James Bond 26 gets disappointing update from 007 producer
Universal PicturesJames Bond 26 won’t be here any time soon, according to the franchise’s longtime producer, who’s stressed that “nothing is happening.”
After 16 years in the tux, Daniel Craig’s tenure as Hollywood’s beloved secret agent came to a breathtaking, unprecedented end in No Time to Die.
We’ll say this: it wiped the slate clean for whoever is picked to play the new Bond, with the series set to undergo a “reinvention” and “modernize” the character for the next era.
It’s been more than three years since Craig’s big finale, and speculation is still fairly intense around what shape the next block of movies will take (and, obviously, who’ll be cast as 007). Alas, this update is far from good news for fans.
“Nothing is happening” with James Bond 26
During the BFI Fellowship Awards, Bond producer Barbara Broccoli said: “There’s nothing I can tell you about the next Bond film. There’s nothing. Nothing is happening yet.”
This is a bit disappointing, given she said in June 2022 that the next film was “at least two years” away from production. “Nobody’s in the running. We’re working out where to go with him, we’re talking that through. There isn’t a script and we can’t come up with one until we decide how we’re going to approach the next film because, really, it’s a reinvention of Bond,” she explained, as per Deadline.
Late last year, that timeline started to look unlikely when Broccoli told The Guardian: “There’s a big, big road ahead reinventing it for the next chapter and we haven’t even begun with that.”
That’s not to say there’s no movement at all, even it’s all being kept very hush-hush. At the same awards ceremony, Broccoli avoided saying whether or not she’d spoken to Denis Villeneuve about helming a Bond feature.
The Dune director has been open about the fact he’d say yes to such an opportunity. “I would deeply love to one day make a James Bond movie,” he said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast.
“It’s a character that I’ve been with — like everybody — since my childhood. I have massive affection for Bond. It would be a big challenge for people to try and reboot it after what Daniel did.”
You can find out everything else we know about Bond 26 here.
