Daniel Craig didn’t have the longest run of James Bond movies, but he did have one of the most eventful. 2007’s Casino Royale gave the series a shot in the arm that both made it matter more in the eye of the mainstream public, and greatly boosted his profile.
As much as people have spent the years since 2021’s No Time to Die trying to figure out who could (or should) be the next 007 agent, the series producers are still just trying to figure out what the next James Bond even is. Talking to The Guardian, producer Barbara Broccoli explained the franchise’s executives are still trying to nail down what to do with him for the next set of movies. Part of the issue is trying to have Bond reflect how the world has changed in the near 20 years since Craig first took the role. His Bond focused on “what a 21st-century hero would look like,” something she felt the world was ready for at the time. The aim for the new iteration is to follow suit, but it isn’t entirely easy to zero in on right down.
“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!” Broccoli recalled. “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.”
Even with that uncertainty, one area that Bond for sure won’t be going to is the realm of television. There’ve been plenty of movies that’ve gotten TV spinoffs in the last decade, but Broccoli has no real plans to do that with their character. Other than the 007: Road to a Million reality show, the focus will remain solely on theatrical movies. “When we get going on a Bond movie, it takes our full attention for three or four years,” she explained, “so that’s our focus. We make the [films] for the big theatrical screen, and everything about the Bond movies is for audiences to see around the world on that format, so we’ve not wanted to do television.”
The reality show is just a “nice, fun thing to do in the meantime,” and is intended to tide fans over until Bond 26 and 27, whenever those may be.
Want more entertainment news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and DC releases, what’s coming to cinemas in Australia this year, and everything streaming this month across all platforms. Check out our dedicated Entertainment tab for more.