In the middle of 2024, a top bookmaker declared that the 2-1 favourite to play the new James Bond was Aaron Taylor-Johnson, the beardy Brit star of Bullet Train and Kick-Ass. Or, if you’re spiritually 13, Angus, Thongs & Perfect Snogging. More than 70 per cent of that year’s Bond bets revolved around Taylor-Johnson, the betting company declared, suggesting that few other actors possessed anywhere near as much Bond buzz as he did. Then, like a vat of manure being dumped on your garden lawn, came Kraven the Hunter, Taylor-Johnson’s great big Marvel flop about a superhero in a furry vest. Released shortly before Christmas that year, it grossed just $62m worldwide, off a budget of nearly $130m. It was the first – and, to date, last – movie sold entirely on Taylor-Johnson’s name above the title on the poster. His Bond chances seemed to vanish in a flash.
Today, Taylor-Johnson is rarely even mentioned when it comes to possible Bond contenders, his name consigned to the big clearance bin of never-gonna-happens that includes Henry Cavill and Bridgerton flash-in-the-pan Regé-Jean Page. And while there’s no proof that it was Taylor-Johnson’s high-profile bomb that did him in, it probably didn’t help. Which brings us to this weekend, in which two contemporary maybe-Bonds – Australian tall person and recent Frankenstein Oscar nominee Jacob Elordi, and Dua Lipa’s husband Callum Turner – are coincidentally both front-and-centre of expensive flops at the very same time.
