking with Deadline’s Crew Call podcast last week, Broccoli said: “We’ll just have to see what happens. We’ll start the process, y’know, sometime this year I guess. And we’ll see where it takes us. What we tend to do is we tend to come up with an idea for a storyline, we start to flesh that out and once we have something reasonably concrete, that’s when we go out to directors. And that’s when we decide who would be the best director for that particular storyline, rather than just having a generic idea.”
As for casting the next Bond himself, they’ve similarly played it coy in No Time To Die interviews, alluding to a focus on Craig’s swansong, but you never know what could have happened during the latest 007 movie’s 18 month delay.
Perhaps this scene is used at Bond auditions as it’s a way of seeing if contenders can still pull off the character when he’s vulnerable rather than just looking suave in black tie.
Even if there’s no new 007 announcement in the Spring, perhaps there will be a commitment to a reveal date.
The most obvious one would be Global James Bond Day on October 5, which marks the 60th anniversary of Dr No.
Here’s hoping it’s not too long a wait. After all, No Time To Die was a very long time coming.
