Which stars could get 007’s licence to kill amid Amazon shake-ups, according to experts
The James Bond casting controversy has reignited again now that the controlling stake in the 007 franchise is held by streaming giant Amazon. See if Aussies are being ruled out.
A double-0-dilemma.
Lately, the name’s been everywhere – Bond, James Bond.
While speculation had been rampant as to who should and would play 007 after Daniel Craig made his final bow as Bond in 2021’s No Time to Die, the rumour mill sped up faster than an Aston Martin when news broke in late February that Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson sold a controlling stake in the franchise based on Ian Fleming’s novels to Amazon MGM Studios for a reported $US1bn.
Then in March came word that venerated producers Amy Pascal (who helped usher in the Craig era while at Sony) and David Heyman would be stepping in and running point on the next James Bond movie. The pair wasted no time in hitting the ground running.
A little over a week later, Amazon MGM announced at CinemaCon that Pascal and Heyman were already in London “getting started” on the 26th Bond film.
There was, however, no news about casting, or even a possible director for that matter (though the word around Hollywood is that Oscar winner Alfonso Cuarón may already be on-board). So the guessing game continues. The only thing most seem to agree on is that the actor will be British.
The name bandied about most often is Henry Cavill, the “loose second reserve choice when Daniel Craig got the role back in 2005,” as Bond commentator and pop culture author Mark O’Connell described the Man of Steel star, 41.
“What often happens in Bond is that the runner-up is kind of favoured next time round. Roger Moore was looked at for Dr. No in the first Bond film. Timothy Dalton was looked at in the early ’70s,” explained O’Connell, who wrote, “Catching Bullets: Memoirs of a Bond Fan.”
“The guys in waiting sometimes get their turn. And Henry Cavill’s worked with Amazon and he looks the part. He’s a great clotheshorse. I’d love it if it was ultimately Henry Cavill.”
Not everyone feels the same.
“Lots of fans want Henry Cavill, which only just proves to me that they don’t know what they’re talking about,” Graham Rye, editor and publisher of 007 Magazine, told The Post. “The man’s just not James Bond.”
Added Rye, “There’s only one actor I’ve seen around that could do justice to the role very much in the style of Sean Connery and that’s an actor called Stuart Martin.”
Martin, 39, is best known for starring as the Duke in the British series Miss Scarlet and the Duke (renamed simply “Miss Scarlet after the actor’s exit from the show last year).
“If Amazon fail to cast Stuart Martin in the 007 role in Bond 26, I shan’t be bothering to see the picture!” Rye declared.
“The rest of the actors in the ‘field’ are entirely wrong for the Bond role. They couldn’t convince me any more than Woody Allen could.”
While Rye dismissed them as serious candidates, O’Connell was more willing to give some of the rumoured contenders a shot.
“One of the names I do keep coming back to is Aaron Taylor-Johnson,” O’Connell told The Post of the Kick-Ass actor, 34. “And the film for me that sort of cemented him was ‘Bullet Train.’ He was like a mix of Roger Moore and Daniel Craig and was very British, very London — almost too London. He wasn’t heavy, but he was doing the heavy lifting. He was taking the mickey out of it.”
An actor with a similar vibe: Nicholas Hoult. “I’ve got this fantasy casting of Nicholas Hoult as Bond and Hugh Grant as ‘M,’” O’Connell shared of the 35-year-old star. He even has the perfect title: “About a Bond.”
Another strong choice in his eyes is Kingsley Ben-Adir, 38, who played Bob Marley in One Love, and has a slew of other credits to his name including Marvel’s Secret Invasion and One Night in Miami.
“There’s something about him. He’s got that Connery swagger and bounce,” O’Connell said.
1917 star George MacKay, 33, could be an “interesting” choice, he added.
MacKay is “going places,” O’Connell shared. “He could be an A-lister.”
A “let’s f--k it up a bit” choice for O’Connell would be Taron Egerton, 35, given that the actor “has played council estate Bond” in The Kingsman.
One newer name that’s been thrown into the mix is Babygirl star Harris Dickinson, 28. “I don’t know if he’s totally right for Bond but he’s totally right for that young demographic and is a rising star,” O’Connell explained. “It’s interesting watching a new movie star that doesn’t know he’s the movie star.”
The Invisible Man star Oliver Jackson-Cohen, 38, has also found himself included in the 007 conversation. “He’s done a bit of British TV stuff; very beautiful, very good,” O’Connell said. “The camera likes him.”
As for 28-year-old The White Lotus Season 2 and Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy star Leo Woodall: “I think he’s too puppy-faced.”
One non-British name? Chris Hemsworth.
“I think he’s too old for this and he’s kind of shaved his work commitments down for different reasons, but one actor I always thought could have done a really good Bond movie was Chris Hemsworth,” O’Connell said of the 41-year-old Aussie, who he quipped would be “the first actor to bulk down for the role.”
The debate about which actor would be best suited to play Bond hinges on how someone perceives Bond, it seems.
“It’s got to be a British actor. It’s got to be a caucasian white actor, and no, there’s never going to be a ‘Jane Bond’ which is a completely ridiculous idea from beginning to end,” Rye insisted.
“You can’t make Bond woke,” he added. “Bond, as he admits to Judi Dench in ‘Goldeneye,’ is a sexist misogynist dinosaur, which he probably is. But who cares? That’s why everybody loves him. It’s fantasy. It’s what we’d all like to do, what we like to be like. But we know we can’t because we’ll get our faces slapped or our noses broken.”
“I’m not worried about the actor, about the director or about the writer,” James Bond historian John Cork told The Post. “My concern is the character of James Bond. If you get the character right, he will work in any form. If you get him wrong, he will never work.”
Cork, who co-authored “James Bond, The Legacy,” went further: “Could James Bond be a woman? Could James Bond be this? Could James be a different race? The character just has to be James Bond. That’s the core of it there. If somebody wants to say, ‘I can do it with a woman.’ Show me that. And if you get that character right, I’m gonna go, ‘My hat is off to you.’”
So what makes Bond, Bond?
“Understanding James Bond is very difficult,” Cork said. “James Bond is not just the iconography. He is not just a tuxedo, a martini, an Aston Martin, beautiful women, gadgets. That’s not James Bond. That is all the stuff we surround James Bond with.”
Cork explained, “James Bond is not defined by his license to kill. He is defined by his aspect of wanting to preserve life. And it’s that kind of dichotomy that’s there that makes that character interesting.
“It’s not that we wanna see James Bond go out and kill people, it’s we wanna look at James Bond as an example of how best to live.”
The true measure of success for Amazon may then be whether their choice of actor — at least on-screen — almost erases the line between their own identity and that of the MI6 spy.
“It wasn’t a Sean Connery film or a Roger Moore film or a Pierce Brosnan or a Daniel Craig film. These were James Bond Films,” Cork said. “I’m interested in, ‘what are you gonna do with James Bond?’”
– The article was first published in the New York Post.
Originally published as Which stars could get 007’s licence to kill amid Amazon shake-ups, according to experts
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