The head of James Bond — we imagine relaxing in her island volcano lair — has declared that we fans need to be "patient" while they decide who the next Bond will be.
But I can't be the only Bond fan who's beginning to lose patience with the ever-increasing gap between Daniel Craig's last outing and whoever will be the replacement. No Time to Die was released in 2021 and after taking the extraordinarily brave/stupid (pick an option as you see fit) decision to kill off the character, you can't help but wonder if the makers know quite what to do next.
Jennifer Salke, the global head of Amazon MGM Studios, the home of Bond, said fans will be patient. To be fair, matters aren't completely in her control as the movies are made by EON Productions, who are in charge of picking the next Bond.
She said there "were lots of ideas" that were "interesting" about who should play 007. Adding, (quotes via The Guardian): "The global audience will be patient. We don't want too much time between films, but we are not concerned at this point".
Jennifer may not be concerned but personally, I am! The greater the gap between the movies to my mind the greater the risk that a wrong pick for the lead role could kill Bond permanently this time.
There was a gap of just over six years between Licence to Kill (1989), Timothy Dalton's final Bond movie, and Pierce Brosnan's first and finest effort GoldenEye (1995). The way things are looking it would be absolutely no shock if the gap is greater between No Time to Die and Bond 26. The Pierce Brosnan reboot does offer encouragement. Personally, I loved Timothy Dalton's first Bond film, The Living Daylights (1987), number three in our best Bond movies list, but his second movie was at times brutal and went too far away from the charm of Roger Moore's Bond efforts. Brosnan, in the days before he got involved with invisible cars, brought a nice balance to the part and GoldenEye remains a great Bond adventure.
Please don't send Bond back to the 1960s...
Given the growing time gap, it looks like we're heading for a major reset to the Bond universe. One popular theory is that the new Bond movie will be set in the past. Ian Fleming's books were penned in the 1950s and 1960s and setting Bond 26 in that era seems an interesting way of going. It would be a way around Bond's dated behavior but one obvious problem with setting it in this period is how could these films possibly beat the actual Bond movies made in the 1960s? A new 1960s Bond would be compared to Sean Connery's 007 and that's one battle the new leading man couldn't hope to win.
So, Bond needs to go forward and it needs to happen soon. Come on, let's have the next Bond movie. There's only so much patience we Bond fans have...
