Poor old Daniel Craig. Every interview he ever does brings the same turgid question: “Who do you want to be the next James Bond?” Ever since he quit the franchise in 2021, that query has been pelted at him like rotten fruit at a creaky Elizabethan actor; he’ll probably be answering it until the day he dies. When, 100 years from now, a particularly well-connected psychic manages to summon Craig’s spirit back from the afterlife, you can bet it’ll be this subject on which his ghost is interrogated. And even then, he’ll surely give the same response that he did this week: “I don’t care.”
The problem, for Bond studio MGM and producer Barbara Broccoli, is that many 007 fans are starting to feel the same way. It’s now been more than three years since Craig bowed out as the British superspy, and it feels even longer – the final entry, No Time to Die, having already suffered lengthy delays as a result of creative changes and the Covid pandemic. And, despite feverish reports linking Aaron Taylor-Johnson to the role back in March, no one is any the wiser as to who Craig’s successor will actually be.
