It’s likely going to be some time before fans know who’s taking over for Daniel Craig as the next 007.
Franchise producer Barbara Broccoli told The Guardian, in an interview published online Saturday, there is a “big road ahead” before the iconic character is “reinvented for the next chapter.” She added that executives also “haven’t even begun” to modernize the franchise yet.
Broccoli, who helms the film series with her half-brother Michael G. Wilson, explained that it’s important for the next installment to depict the way the world has changed since Craig took on the role of James Bond in 2006. But this is nothing new, as the producer noted that 007 has typically been reinvented and modernized over the decades.
“I go back to GoldenEye when everyone was saying. ‘The cold war is over, the wall is over, Bond is dead, no need for Bond, the whole world’s at peace and now there’s no villains’ — and boy was that wrong!” she said.
When it came to Craig in the title role, they “wanted to focus on what a 21st-century hero would look like.”
“Daniel gave us the ability to mine the emotional life of the character … and also the world was ready for it,” she added. “I think these movies reflect the time they are in, and there’s a big, big road ahead reinventing it for the next chapter.”
After five installments in the film series, beginning with Casino Royale, Craig officially retired from the role following the release of 2021’s No Time to Die.
Last year, Broccoli told The Hollywood Reporter that they were more interested at the time in figuring out who the next villain will be before considering who will play Bond.
“We always sit down with our writers, and we start by thinking about ‘What is the world afraid of?’ We start by thinking about, ‘Who’s the Bond villain?’ We try to focus on that as the sort of uber story,” she explained. “And then we want to also look at Bond’s emotional life, and what he’ll be facing personally that he hasn’t had to deal with before. So he has two big issues in the films — one is the geopolitical one and the other is the personal one.”
