We Don't Care Who Plays Bond, Just Give Us the 007 Multiverse

Jacob Elordi. Callum Turner. Jack Lowden. The names of the next actor to play James Bond are — to borrow a British phrase — being bandied about. Indeed, the favorite seems to change daily. The latest? According to Page Six, that would be Jack Burton, whose physique is nearly as thin as his resume.

Of course the next 007 is never small news, nor is it never not controversial. (Remember the hubbub when a then-unknown Daniel Craig was named the next Bond? For those of you who were too young to remember, it was back in October 2005, and the actor’s blonde locks sent the internet into a tailspin.) What do you expect for the world’s most famous secret agent and a franchise that has spanned some six decades, and racked in an inflation-adjusted $13 billion?

All that said, I’d argue that by obsessing over who plays the next Bond, we’re really missing the bigger — and more exciting — picture. Say it with me: Bond Multiverse. In today’s franchise-dominated filmscape, doubling down on IP is the name of the game. You’ve gotta squeeze those stories and characters for all their worth. We’ve got multiple Spider-Mans (and sometimes multiple Spider-Men in the same film!), multiple Batmans, multiple Jokers. We have Superman and Supergirl. Then there are the spinoffs, like in the Game of Thrones universe, the prequels, a la Rings of Power, and the complete cannibalization of Star Wars courtesy of Disney, where we get more TV shows than trilogies. No, not all these examples gave us good entertainment, as not all stewards of the above brands had everyone’s best interests in mind, but the genie, as it were, is out of the bottle. Not even Q can get it back in.

Jeff Bezos is a businessman, not an auteur. When Amazon forked over $8.5 billion for MGM (Bond’s studio) and a further $1 billion for creative control over 007 from longtime producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, you can bet he didn’t do it to merely release one Bond film every three years, with a five-year hiatus every time a new Bond needed to be cast. The man wants return on his investment, and the best way to do that is to give us more Bond. Before you groan, consider the upside of getting Bond entertainment that sits adjacent to the series. A Bond-comes-out-of-retirement one-off, with a silvery, aged-like-fine-wine Pierce Brosnan reprising the role? How about a Moneypenny TV series with Naomie Harris going back out into the field? Or Q Branch, featuring gadgets and an ensemble cast. Or, in keeping with that theme, a series highlighting the other 00s (call it “Double 0,” please), with Bond himself making cameos in certain episodes. And, if they’re so hell-bent on casting Elordi, why not get him to star in a biopic about his compatriot George Lazenby, one that tells the stranger-than-fiction tale of how an Australian car salesman swindled his way into cinema’s most iconic role?

Now that’s some Amazon optimization I can get behind.

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James Jung

James Jung is the Editor-in-Chief of InsideHook. His journalism has appeared in Bloomberg Businessweek, Outside, Vice, Travel + Leisure, Bicycling, Slate and other publications. His fiction has been published in Narrative, The Southern Review and The Southampton Review. Prior to joining IH, he served as the Editorial Director at Blackbird, the restaurant payments and loyalty company, and was the creator…