31
votes
James Bond shocker! Amazon MGM Studios takes creative control of spy franchise as producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli step back.
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Authors
- Justin Kroll
- Published
- Feb 20 2025
- Word count
- 563 words
Oaft, this worries me. Barbara and Michael have made missteps for sure over the years but it's obvious they sincerely love the series and have given us some incredible films.
I don't really trust Amazon to do the series justice I'm afraid, I feel they're consistently one of the worst of the streaming companies in regards to their wheelhouse of original TV shows and movies.
I'm a huge Bond fan, the Fleming novels (and some of the continuation novels) are some of my favourite books. Moonraker (the book, not the film lol) is a top 3 novel of all time for me, so I know how large and how far the culture of Bond as a character stretches, so I really hope they take their time and treat the series with the respect it deserves.
It doesn't have to become some sort of Expanded Universe behemoth like DC or Marvel. Keep it as a showstopping big budget blockbuster every 3-4 years in my opinion. And if they must, perhaps a short 3 to 4 episode self-contained miniseries exploring other aspects of the Bond universe in between the films. Something like Kim Sherwood's "Double O" novels, centered around other Double O agents, or Samantha Weinberg's "Moneypenny Diaries", exploring Moneypenny's background and filling in the gaps between Bonds missions could be a good backbone for these.
I don’t trust Amazon one bit to make decent shows/movies. Wasn’t a fan of Rings of Power, not looking forward to whatever they’re planning for Bond. I’ll give them one show/movie to show what they can do. If it’s not good, I’m going to just block it out (like I did RoP and Disney Wars) …
Yes, I’m a grump
My greatest fear is James Bond teaming up with Lara Croft to take down the Corleone crime family, or some nonsense like that. And spinoff films with the solo adventures of Q and Moneypenny.
I mean now we’ll probably get Bond in Fortnight….
Basically the same thing
It may be a reference to supposed plans to make spin off movies for Brosnan Bond Girls to, well, to get them stopped being called Bond Girls. Both the Tomorrow Never Dies agent from China, and Jinx, the CIA agent played by Halle Berry, were supposed to get them but plans were derailed by box office under performance, which in Die Another Day's case killed the Brosnan series for good. It's unclear how much of that was the truth and how much was PR to get away from the Bond series' reputation for misogyny.
I think judging Amazon's ability to make shows just by Rings of Power is a bit unfair. They've made a lot of shows. These are just ones I've watched, with IMDB ratings
There's a ton more that I haven't watched (and this is likely not exhaustive, I just looked at what was available to stream), but many of them are positively reviewed, with imdb scores in brackets:
I think you're judging based on one of the most critically unsuccessful of Amazon's offerings. I think arguably most of the shows they make are fairly good.
Rings of Power also has a rabid fan base who are very easy to disappoint. Amazon is in business to make money and they made Rings of Power to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, which for the most devout absolutely ruined it.
Bond movies have a long history of disappointing the OG book fans and broadly pandering to the masses (maybe a little less so during the Daniel Craig era, but Roger Moore flew a microjet out of the rear end of a horse... edit: AND IT WAS AWESOME).
All of which is to say it's a much lower bar to maintain the Bond movie franchise... But they could still muck it up.
Oh they definitely could make it bad. But I think that they have also made a variety of actually pretty good tv and movies as well so it's kind of a toss up whether they are likely to make it terrible.
3rd hand as hell here but I just spoke to someone who apparently read that Amazon wants to treat Bond like anything else and just throw focus groups and marketing reports at it.
It's so weird to me spending a ton of money on these extremely well defined series like LOTR or Bond and then making it as generic as possible to appeal to the most groups.
Bond has very clearly always been a male power fantasy spy thriller thing. Can you subvert that and have a female 007/bond, sure. Why not just make something with a different name? Some large % of the legacy fanbase is going to be unreasonable pissed, some reasonable so, and the some % of the fanbase you're courting is going to feel pandered to, or annoyed you're using something else they enjoyed, or confused and ignore it because of expectations.
There are IP's you can pretty much just jam plots and characters on top of and it won't matter, but these highly distinctive ones strike me as such a boneheaded VP of blah move where they only see the upsides (oh it's got name recognition and an audience) and they don't actually understand any of the downsides (it's got an expected vibe that you DON'T want to follow because you're going to let the data team write the show)
You're already seeing it, with Bezos asking people who they want to see as Bond.
Now you could say that it's just a post from Bezos celebrating them getting control over the Bond licence but I absolutely reckon they'll use the data in future discussions.
The problem is the general public doesn't really know who they want as Bond considering they keep suggesting people like Henry Cavill, Tom Hardy, Tom Holland or having a female Bond (which I'm only against because Bond is a male character and has been for 70+ years. There are plenty of great female action heroes and great books that could be used for material to create a female spy character, such as The Modesty Blaise novels, which are very fun and quite Bondian).
I remember the public reacting pretty negatively to Daniel Craig getting the role, only for him to put in a consistently fantastic showing as Bond
This. “People” don’t know what they want. They know what they like. That’s rehashing, not creating.
Auteurs by definition create great things, and they’re great because they’re liked by a lot of people.
I remember when the Vin Diesel vehicle “XXX” came out. The Bond franchise hadn’t been doing great and the opening scene just skewered Bond. Kind of literally. They killed a spy in a tux comedically as a declaration of intent. Bond was over.
I’ve wondered before if that slap in the face wasn’t what gave us the Craig Bond films. That it pissed off and motivated people to really buckle down and dig into what makes Bond great and deliver.
It takes a lot of skill from a lot of talented and dedicated people to deliver what some might call art, or pop art, or “prestige” film, or whatever… but what they did with Casino Royale delivered.
No focus group based development could have come up with such an artful and excellent way of reintroducing the character so well, and nobody expected the Bond franchise to rise up like it did at that point in time.
I’m not saying Amazon can’t let artists follow their vision. I’m just trying to think of a solid example where it’s happened with an existing property.
Even conceptually I don’t think The Boys (my example of what successful creative efforts from Amazon looks like) even really breaks much actual new ground. IMO (and I enjoy the heck out of the show) it’s more of like an incremental next step in genre that occasionally says stuff that’s kind of already been said elsewhere.
I’ve tuckered myself out with this now, but yeah. Unless Amazon commits to really letting a talented team go at it fully and with time and budget and stuffs the meddling execs back in their cubicles, I don’t expect much more than another middling Roger Moore-like era. Not the end of their world, and honestly, IMO the Craig movies weren’t going to get topped anyway, so…
There’s my harmonizing from the peanut gallery for ya. Who knows, maybe we’ll be surprised.
JAMES X BAT
in which our heroes James bond and Bruce Wayne team up to defend Gotham from a city-destroying blue laser beam, thwart the convoluted schemes of Vegeta and the Ginyu Force, and discover the power of true friendship. Glup Shitto guest appearance. "EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED"(tm) - be the first to see Bond as you've never seen him before.
Season 1 part 1 teaser preview trailer begins NOW for prime subscribers, who receive 5% less ads per minute watch time on average (per data analyzed by the Amazon Foundation for Responsible Ad Consumption - user experience may vary). Subscribe NOW to the bi-weekly plan and SAVE $0.06 per episode, save EVEN MORE when you submit your sequenced genome on MyAmazon ID+ and allow your first Predictive Purchase!
Along these same lines, I saw this very funny bluesky post yesterday.
my dream scenario is a Bond series that follows the books to the letter. roughly four episodes per book, one as a primer / catch up, thirteen total per season.
i want ever really into the bond films, but absolutely fell in love with the novels. way better in every way.
Somewhere between Brosnan and Craig, I was feeling the gap and sat down and read Casino Royale. I realized that I had been missing out, and was absolutely charmed when the Martin Campbell version came out.
That's a shame, I have 0 faith in an unfettered Amazon to make a good James Bond anything. It will be heavily focus-tested slop with no room for any real creativity or risk-taking.
The ending of No Time to Die is making a lot more sense now. The Broccolis were ending the series for those of us who may end up skipping all the Amazon stuff. Bond died.
Oof. Yeah. This might have to inspire a rewatch.
I love the Bond movies and I am sure Amazon will guide and respect this series and make no mistakes...
Whatever, they have basically "done" all of the books and a soft relaunch with Daniel Craig.
I guess they probably just do that again with a new Bond? I don't know what I want out of more Bond movies but I have limited faith that Amazon will figure it out.
Penny Arcade strip