Three years have passed since the last James Bond film, and with No Time To Die concluding with a franchise first – the death of 007 – fans are eager to see what the 26th Bond film will bring. It will need to be a fresh reboot, similar to the one initiated by the Daniel Craig era starting with Casino Royale. So far, all fans can do is speculate about what Barbara Broccoli & Co. have in store. Aaron Taylor-Johnson has emerged as the clear favorite to replace Craig, but with no official announcement in sight, a new contender could easily step in at any moment. In the absence of a script and director, fans are left wondering who will perform the upcoming Bond theme song... And the wait is becoming increasingly difficult.
Granted, this isn’t the longest gap between Bond movies. We’d have to double it, and that has already happened twice. The first six-year gap was between Timothy Dalton’s final outing, 1989’s License to Kill, and Pierce Brosnan’s debut, 1995’s GoldenEye. The second was between 2015’s Spectre and 2021’s No Time to Die. Will it be another three years for Bond 26? According to a key figure at Amazon (who acquired MGM in 2022 for $8.5 billion), patience is key. Speaking with The Guardian, Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke said: “The global audience will be patient. We don’t want too much time between films, but we are not concerned at this point.”
While there are many possibilities for a new Bond era and the casting of the iconic role, a film’s hero is only as good as its villain... Saoirse Ronan has some thoughts. In a recent interview with the Happy Sad Confused podcast, the 30-year-old Irish actress revealed that she would rather decline a role in a Marvel movie if that meant being cast as a James Bond villain. When asked what her ‘affectation’ might be as a villain, such as an eye patch or a white cat, she jokingly suggested “a limp”. Ronan would be the perfect foil for a new Bond – not just because she has the range to play any role but because she would inject an intriguing level of humanity within a level of sadism and maliciousness that we haven’t seen her fully embrace yet.
More than that, if a necessary 007 renaissance is to take place for the 26th film, so should the role of the female villain. Traditionally, male antagonists have been the standard for the 007 franchise, and when actresses have been cast as baddies, they’ve been relegated to side-villains / secondary scoundrels. It’s time the Bond series had a properly vicious primary female villain, and casting an actress of Ronan’s versatility and charisma could not only break the antiquated trend, but also take the franchise in a bold new direction.
During the same interview with Happy Sad Confused, Ronan tipped her husband, 34-year-old Slow Horses actor Jack Lowden, to be the next James Bond. Cast them together, and you have a metatextual dynamic for the ages that would not only revitalize the series but bring in a new generation of intrigued moviegoers to the theatres. Here’s hoping the Bond producers are taking notes. And that they won’t make us wait another three years for the next chapter in the franchise.
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