Amazon are running the show but if they get serious directors on board that will go a long way. I’d be a lot more comfortable with Nolan having expanded control under these circumstances. I’d welcome another TND style film with open arms, and the truth is we’ll always like some films more than others. Some like SP and NTTD, others hate them. Trends always come and go. The more things change the more they stay the same.
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Surely Amazon can see the money making potential in bringing someone like Nolan into the fold. Bond makes money. Nolan makes money. Combine the two, they’ll make money. Lots of money. Nolan’s last two franchise outings both crossed the $1 billion mark at the box office, and his last outing, a three hour biopic, nearly got to a billion as well.
A lot of this will still be business as usual. Bond is still going to be at least a somewhat recognizable version of the original character, in so much as the other iterations of him have been. If they could get away with turning Bond into an almost farcical comedic character for a stretch, they can get away with whatever’s coming down the pike assuming that they keep it to the broad strokes of what makes Bond “Bond”.
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They surely can. But whether one pictures Nolan, Villeneuve or whomever else, these people are experienced and know the conditions they would be working under.
Nolan would rightfully demand his own production entity to be in charge and to earn top dollars, final cut and basically no interference. Bezos would not give him that.
Villeneuve, already stressed out from DUNE and forced to make DUNE 3 soon, will not want to endure another high pressure situation in which billions of money and the potential wrath of Bezos will hang over his head.
It’s like imagining that your favourite players could join your football team, and then everything would be alright.
Reality, folks. Reality.
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True about Nolan’s control - but then he’s always been the massive outlier in that respect. No other director has been able to seize this particular creative control from the talons of big studios the way Nolan has. Especially since his work isn’t typically crowd pleasing. Nolan is effectively his own studio. 
I get how this new constellation with Amazon excites people. But if Amazon wanted to put its stamp on the studio territory, wouldn’t it then already have happened? Nothing would have held them back to hire Nolan - or any other extraordinary director - and let them rip the internet apart with a totally original and fantastic work, their generation’s APOCALYPSE NOW, TAXI DRIVER, THE GODFATHER. Just to show they can and value the creative side of the business that doesn’t entirely fall down the Quel-drain.
Do we really think, seriously, they will start that revelatory voyage with Bond? I’d be happy to be proven wrong, but it seems unlikely as of now.
Amazon will surely do something different with Bond; maybe even a lot of things. And many of them may address what we often feel has been going over the top or into a cul-de-sac. But ultimately I don’t expect them to deliver something entirely innovative or revolutionary. For that they could have used any number of original films and series.
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A TND style film that smashes the decades long trend of personal vendettas and the like would feel revolutionary as much as CR was at this point. We haven’t had a normal gunbarrel for 20 years. Just as Dalton’s duology changed the tone following Moore, the time is ripe for entertainment without pretension, something more straightforward with less navel gazing. I respect what Barbara did by keeping the series alive during her tenure but perhaps we have less chasing awards that are never going to won and focus more on entertainment.
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This.
And let´s not forget: if EON could not work with Amazon (“These… idiots”) why should anyone think “Oh, with Amazon alone at the helm everything is going to be so much better”.
The adults have left the room, folks. And we’re currently seeing what happens when people who think they know better are in charge.
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Not necessarily. They’ve been steadily building the original programming “wing” of the company quite steadily since they started. They’ve got some hit “TV” shows under their belt now and have branched out into live sports entertainment with Thursday Night NFL Football within the last couple of years. Taking the next big leap on the film front seems like a natural progression of what they’ve been doing.
Will it be great? Who knows. None of us do, despite declarations to the contrary. Most movies suck now anyway, including the last decade of Bond entries for that matter, so these very well could follow suit. There’s at least movement on the Bond front now, though. The franchise was going to die a slow death had they just continued releasing more or less the same film (rogue Bond, personal vendetta, parental and trust issues with M, empowering the M:I-type team with Q/Moneypenny) at increasingly longer intervals. There were more Bond films released in 1983 than there were in the entire decade following the release of SP, assuming that a new film doesn’t just spontaneously manifest itself in the next nine months. Whether the upcoming change is good or bad remains to be seen. A change was needed, though, so that’s half the battle.
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That’s the reality of the situation as I see it, too. A new Bond actor under EON was unlikely to happen, and if it did, no doubt their momentum would have been stalled with the same long gaps in between. That would have been a downer in itself. That is going to change once Amazon is up and running. We’ll judge the results then.
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I would be more hopeful if EON had been able to sell Bond to a traditional film studio.
Yes, they all want to maximize IP now.
But there still is a difference between the studios and the streamers.
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Are we really far off from that now, though?
When we talk about wishing it were a traditional studio - is that not what MGM is? It’s still the MGM located at Culver Studios with many of the same people. Yes, they have new overlords, and that does absolutely mean something. But this wasn’t a movie studio started from scratch.
Let’s remember too - Amazon MGM produced a Best Picture Oscar nominee this year, and it’s not their first.
And calling it a streamer - all traditional studios are streamers now.
If EON sold to anybody else, I don’t think the situation would be a heck of a lot different than what we have now.
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Exactly. When was the first time branching out into spinoffs and tv series has been mentioned by us fans here? Ages ago. That was an idea even some of us embraced. It’s simply such a no-brainer every industry goes the same way of maximising profits. Back in the day of McClory’s last few media announcements Sony thought they would invest and do a Bond tv series. This kind of pressure has always been there and only the particular structure of the Bond franchise has prevented it so far. And we’d likely get very similar announcements from a Disney or Universal studio exec we’ll get to hear from Amazon. The differences may just be nuances.
In such an environment a lot depends on personal chemistry, understanding, trust. Let’s not forget, Amy Pascal helped getting Craig past Sony’s filters. So even in such a pressurised economic habitat as the Hollywood studio system there can happen great things if the right people congregate and cooperate.
Let’s hope for this for AmazonBond and wait and see.
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Exactly
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Yes, but from what I’ve read lately, I just hope Jennifer Salke is not one of those making decisions on James Bond–present or future. I have no confidence in her. I think the Bond series will be much better off without her decision-making/interfering. Hopefully, Jeff Bezos/Amazon go in a different direction for Bond.
Impossible to say as yet how that plays out. One supposes Bond would get an executive exclusively for BOND 26 and the brand. Such a person would likely still report to Salke, but could have some leeway. We should hear soon though.
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All this hammers home the point of how different it is now with EON selling. We never had to worry about the person in charge. They might make creative decisions we disagree with yes, but that’s a given when you’re making art.
HOWEVER, Disney, Warner, Universal, etc, all have their own Jennifer Salke’s. If they had someone you liked better, it wouldn’t matter because that person could be out of their chair a year from now.
The executives making Bond 26 might not be the ones making Bond 27 no matter where you go.
That’s what’s different now.
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It does indeed always depend on the particular executive.
And bad ones are everywhere. Good ones, too.
But…
Even the good ones these days have to answer to the changed rules for the ever more volatile market.
So, you have those executives (who were great with story, aligning writers, directors and producers to catch the elusive lighting in a bottle) now increasingly shy away from every creative instinct they showed before and bow down to market research and pressure from above.
And no, it never has been that dramatically bad as it is now.
With that in mind, imagine an executive without the guiding hands of EON.
Imagine the good ones who have to adjust.
Imagine now the bad ones who mainly are bad because they don’t see any problem with adjusting their standards and don’t care about creative reasons, only looking at what, yes, the algorithm dictates what audiences want, every minute of a movie‘s running time. Do you think „The Gray Man“ turned out the way it did because the Russo brothers just had bad taste? The did what they were told they had to do - and they gladly followed those orders.
Coming back to my argument about traditional studios vs streamers, there is one major difference plainly visible:
If a powerful billionaire owns a streamer he will not be in charge of all the creative decisions, of course. But he will be the one every executive has to answer to.
Imagine the fear of failing to restart the most famous franchise in the world.
Now, if you look at the traditional studios, even failure will not end your career, because studios get new management, and not one billionaire will have to be appeased. Also, despite all the beancounting, these studios have a long tradition and experience of making movies. This does influence the way they attract creatives. And you won’t find any serious filmmaker who would not start to sell his idea to those.
When the streamers arrived everybody thought: wow, they are loaded with money, eager to greenlight to bolster their portfolio, oh, man, it’s gold rush time again.
This was then. This is now: micro-managing, huge and unrealistic expectations, hire and fire, chaos.
Yes, there are projects which still work out fine with them. But count the many which don’t. Many of those which you never hear from because they get canceled.
No, Bond won‘t suffer that fate, of course.
But Bond might very well become the next „The Gray Man“.
You have been warned.
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BOND 26 was going to answer to the “algorithm” no matter EON’s involvement. With Amazon providing the funds, they were going to want to have some say in how that was spent, and don’t rely strictly on EON’s creation for their financial survival like MGM did for decades. And, quite frankly, Amazon has every right to want and have a say in where and how their money is being spent.
Every studio, financier or even every manufacturer whose product is placed has the right to know what is done with their money.
But to give money in return for a very specific result will influence how creativity will actually be used.
In other words: the king who paid the artist to paint him will expect the most flattering picture, not the one which actually is the best possible one.
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This is an exaggeration. In NICKEL BOYS, RaMell Ross extended the language of cinema. THE SUBSTANCE, THE LAST SHOWGIRL, ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT, and dozens of other movies are expanding the stories film tell, and even more importantly, the way they are told. Cinema is thriving in new ways, and with new voices.
That would be a good approach, but that executive will want success in order to go on to their next job–maybe running a studio or a streamer–something larger. Bond thrived because it had a committed producer. Now Bond needs a committed auteur director more than ever, since its producer will be a gun-for-hire–a cinematic Clay Blaisdell.
Exactly. EON was the auteur that gathered other committed artists/auteurs to make Bond films. Now the person in charge is a resume polisher. Of course they will want a hit, but they are not sticking around for legacy tending. And if Amazon had wanted such an.approach, they would have found a way to work with EON.
Exactly. Look at what Bezos did with the editorial page of The Washington Post. There is now one voice–and you will follow it. You believe Amazon’s minions are not going to suit their creativity to the oligarch’s priorities?
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This could easily be the title of this thread. 
But also for each of those movies you cite, there’s another 2-3 Marvel films (or it at least feels like there’s that many), another handful of studio fluff that nobody cares about, and so on. There may be some filmmakers making some films that are truly great, which is fantastic, but it’s more an exception rather than the rule.
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