Ever since Daniel Craig announced that he would be turning in the tuxedo and putting down the martini glass, the race has been on to decide who will be chosen as the next James Bond. The rumor mill has been heating up for years now, but now it’s really down to the wire for the final weeks of auditions for Bond 26. With stories dropping daily about who Bond producers are meeting with, fans are hoping it might soon be revealed who will take over as Ian Fleming’s iconic character.
Once “Dune” director Denis Villeneuve was hired to shepherd the next installment, with Steven Knight writing the script, it was off to the races to decide who casting director Nina Gold and Villeneuve would select. Here’s what we do know: The new Bond will almost certainly not be the familiar 007. If the next film follows the timeline of “No Time to Die,” then James Bond is dead and Lashana Lynch’s character Nomi adopted his MI6 agent number.
Of course, the next Bond movie could easily set that established timeline aside, and take place in an alternate Bond universe altogether. (It never made much sense that Sean Connery’s Bond from the 1960s and Pierce Brosnan’s Bond from the 1990s were the same person, anyway.) The series’ previous producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson were clear about three things: The next Bond should be played by a Brit; the next Bond should be young enough to be able to continue in the role for at least 15 years; and the next Bond will be a man, not a woman. But with Broccoli and Wilson turning over creative control to Amazon MGM, there’s no telling what changes might be in store. Amy Pascal and David Heyman are now producing, and since it’s their first Bond film, any number of changes could be in store.
And as Agent 007 knows better than most, rules are meant to be bent, if not broken outright. For this list, we cast a wide net of actors mostly in the under-40 category — yes, even a couple of women — so sorry to earlier picks like Idris Elba, Henry Cavill and others who have aged out of the running. The most important criteria was whether the actor could bring the necessary gravitas, style and charm to playing Britain’s most famous secret agent.
While awaiting the next Bond to be cast, catch up by watching all the Bond films in order. (Contributors: Pat Saperstein, Rachel Seo, William Earl, J. Kim Murphy, Jenelle Riley, Caroline Framke, Jordan Moreau, Michaela Zee, EJ Panaligan, Katie Reul, Ellise Shafer, Maane Khatchatourian, Adam B. Vary, Ethan Shanfeld, Andrés Buenahora, Angelique Jackson, Jack Dunn) Before appearing in “Eternity” and “Rosebush Pruning,” Callum Turner led the helm in the sports drama “The Boys in The Boat.” And while rowing may have sharpened his look and physicality, playing an athlete is far from the only thing he can do.
In addition to playing a likable suitor to Anya Taylor-Joy in the 2020 screen adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Emma,” the London-born actor has appeared in a diverse slate of films, from the video game-to-film adaptation “Assassin’s Creed” to the Harry Potter-universe’s “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.” He also starred as Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan opposite Austin Butler in the Steven Spielberg-executive produced “Masters of The Air.” The Apple TV+ miniseries displayed his capacity for aerial combat scenes, which could bode exceptionally well for any potential Bond films that require 007 to jump out of a moving plane or perform any flying stunts in debonair fashion. Stranger things have happened.
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