With No Time to Die’s ending having wrapped up Daniel Craig’s tenure as James Bond, the James Bond franchise itself remains in a holding pattern. The search continues to find Craig’s successor for what’s informally known as Bond 26, but lately there’s also been rumors about a James Bond TV show being in the cards. Barbara Broccoli, one of the franchise’s main producers, has now clarified the Bond franchise’s future, and there’s bad news for those of you who’ve been wanting to see 007’s exploits on the small screen.
While Broccoli and her half-brother Albert G. Wilson inherited Eon Productions, the production company behind the James Bond movies, in 1995, Broccoli’s direct experience with James Bond stretches all the way back to when she worked in the publicity department on The Spy Who Loved Me. Now she and Wilson are gearing for a new Bond chapter following their time spearheading the Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig eras, and as Broccoli told The Guardian, there’s more than enough to keep them occupied on the cinematic front that a James Bond TV just hasn’t interested them. In her words:
Our focus is making the feature films. When we get going on a Bond movie it takes our full attention for three or four years so that’s our focus. We make the Bond movies for the big theatrical screen and everything about the Bond movies is for audiences to see around the world on that format, so we’ve not wanted to do television.
There is a reality competition show airing to Amazon Prime Video subscribers next month called 007: Road to a Million (which premiered its first trailer on James Bond Day), but that’s a far cry from a fictional narrative series centered on the suave spy created by Ian Fleming. Granted, following a loose adaptation of Casino Royale n the 1950s, there were efforts to bring James Bond back to TV prior to Dr. No’s release, but ever since that movie’s arrival in 1962, when it comes to onscreen adventures, Bond has strictly been a film character, and Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson don’t intend to change that.
Like Broccoli explained, so much planning goes into just one James Bond movie that there just isn’t any interest in splitting attention onto a fictional TV show on top of that. Franchises like Marvel, Star Wars and the MonsterVerse are now delivering both big and small screen offerings to their fans, but for the foreseeable future, James Bond will remain firmly planted in the world of film. So unless you want to delve into the James Bond books, you’ll have to wait until Bond 26 to reunite with this character.
As far as where things stand with Bond 26, rumors about Christopher Nolan being lined up to direct the movie were debunked in September, and there’s been no word lately on actors who are under serious consideration to put on the tux and request the shaken, not stirred martini next. While we wait for updates on what’s being planned, remember that nearly all of the James Bond movies can be streamed on Amazon.