This week’s shock news that Amazon MGM Studios has taken over innovative control of the James Bond franchise from longtime stewards Eon brings t
This week’s shock news that Amazon MGM Studios has taken over innovative control of the James Bond franchise from longtime stewards Eon brings the likelihood of spin-off features and series one step closer amid an uncertain future for the property, Hollywood producers say.
Sources who spoke to Screen on condition of anonymity point out that now the entertainment studio division of Amazon has finally tightened its grip on the Bond IP – for a fee that one outlet has put at an unconfirmed $1bn, on top of the $6.5bn Amazon-MGM merger in 2022 – it will exploit the franchise as far as it can.
Amazon MGM Studios is “in the driver’s seat”, as one producer put it. However it will need to get its skates on. No Time To Die, the most recent Bond film and the fourth and final outing for Daniel Craig, came out in 2021, contributing $770m to a franchise that has earned $7.6bn at the global box office. At time of writing the next instalment was little more than a working title, Bond 26.
“The first move will be to get the feature going and they can now do that with fewer obstacles in their way, and greater control,” said the source.
Michael G. Wilson, who alongside his half-sister Barbara Broccoli shepherded the Bond films through their Eon production company since 1995, has essentially said he is retiring. Meanwhile sources said that after several years spent fighting with Amazon over the soul of the franchise, fierce guardian Broccoli has thrown her hands up in exasperation and agreed to cede innovative control. This despite a December article in The Wall Street Journal reporting that she called executives at the tech company “fucking idiots”.
Exploiting the IP
The handover, sources say, means that besides Bond 26 and successive core franchise features centred on the infamous British spy, there will be films and television shows exploring regular characters in 007’s orbit. In the coming years, audiences could get to learn more than they ever thought they needed to know about the origins or parallel escapades of Miss Moneypenny, the evergreen secretary to spymaster M; M themself (the character has been played by Judi Dench and several male actors including Ralph Fiennes); gadget supremo Q; and Bond’s CIA pal, Felix Leiter.
“This is how studios work,” one Hollywood producer says of IP exploitation. “You’ve seen what Disney has done with its Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm brands.” Amazon MGM Studios head Jennifer Salke will be under pressure to serve up film and television stemming from a coveted IP motherlode that has now come under one studio roof.
Salke, who reports to Mike Hopkins, SVP of Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Studios and MGM, will need to tread a fine line between too much and too little. Looking at what has happened within the Disney fold, an overabundance of Marvel films and shows recently led to a perceived drop in quality at the hit factory, triggering box office disappointments and a backlash from fans. Nobody is panicking at Marvel, although the latest release, Captain America: Brave New World, had earned $208m at the global box office heading into its second weekend, a relatively anaemic number compared to heavy-hitters from the past.
Over at Lucasfilm, things have gone the other way. Series have emerged fairly regularly, but feature development has proceeded at a glacial pace. It has been six years since Star Wars The Rise Of Skywalker, and antsy devotees wonder when the next instalment will materialise.
According to the Journal article, Broccoli has said there is no story, let alone a script, for Bond 26. And there are no clues as to who will assume the mantle of Bond himself/herself.
Who will play Bond?
Salke will need to appoint dedicated producers and executives to oversee the property. Casting the right person to play Bond will be no mean feat. Names like James Norton, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Josh O’Connor, Harris Dickinson, and Lashana Lynch, who briefly held the 007 designation in No Time To Die, have been bandied about. However there is little clarity over whether these are realistic options.
Posting on X on Thursday, Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos asked fans who they would like to see in the lead role. That immediately raised concerns among the Hollywood innovative community that the tech giant, which has embedded algorithms at the core of a business designed to give customers what they want, would rapidly consign the memory of Broccoli’s passionate, instinctive approach to the dim and distant past.
One source pointed out that once a studio gets involved in building franchises the process veers “towards the lowest common denominator [approach] because they want to make more people happy”.
There is also the matter of who will direct. Christopher Nolan has expressed interest, although his potential involvement could push back the release of Bond 26 by another two years. He is shooting The Odyssey for Universal, which is scheduled to release in July 2026 and would likely keep the British filmmaker tied up with promotional duties into early 2027 if it becomes an awards contender.
On the face of it, the next instalment would get a theatrical release, in keeping with Amazon MGM Studios’ stated strategy of ramping up its theatrical distribution operation. Universal Pictures International is the distributor outside North America for the next feature. Subsequent films films might go out through an in-house international distribution division that Amazon MGM Studios is reportedly setting up.
It has been argued that box office receipts are inconsequential for a company like Amazon with a market cap of $2.3tn, and theatrical plans can be jettisoned while preserving the ultimate goal of keeping subscribers on Prime. There is concern that, were Amazon MGM Studios executives to assess Bond 26 after delivery and deem it to be a dud, it could either get a truncated release in cinemas, or go straight to streaming.
Only last year, Apple pulled a wide release for the crime caper Wolfs and, in partnership with distributor-for-hire Sony Pictures, pivoted to a one-week run before pushing the film onto its platform. It also scrapped plans for a sequel.
Neither Eon nor Amazon MGM Studios have commented on the deal since Thursday’s announcement.
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