So, predictions? A new movie each year? Series? New movies about the Son (or Daughter) of James Bond?
Streaming series on Prime. About 3 per year.
I could see a few directions for Bond to go.
The original James Bond was a product of the Cold War, Britain’s loss of her colonies, and the around-the-corner change in sexual mores and relations. With each passing year the original Bond became less and less relevant.
So where do you go?
1.) retro-Bond – remake the original novels as films, but keeping them period pieces, and pretty faithful to the books. It’d be a sort of nostalgia, an you’d see Bond up against his original enemies and dealing with his problems anew. Moonraker as a neo-Nazi plot to drop an atomic bomb on London.Diamonds are Forever with Bond in a Las Vegas just starting to open up, fighting against the Spangled Mob. And so on.
2.) Go beyond Bond to see where the double O section goes after his passing. That’s the direction taken by official Bond novels have taken, starting with Kim Sherwood’s 2022 Double or Nothing. Instead of being concerned with the “Dinosaur” James Bond, we get to see some new characters.
3.) James Bond reborn – sort of what happened with Daniel Craig – we re-invent Bond himself as a 2020s spy and persona, with sly references back to the original novels or books.
“That never happened to the other fellow.”
Starring some schlubby sitcom actor remade into a shredded action star by CGI and quick cuts.
Well, we’ll always have Casino Royale, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and The Living Daylights.
Stranger
Like stories about Moneypenny or M? Or are you thinking along the lines of The Adventures of OO9?
I think it needs to be darker. Much darker.
(ed.: No he doesn’t!)
I’ve said for years that the best Bond movies these days are Mission Impossible films. (unfortunately, they’re terrible MI movies!)
I’m just not sure where he franchise could, or even if it should, go. It’s a product of a different time, a different ethos, a different world.
Bond films were always about outdoing the last. Bigger! Better! Bond-er! Bond has already bedded the most beautiful women, driven the best cars, killed the baddest villains, quipped the best quips, literally saved the whole world (more than once!), violated laws of physics and common sense, he’s even been in space. It’s impossible to go more any more without getting into self-parody.
You start making more “realistic” spy movies and you get…Le Carre. Been there, done that, great movies. Wouldn’t fly to have Bond become George Smiley.
The modern world is all treachery and back stabbing selling out our allies for profit, and … whatever we have in this country now. When the US and Russia are both sides of the same coin, who is the baddie? You make Bond take on the US, or maybe Musk…well, we already had that film. It was a view to a suck.
As a business model, there’s no market for making the US the bad guy (obviously). China can’t be the bad guy (just business, you understand), and the world is just too complicated.
If they made more films like For Your Eyes Only, or Casino Royale, maybe. More movies that are less global.
But I expect they’ll make a mini series called “Bond Kids”.
I’d go with a Cold War Bond. Go all Mad Men on the production design. There are so many more stories that can be told when you don’t have to deal with, “why didn’t they just use a drone to kill him?” or coming up with a bunch or lame reasons why a cell phone won’t work.
I’m waiting for a remake of “Operation Double 007.”
I’d like an update of The Liquidator, about a guy that gets hired by MI6 to be a spy/assassin, but he hates the idea of killing people so much, he farms out his assassinations to a professional killer. He lives the spy life but never does the dirty work. Everybody wins!
I would consider, in the spirit of the MCU, “Bond What-if?”. Reimage the existing canon with changes.
How about a James Bond origin story, set during his school days? Though I think they’ve avoided that not to tie him to a particular age.
I think that’s the biggest problem with a present-day Bond reboot. You pretty much have to have some sort of SPECTRE style shadowy extra-governmental criminal organization that’s scary and bad enough for Bond to go against, but not conclusively defeat.
I mean, if they did it right and had Bond opposing SPECTRE, except that it wasn’t a traditional crime syndicate, but rather some kind of modern-day information peddler/tweaker/fabricator organization using this ability to influence nations’ internal politics, public opinion, and the like, it could be very cool. It would have to be one of those things where each movie had him figuring out a little bit more about SPECTRE and their reach, while defeating their henchmen/allies/contractors’ plot that the movie revolves around. Then, after five movies or so, Bond has a good picture of SPECTRE, and he could set about dismantling it in the next several movies. A series would lend itself to this extremely well, IMO.
But I think that would take better and more sustained writing than it’s likely to get from Amazon, so I agree with @Elmer_J.Fudd- Cold War Bond is the way to go- set it in the original 1960s milieu, and go to town. Gadgets, beautiful women, volcanoes launching rockets, and all that stuff. Not necessarily campy, but just realistic enough to not be a comedy.
It’s been done:
Anthony Horowitz already did Bond’s first outing in his authorized novel Forever and a Day (2018). And there’s the whole “Young James Bond” series by Charlie Higson
I don’t see either possibility becoming a film. They pretty much gnored John Gardner’s new Bond books when they continued after they ran out of titles
They already have The Moneypenny Diaries
And the Bond films were leaning toward doing another agent when they brought in Jinx in Die Another Day. They were all set to have a Halle Berry series, but it didn’t happen.
OMG. I can’t tell reading the plot summary if that is supposed to be serious or a parody/comedy. Was there ever an episode where they switched Bond’s mind with a bad guy? If not, there should have been.
You’ve described the Daniel Craig movies. However, I’d watch that…if they made it better than the Daniel Craig movies.
Right, but they didn’t do a very good job of setting the stage. The first three movies were pretty much without reference to SPECTRE or Blofeld.
What I’m saying is that Bond will actually start uncovering stuff as he goes. Maybe never let him find out the full story or take it down; most properties with a big malevolent bad guy suffer when they let the bad guy become defeatable or relatable in some way. BSG was far better when the Cylons were relentless, inscrutable, and powerful. The Walking Dead was the same way- when the zombies were terrifying and random, it was far better than when the survivors started getting the upper hand.
Bond & SPECTRE should be the same way.
I’m afraid I’m a pessimist, so I expect Bond to go the way of Disney-fied Marvel and Star Wars, ie. far too much and of varying quality (hmm, come to think of it… plus ça change…).
What I would like to see is a period Bond, as others have suggested. A bit like that Man From Uncle that was done a while back. There isn’t much that hasn’t been mined from Fleming’s original stories, but as someone above mentioned, a more faithful adaptation of Moonraker would be pretty awesome. There’s no way the protracted bridge scene would work on screen though, so they’d have to take one or two liberties with it.
Wasn’t that the TOMORROW NEVER DIES plot?
I thought the topic was possibilities for new movies or TV shows, so even if there’s an authorized novel, that doesn’t prevent one.