Monday Musings: James Bond 28th movie in production

The last time I wrote about James Bond was in 2025. Amazon had done a deal to take full creative control over the rights. How it used to work was MGM would fund it and EON Productions would produce it, with the Broccoli family and Michael G. Wilson overseeing everything. They owned the IP and helped turn the franchise into a cultural icon. The new arrangement is likely a joint venture with the family still getting a slice of the pie. EON Productions, which exclusively produced Bond, received $20 million as part of the deal, likely as compensation for giving up its production rights. With Danjaq LLC no longer holding the Bond IP, it is London Operations LLC that is taking over. There are almost certainly other elements to the deal we do not know about, and the full value of what the family received has not been disclosed, though estimates including stocks and other considerations put it at around $1 billion. EON Productions is now shifting focus towards smaller films and indie productions.

It was well known that the family had growing frustrations with Amazon. Yet now they have struck this new deal, reportedly partly due to wanting to retire. I did not have high hopes then and still do not. The last James Bond film under their direction was No Time to Die in 2021.

Since then Bond has been on something of a hiatus, but signs of life are emerging. We are getting a new James Bond game after a very long wait. 007 First Light, which looks quite promising. That must have been greenlit by the family before the deal was struck, given how long games take to make. The last game before that was 007 Legends in 2012, which received negative reviews and was considered rather poor. On the TV side we had 007: Road to a Million, a reality show that ran from 2023 to 2025 and received mixed reviews. It followed a similar format to other travel based competition shows, an unusual direction for the franchise. You can understand why the family were reluctant to hand over control after that.

Bond seems to be coming back, first through the video game and then a film. It is a reversal of the old model where you would get a movie and a tie in game alongside it.

So what do we know about the 28th Bond film? Denis Villeneuve is directing, Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight is writing it, and producers Amy Pascal and David Heyman have been brought on board. Villeneuve is a serious and proven filmmaker. He delivered a worthy sequel to Blade Runner and adapted Dune, one of the longest and most difficult books to bring to screen, twice. Steven Knight has admitted to being a Bond fan, and so has Villeneuve by the sounds of it. That is encouraging, though being a fan does not always guarantee results. We have seen passionate fans take the reins of beloved franchises and make a mess of them. The Doctor Who showrunner situation comes to mind, where genuine love for the material was not enough to save it.

Casting for the next Bond is underway, which suggests a 2028 release is likely. This is probably the longest gap between Bond films in the franchise’s history. As for who should play him, I genuinely do not know enough working actors to throw names around confidently. Amazon MGM now has full creative control, which also means streaming rights. They have shown a willingness to release things both theatrically and on Prime. Bond has been reinvented for so many generations since the 1960s. Now it is time to see who Bond becomes for the 2020s. By the time this goes up, who knows, we may already have answers. I am writing this in the summer, so plenty could change.

As for what they should do with the character, in a world of increasingly serious and self important films, maybe the answer is to go a little silly. Have some fun with it. That might be exactly what the franchise needs. The next Bond may leave us shaken or stirred as to what is coming.