By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
No Time To Die was the final James Bond film for Daniel Craig, and that movie ended (spoilers, sweetie!) with the unthinkable: our favorite cinematic superspy’s death. It made for a sad and sobering ending, but it was tough to get all that depressed because everyone knew the character was going to get brought back soon enough. Now, though, with news that Amazon had bought creative control away from franchise shepherds Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, it’s clear that the streamer will be bringing back James Bond just to kill him all over again by completely diluting the brand.
Amazon Turns James Bond Into Content
Now, Amazon bought the rights to James Bond back when they merged with MGM in 2022, and most fans assumed we’d be getting a new film soon afterward. That merger cost the streamer a cool $8.5 billion, but there was a problem: they still couldn’t make any new Bond films without the approval of Broccoli and Wilson. Now, Amazon has forked over another billion to get creative control from those two, and while that means we’ll be getting new James Bond films sooner rather than later, it also means the franchise will never be the same.
That’s because the Wall Street Journal reported in December 2024 that there was serious bad blood between Amazon and James Bond steward Barbara Broccoli, with her allegedly calling the streamer employees she had been working with “f**king idiots.” She reportedly “doesn’t trust algorithm-centric Amazon with a character she helped to mythologize through big-screen storytelling and gut instinct.” Most pertinently, she is said to have pushed back against Amazon’s desire to create a James Bond cinematic universe with TV shows on Prime.
How, then, does all of this add up to Amazon killing James Bond all over again? While not all of the films have been winners (looking at you, Spectre), this franchise has had a consistent style and vibe that it has maintained for 25 films. That’s a staggering cinematic record that we owe to how much Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson care about this franchise, and without their creative control, there’s no doubt that the streamer will take the world’s most famous superspy in a completely different direction.
That doesn’t mean it will be an inherently bad direction, of course. Just different. Still, those who have dreaded the possibility of the spy being completely overhauled (reimagined as a Black man, a woman, and so on) should know that Amazon’s creative control over James Bond makes those possibilities coming true likelier than ever. Again, it’s entirely possible that such a film would blow our minds (Idris Elba or Emily Blunt would both make for interesting 007 casting choices), but if you like the Bond character and films for their consistency, these major changes likely have you more shaken than stirred.
We also now have to deal with the possibility that Amazon will release the next James Bond film to Prime Video rather than theaters. During initial negotiations with Broccoli, they were committed to a theatrical release, but that extra billion dollars may mean they can make this and all future Bond films as streaming exclusives. That may not mean much to the digital natives who have spent their entire lives streaming content, but to old nerds like myself, it’s dreadful to think that the era of James Bond theatrical events could already be over.
Most of all, though, I am concerned about Amazon’s reported desire to create an MCU-style universe for James Bond. On paper, something like a Moneypenny TV show could be fun, especially if it had the creativity and quality of Amazon’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith. But one of the reasons audiences have grown tired of Marvel is that keeping up with their films feels like homework, and the streamer might face serious pushback if they expect fans to watch a bunch of tie-in media just to understand the next Bond film’s plot or its new characters.
Maybe I’m just being alarmist and old-fashioned…a bit like Bond himself when he first met the young new Q in Skyfall. After 25 films, this franchise possibly deserves reinvention, and Amazon certainly has the deep pockets necessary to do justice to James Bond and his iconic world. But if I’m right and we’re entering an era of streaming-only Bond films and TV shows filled with bad CGI and tumbling viewership numbers, fans are likely to reach the same conclusion I have: the real Bond died back in No Time To Die, and he’s never coming back.
Source: Deadline