Hah!
If Salke mentions she is not worried (at this point) in an interview then it is a topic which worries Amazon.
This is just her way to mention it indirectly so EON notices. And rest assured, while EON is tough, Amazon will be tougher.
BB‘s extracurricular activities might be trolling Amazon, but sooner or later there will be a forceful response.
The contract will stipulate that new content must be produced or else.
Remember back when A VIEW TO A KILL was released and Cubby managed to find a new Bond and start production on THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS within 18 months?
Man, those were dark times…
Not to mention that he originally signed Pierce Brosnan to be Roger Moore’s replacement as James Bond #4 only to have that fall through when NBC renewed Brosnan’s TV show, Remington Steele, for another season and he had to find another 007 candidate which eventually turned out to be Timothy Dalton.
Seems like EON back then really wanted to make James Bond movies.
I think that last minute change to Dalton was the even greater feat - replacing Moore has been on the radar for years already (certainly after FOR YOUR EYES ONLY) and the tabloid fantasy casting process had been in full swing with Lewis Collins, Michael Pread, Jason Connery, Ken Wahl, Ian Ogilvy andandand - Cubby had time to get used to the idea and could cast a wide net should his mate decline to return. And a few times he seems to have been going so far as to arrange screen tests. We can reasonably assume Brosnan was set for Broccoli from early on.
The gut punch of having to recast more or less on the fly and arrange a decent replacement was quite the accomplishment. Never even breaking stride in their schedule, too. How did they do it?!?
I have great respect for the pioneers of the franchise. It’s remarkable when you look back and see what they achieved in that condensed timeframe. The team came together and smashed it out on a regular basis. Musicians, production designers, actors, writers and everyone else with the shared aim of entertaining the audience. They were innovative and hungry. What they did will be remembered forever. Like most things, you can’t help but feel like a golden age has already been and everything else is now an inferior echo.
I absolutely get that BB wants to do other things than Bond.
I absolutely support her taking her time to produce films which are close to her heart.
But I don’t think it is sensible to neglect Bond for that.
The longer EON takes time to let the „brand“ rest the higher the threshold will be to make the next generation want more Bond films. And let’s face it: we are not the target audience anymore.
The target audience, teenagers and young adults, mostly male, are busy with gaming, streaming and Marvel movies which have event character.
Bond is not on their radar anymore.
And yes, NTTD was wonderfully successful in a time in which the pandemic raged so much that cinemas were in deep crisis mode.
But that does not mean the next Bond film can easily repeat that feat.
The same applies to all the legendary successes of Bond films in the past.
We are living in another time now, and the business has changed enormously.
Bond, whenever he will reappear on the big screen again, will have to react to all the changes which have taken place. In contrast to earlier eras he also has more competition than ever. And since he is old he is not cool anymore but „my father‘s/grandfather‘s“ idea of entertainment.
Sure, the „Sherlock Holmes“ argument might apply in so far as the character itself will live on. But in which form? An event tv show which comes and then goes again for decades?
To make Bond survive as an ongoing cinema force EON has to make Bond films regularly and start soon (if they started production in 2025 the soonest release date would be the end of 2025, rather 2026, probably, and that does not seem likely either currently).
Why wait, really? There is no lawsuit delay like in 1990-1995. There is no tactical negotiation with the current actor anymore. There is a new financial, very potent and willing home.
There really is no reason but EON unwilling to proceed.
And that is the very sad reality of it all. It almost feels like they think of themselves as trapped in the franchise and want to move on, but it’s the cash cow that needs to be fed, so once more into the breach they must go.
I believe MGW is genuinely a Bond fan and would move forward if he could, but he has to be ready to retire. His son is the likely replacement in the EON power structure, but BB is calling the shots and has her lofty ideas beyond Bond. Thus it’s the machine she reluctantly must restart from the ground up now that the decision was made to kill the character off, thus making the job she doesn’t seem to want to do even more difficult,
Maybe that’s the core problem, Barbara Broccoli has had her ideas of Bond realised with Craig - and now there’s not so much left that’s not already been done from her perspective. From a creative point that’s just what happened to Fleming before. And then to Cubby, too, which was the reason for the remakes-in-all-but-name.
Also, when we look at the aspirations from CASINO ROYALE onwards, it’s quite daunting to realise how trapped under its own weight the series has turned out to be. You can check out any time you like - but you can never leave the gravity well of the classics.
And on the other hand, it’s quite bizarre to kill off your main character - but to vehemently insist your series must at all cost be a cinematic experience and can never be anything else but that. Why ever not, when you can have him have kids, a family (for the briefest moment), even kill him?
Absolutely.
And I am ashamed to say it - but right now I think BB is Bond‘s biggest problem.
And she will cling to it, of course, and never hand it over to others.
I think that the world in general is a much less carefree place and the filmmaking stakes, at the risk of sounding like a Bond trailer voiceover, have never been higher. I think the original team were able to enjoy the process for the most part, but now I am not so sure: I suspect that ludicrous budgets, toxic fandom and demanding paymasters just suck the life out of you when making such a major film: just look at Craig after Spectre (or even Connery after YOLT for that matter!) Let them take time away and come back when they’re ready and they will deliver. Will the 60s sweet spot ever be recaptured? Probably not, but that was arguably the case since 1979 anyway (unapologetic Moonraker love moment!) But I am sure there are some exciting highs on the horizon!
I know she is not perfect (although 60 years ago…), but you can’t blame everything on Brigitte Bardot. 
But she is the one who can make it happen or not.
And it seems that she is opting for „not“.
Generally, yes. In this case, however, there’s a real chance that creative momentum has truly ran its course. I’m looking at it from this angle: if you’ve gone with Bond where Broccoli went with Craig - which was surely aiming to be bold - and if the result, in spite of its boldness, was then still so utterly dependent on iconography of another era fifty years or more in the past, then it’s difficult to think of something that doesn’t fall into that same trap again.
What I mean is, when you’ve done such a lot of Bond as Broccoli did, her entire grownup life, then it’s just possible no idea, no matter how convincingly pitched, will resonate with your own set of conceptions about Bond.
Then you just don’t know where to move from here - only where you don’t want to go. This could be what’s keeping the series nailed down.
After 30 years maybe a film with a Bond who doesn´t wallow in self pity and is not going rogue, taking orders from M and executing a dangerous mission in interesting destinations with one or two helpful gadgets could be a surprising change…
I’m also hoping they’ll go a bit less James Bond, a bit more 007, in the next one, if only to distinguish the new film from the Craig era.
Emotional introspection likely won’t be completely absent - them’s the times we live in - but after the Craig era - enjoyable as it mostly was - Bond feels all wallowed-out.
This is really the big question: what could that introspection look like in these times?
With Craig it was about questioning his priorities - service or personal life?
Should the next Bond question whether his work does help at all when the world is dominated by greed and autocrats playing around with the lives of others, never being punished for that?
I don´t think so. Too angsty again.
Instead, make the next Bond a pure genre construct, not even repeating the some old schtick (drinking to numb and to forget, always falling in love with the wrong one).
Instead make Bond enjoy sticking it to the man and getting the most out of his luxurious lifestyle, knowing that he can’t change the world but change a few things for the better by torpedoing the schemes of the ultra rich bastards out there (and maybe here and then bending the rules of his superiors to get better results than the original assignment could have produced).
And this is now how you make (young) people aware of any movie. I had no idea because I‘m, you know, 55.
So, Bond film marketing will have to endure… that.
This. I’d argue this is effectively truer to the Bond character than the recent run of the last few films.
Apart from that hospital chapter in Casino Royale where Bond and Mathis briefly set out on a three-page-safari into the philosophical underbelly of the ‘nature of evil’, Bond doesn’t really question his own place in the greater scheme of things.
He’s not always peachy with it - see Goldfinger’s first chapter; see You Only Live Twice - but until The Living Daylights he’s fairly certain the 00-section is his thing. And even that last revolt in Berlin is more due to the pompous toff he’s locked up with, not a general refusal of his own role or its ethical implications. If Bond has any notable traits at all - debatable - it’s the fact he’s fitting perfectly into the life he’s chosen for himself. Not without conflict, but mostly without doubts.
Therefore, that self searching element we’ve seen recently resulted from a faulty premise of Bond as a ‘real’ person. Yes, you can treat him as if he was ‘real’ - but he was never meant to be that. And most of the films in Craig’s run were no more realistic than YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, they just weren’t as fantastic.
Bond’s moments of ‘introspection’ - do they need be more than the fact he’s fallible? That he’s good at what he does, but sometimes good isn’t enough? That he makes mistakes and sacrificial lambs like Quarrel, Kerim Bey or Aki show Bond - and us - how failure can be deadly in that world. Still, none of them need to throw doubt on that entire world.
Exactly. What level of self-awareness should an action hero possess in 2025? I don’t watch THE FAST & THE FURIOUS movies, so I do not know what, if any, introspection exists there. I do see a bit of inner thought with Ethan Hunt. But where should the new Bond be pitched to attract the contemporary audience?
What elements constitute pure? Bond = good guy. Opponent = bad guy. As soon as they put any flesh on those bones of genre, impurity walks in the door.
It is the second half of your prescription that will be the trickiest. How luxurious should it be? How much enjoyment in it should Bond manifest?
Which is fine on the page, but messier on the screen. For Bond to be effective on screen, the audience must feel that his thing is their thing as well. Absent that identification, all his assignment behaviors and enjoyment of luxury becomes suspect, and open to critique.
But that pullback from fantasy was experienced as a turn toward realism. The STAR WARS and LOTR franchises (and others all of you know, but of which I am ignorant) have defined and occupy the fantasy market. Bond’s lane is escapism, with enough verisimilitude to pass the realist exam.
DAF handled this well: Las Vegas is both real and fantastic, and stopping a villain with outsized ambitions can be both Bond’s and the audience’s thing (MR also works this territory). All the Bond movies with Russians as the baddies were good as well. It was easy to boo the Russkies.
The depiction of fallibility opens the door to realism.
The future use of sacrificial lambs may well be in doubt.