For over six decades, the Broccoli family has been as much a part of the James Bond film franchise as vodka martinis (shaken, not stirred, of course), beautiful women and henchmen with terrible aim.
They built a legacy from the early years starting with 1962’s “Dr. No,” when Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli and fellow producer Harry Saltzman were working with relatively modest budgets, and continuing into recent years, when the movies cost an eye-popping $200 million to make before marketing.
So it was a big deal when tech giant Amazon said last week that it had made a pact with Cubby’s heirs and longtime 007 producers Barbara Broccoli and her half-brother Michael G. Wilson to take over creative control. (Albert R. Broccoli died in 1996.)
James Bond was a top attraction for Amazon when it paid $8.5 billion in 2022 to swallow MGM Studios, which has the distribution rights to the venerable superspy series. But it was known from the start that if Amazon wanted to take advantage of one of the film industry’s longest-running and most lucrative properties, it would have to contend with the Broccolis, who were deeply protective of their family heirloom.
The relationship between the clan and the e-commerce behemoth was strained, to say the least. Bond has been in a holding pattern since 2021’s hit “No Time to Die,” with no actor announced, despite rampant speculation, to replace Daniel Craig, whose time came definitively to an end in that film.
Now the Amazon era begins, with the company able to choose its own path on casting, directors and scripts. Once the deal is closed, the company and the Broccolis will co-own the rights through a new joint venture, but it’s Amazon’s franchise now.
Amazon executive chair Jeff Bezos quickly took to X to ask social media who should play Bond next.
The jokes pretty much wrote themselves. Cue the six-part Ana de Armas spinoff for Prime Video and the Miss Moneypenny origin story. Alexa, please add “bagpipe flamethrower” to my cart. A New Yorker cartoon by Ellis Rosen showed Bezos as a Bond villain telling the British spy (strapped to a table), “I expect you to star in a series of increasingly bland spinoffs and TV shows.”
“R.I.P., Mr. Bond,” was the sentiment many fans expressed online.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
In fact, Amazon, with its massively deep pockets, now has a major opportunity on its hands as it takes the reins of a multigenerational series, said Steven Jay Rubin, the Los Angeles-based author of “The Complete James Bond Movie Encyclopedia.”
“They have a chance to do something that is done very rarely, which is to have a big theatrical hit under the Amazon banner, and I think that Bezos really wants that,” Rubin said. “I think that if they can avoid diluting it, maybe we can get Bond movies a little bit faster. I don’t think we need to wait six years for a new Bond movie.”
Amazon MGM Studios declined to comment.
The worst thing Amazon could do would be to overextend the brand. The instinct to milk a franchise for all its worth was what has weakened the “Star Wars” film empire and, to a lesser extent, the Marvel Cinematic Universe under Walt Disney Co.’s ownership. The studios put out too much of the same kind of stuff, and it wasn’t good enough.
The Bond series — over 25 official movies — has certainly yielded some stinkers, but one of its advantages is that it has mostly stuck to theatrical film. The movies come out years apart, giving audiences a chance to breathe.
One key challenge for Amazon is that the Bond films, which decades ago didn’t have much competition, now face multiple rivals that have taken the globetrotting man of mystery formula and run wild with it. “Mission: Impossible,” “Kingsman,” “John Wick,” the “Bourne” series and even the “Fast & Furious” saga each have plenty of 007 DNA.
All the more reason for Amazon to take some significant, calculated risks. Choosing the right actor for Bond is one thing, but picking a big-name director like Christopher Nolan could be an even more consequential coup. Nolan, who revived Batman with the “Dark Knight” trilogy, has entertained the idea out loud, while cautioning about the creative parameters placed on directors who take on such projects.
“If Amazon is smart, they will hand over the reins to a top film director who really can bring something special, because the series needs to be freshened up,” Rubin said. “As much as I love what Barbara and Michael have put into production values, the stories have gotten a little stale.”
The question is how many top-tier directors are willing to take the risk of doing a new Bond movie without the Broccolis’ involvement.
Fans might worry that Amazon, being a tech giant, would make Bond a streaming enterprise. Highly unlikely. Movies of that size and scope don’t make sense as projects made primarily for the small screen.
But if you think Bond can’t work in other media, don’t forget the popular “GoldenEye 007” N64 video game, which was very important to legions of kids growing up in the 1990s. (More recently, MGM Television made a traveling competition reality series, “007: Road to a Million,” produced for Prime Video in association with Eon, the Broccolis’ production company.)
As for who will play Bond, not even Bezos’ social media crowdsourcing effort gives any real clues. There have been plenty of calls for Bond to be portrayed by a woman or person of color over the years. Barbara Broccoli once said in a Variety interview that Bond can be “any color,” but is male. Rubin said the most likely outcome is that the agent with a license to kill will remain a white man from the Commonwealth.
The debate over how to update the character goes to a fundamental question: Does Bond still matter in 2025?
The character has plenty of baggage, from the innocuously silly gadgetry of the earlier movies to the long history of chauvinism throughout much of the series. But the world is an increasingly dangerous-seeming place, with plenty of cold war echoes and international conflicts in Europe and the Middle East. All that is material a filmmaker might mine in order to keep the series up to date.
No, not all the movies have worked, though just about every iteration has its defenders, maybe except for “Die Another Day.” Nothing stays consistent over the course of more than two dozen films (which, for good measure, have totaled more than $7.8 billion in global box office to date, according to the Numbers).
But for Rubin, there’s been enough good stuff to keep the franchise healthy and poised for future success.
“Because of the quality, Bond has stayed relevant as an important entertainment for the mass audience, and I think they put enough effort into them to keep them timely.” Rubin said. “Also, if you hear about a new James Bond movie, it makes news in a crowded marketplace. So I think it’s still important.”
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