Amazon Seizing Creative Control of James Bond Sparks Fandom Fears
For the last four years, James Bond fans have been hunting for any sign that a new Bond movie was gaining momentum following the exit of lead Daniel Craig. Thursday’s news that Amazon had struck a deal with Bond rights holders Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson to seize creative control of the franchise means the longtime boggy stalemate between the two parties is over, and the new Bond will assuredly move forward.
So why are so many acting like Amazon just beat the living daylights out of 007?
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Best-selling author Don Winslow wrote on X (formerly Twitter), “Absolutely heartbreaking. The END of an era.” FilmSpeak critic Griffin Schiller opined, “This is quite possibly the WORST thing to happen to this franchise…. It’ll be milked dry.” Predicted another, “Amazon is going to scrape the barrel here and be as shameless as possible.” Plenty of others have written: “RIP James Bond.”
The deal seemed particularly surprising as Broccoli had long retained such a protective grip on the character, following in the footsteps of her late father, Albert R. Broccoli. The Broccoli family’s careful stewardship has long been credited with the franchise’s enduring appeal and its largely successful evolutions over nearly eight decades. It was one of the last pieces of beloved IP not controlled by a major corporation, one free of unwieldy TV spinoffs, overexplaining prequels or complicated serialization.
Fans’ outcry and skepticism occur every time a beloved franchise changes hands. But in this case, their misgivings are not without reason.
Amazon, after all, spent nearly $300 million creating its own Bond-like international British spy drama in Citadel. The series launched in 2023 to soft reviews and meager audience scores. Amazon had ambitiously conceived the show as not just a series but an instant franchise, with different Citadel spinoff shows planned for various countries worldwide and characters that would eventually all team up, Avengers-style. In other words, Amazon first conceived of a global content plan, then attempted to write a TV show to fit that vision, which is rarely how compelling storytelling works.
The studio’s other action dramas include Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan and Reacher, which are fine. No shade, just very much TV.
Another beloved IP the company spent hundreds of millions to acquire, like Bond, was its The Lord of the Rings prequel. The resulting show, The Rings of Power, has been divisive among fans, to say the least, albeit still popular in terms of streaming numbers.
And then there are Amazon’s worrisome clashes with Broccoli and Wilson. As detailed in a Wall Street Journal story, Broccoli once described Amazon executives as “fucking idiots.” Broccoli was also reportedly incensed by executives dismissively referring to James Bond as “content.” The report also revealed Amazon contemplated TV spinoffs based on the character Moneypenny, or perhaps a female Bond series (Broccoli arguably had it right when she controversially declared that Bond can be any race, but the character is male — he’s basically idealized masculinity). A TV version of Bond is…what? A more expensive-looking British version of Netflix’s The Night Agent?
Amazon, quite understandably, prioritizes its Prime Video streaming service (witness how the streamer refused to bow to pressure to release its reboot of Road House into theaters last year). Which isn’t to say the company wouldn’t release a Bond movie in theaters — keeping Bond exclusive to Prime Video seems very unlikely, though not impossible. The larger point is that Amazon isn’t a company that seems to value cinema, and doesn’t have longtime experience creating cinema, the way a company making the next Bond movie ideally should.
The company would, of course, open its coffers to spend an unholy amount of money on a Bond project. But in terms of casting, few fans seem to trust that the two-day-shipping giant will make a compelling choice. It’s impossible to imagine, for instance, Amazon choosing Daniel Craig for the actor’s first Bond outing in 2006’s Casino Royale. Craig wasn’t considered a safe choice at the time. He wasn’t well known and was slammed for being blonde and not matinee idol handsome. It’s hard to imagine nervous Amazon executives making a similar go-with-your-gut pick.
For instance: For Citadel, Amazon cast Richard Madden coming off BBC’s action-drama Bodyguard, which had fans online saying he should play the next James Bond. The studio cast an obvious and safe in-the-moment choice. Jeff Bezos himself has already started down the wrong path by publicly asking after the announcement, “Who’d you pick as the next Bond?” as if eager to get an online focus group going.
One fan-friendly component of Bond is that the films are all self-contained — at least, until the franchise attempted some degree of serialization in the last couple movies, which critics and fans largely agreed didn’t work. Otherwise, you can enjoy any of the 25 Bond film without having watched any other Bond film. But it’s a safe bet that Amazon will not be content with making a stand-alone movie every few years. One worries the company will try for some tangled world-building monstrosity, like Disney did with Star Wars.
This is a Clint Eastwood quote, so it’s admittedly imperfect for a Bond story, but the message is right: “A man’s gotta know his limitations.” Arguably, the wisest move Amazon could make to earn its double-0 status is likewise recognize its limitations: Hire one fantastic filmmaker with a compelling vision for Bond that feels new and also honors the character’s legacy, then get out of the way, while committing to a single movie to be released in theaters. Prove you can make one terrific Bond movie, earn that license to kill.
It’s a strategy the company will almost certainly reject in favor of something more hands-on and unwieldy. When it comes to Amazon’s ambitions for its “content,” the world is rarely enough.
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