Amazon MGM Studios will gain creative control of the James Bond franchise | Hacker News Reader

Amazon MGM Studios will gain creative control of the James Bond franchise

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56 pointscroes115 comments

This is a sad outcome. The Bond franchise is very strong, and that’s in large part to a single coherent vision of who the character is.

Bond is in need of some modernisation perhaps, but that still needs the strong creative control. The bean counters at Amazon aren’t that, and it shows in every Amazon studios production (and in most Netflix productions too), they’re too caught up in the numbers, the marketability, ticking boxes for target audiences, that the content is soulless.

I hope Bond survives.

The literary version is already public domain in many countries

Seems to be more than just bean counting. Rings of Power was showered with money, so there are properties Amazon is willing to spend lavish amounts of money on. They also boosted the budget when they took over The Expanse, though there's plenty of disagreement over if that netted a better result or not.

The money wasn't the issue though, it was the lack of respect for the established cannon / materials and most fans / viewers not connecting with it.

A web host / grocery store has no taste and should not be disrupting the entertainment industry.

It's time that we start trust busting these trillion dollar giants. Amazon needs a break up.

It's totally unfair that they subsidized all of that using unrelated business unit profit, displayed marquees on Amazon boxes and on the side of their delivery vans, and shipped all of our production crew jobs over to developing economies. US film production is in shambles because of Amazon.

I don't see a monopolistic hold on the media from Amazon that would justify this. Anyone can produce content and put it out there. I agree they're not a good steward and they pretty much ruin franchises, but their right to do it is just that. Now if there is evidence that they're taking a substantial amount of business away from everyone else and you can prove they have a controlling hold on it, i'm with you on breaking it up.

Bond doesn't really have a deep canon. They long ago moved on from the source material, and the first 20 movies were connected only in the loosest sense. For Craig's movies they tried to make a cross-movie continuity, but it didn't really work and required some retconning.

But the movies do have a unique sort of character and consistency that is widely believed to be due to one family running the show for 60+ years. I'm not sure that be replicated with a data-driven, committee-based approach. I also believe it was Broccoli's veto power that prevented over-saturation, and direct-to-streaming releases.

My guess is it will be closer to Star Wars than Lord of the Rings or Wheel of Time. Some of the movies may be "good" and some may be "bad", but they'll be missing that bit that made them special.

    My guess is it will be closer to Star Wars than Lord 
    of the Rings or Wheel of Time.

Yeah. Not all Bond movies were good, but they were at least rare which made them feel special.

Now? Oh boy. Amazon did not buy this franchise to turn out three movies a decade, that's for sure.

I promise there will be a James Bond streaming series, and probably multiple James Bond streaming series. And there will be spinoffs. Ever wonder what Q does when he's not making gadgets for Bond? You're going to find out in his own series. How about Miss Moneypenny? Oh yeah. Another important load-bearing column in the James Bond Cinematic/Streaming Universe. It's absolutely going to be a Star Wars / Marvel kind of thing.

I hate it, even though... if we're honest, it's not like Bond was some highbrow thing. Most of the movies were fun, but few were what people would really think of as "great." Nearly all of them had a camp factor between "moderately high" and "very high." But still.

> My guess is it will be closer to Star Wars

I mourn about what's become of Star Wars.

spoiler alert - he is dead

Amazon needs to be broken up. They are a web host, e-commerce giant, consumer electronics company, grocery store, primary care doctor, and movie studio. That is so wildly fucked.

These companies are entering into entirely new markets, destroying the value, giving it away for free, all subsidized by unrelated business unit profit.

One of the core reasons why Hollywood is floundering is because tech giants are doing this.

Why don't we do trust busting anymore?

we barely do democracy anymore

let them let the customers choose also it allows them to amass substantial capital that can then be spent on R & D that maintains the lead of the US in some areas, as a multinational there is a lot of money coming from other countries that is beneficial to the U.S.. If China is the only country where MegaCorps, then it would be hard for segmented U.S. firms to compete with them

Hollywood is floundering because:

- there's no secondary market for VHS & DVD anymore. Almost all the money has to be made on opening weekend

- in recent years, content has become preachy instead of focusing on being entertaining

Netflix & Amazon movies are ultra-low quality; you couldn't pay me to watch it. A quality Hollywood production that was made to entertain instead of persuade can still easily outcompete tech company movies

> in recent years, content has become preachy instead of focusing on being entertaining

I'm not sure I feel this? From my perspective, the Marvel films feel like a counter example, where they only care about the "entertainment" (arguably the opening weekend!), and there's no lasting quality to them. Each one individually is a reasonable way to pass 2 hours, but they feel like junk food films, I don't feel better for having watched them.

The alternative is things like A24's output, which one may call "preachy", but while I might not enjoy them in the same way as turning my mind off in front of Avengers 8: Avenge Harder-er, they have a much bigger impact on my life and satisfy me much more as a viewer.

Having a diverse cast and talking about things that used to be taboo is not being preachy.

Call it what you will but doing the above for reasons of “representation” or “education” rather than entertainment is simply not a fun experience for anyone, even the self-righteous people making those films.

A business needs a laser focus on how it adds value to its customers or it’ll die.

> doing the above for reasons of “representation” or “education” rather than entertainment

That's basically never the case. People assume it is because they don't like seeing a diverse cast and come up with that excuse.

You may very well think that and keep going to the movies, but a large segment of the population sees this as explicit and implicit criticism of aspects that are integral to themselves (white skin, a Y chromosome, conservative beliefs) and won't watch anymore.

Those people are part of the problem and best left behind IMO.

Learn nothing and you'll keep losing. You'll never leave 40-60% of the population "behind" (who are you to define "the problem"? What's next, "the solution"? Chilling and revealing language) and it's outrageous this notion ever occurred to you in the first place.

There was only progress. The only people who were losing were lowkey bigots in denial who can't handle change. Bigots might be in charge for the next 4 years, but the pendulum will swing much more forcefully in the opposite direction as a result for the subsequent 8 years. The march of progress is inevitable.

I won't be engaging with you again after this due to your views.

> Learn nothing and you'll keep losing

Nah. Keep being bigoted and you'll be left behind.

How much is the secondary market for streaming? When Netflix picks up a major studio release, how much do they pay? Or if it's available on Youtube/Amazon, how much do they make on that?

(All of this is made weirder by the fact that half of the biggest movies every year come out of Disney and go straight to its own service.)

Here's Matt Damon explaining the economics of the evolution from VHS -> DVD -> piracy.

He doesn't directly address how much Netflix pays for rights, but presumably the answer is "not enough".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx8F5Imd8A8

We did. In fact, some of the Biden-era antitrust lawsuits are still active, AFAIK. What happened is that the capital class acted swiftly and firmly to shut down the FTC (and SEC), by brown-nosing Trump[0], so that the federal government couldn't challenge them.

The word "deep state" gets thrown around a lot here, especially by the people who thought Trump was going to stop this bullshit, but it's useful to describe what's going on: the accumulation of informal power structures that render the formal, legitimate one ineffective. Hollywood was part of the last iteration of the deep state; but they are being gradually pushed out of it, both because they are on Trump's enemies list and because tech centralizes power and control far faster than artistic industry does. In other words, Hollywood is no longer useful and is being replaced with something worse.

[0] To be clear, about half the DNC was hoping a judge would block Lina Khan's lawsuits and make her look weak enough to be replaced with a stooge.

All Bonds are marketing phenomena. Amazon Prime Bond will be no different. Good time to try new brands for guns, watches, cars, gadgets and so on.

This is a very sad and soulless way to view Bond's story.

At the end of day Bond movies, Star wars saga, Jazz music, many sports culture or even Apple gadgets are great successfully marketed products. Now some people do take it as way of life and are deep into it, for them, it is not just some product. But for lot others these are just a type of movies, music, sports etc.

I hope you're never in charge of anything in which other people find meaning and community.

I wonder if they will shift production away from Pinewood Studios?

Unlikely, Amazon's already got a long term contract in place with the pinewod group for facilities extending beyond Bond. The actual bond stage is owned by Pinewood and used for lots of different productions however Eon were always given priorty access (again contractually).

You don't really drop contracts like that in the UK, especially right now when theres a shortage of production space due to Amazon, Disney, Netflix, Sky, etc all fighting for access.

I am not the biggest Bond fan so feel free to ignore my opinion, but it seems possible that Amazon is less of a bean counter than a traditional studio? They will throw money at the first production - with the hopes it is a hit. They are not beholden to it being profitable on paper like a studio would be.

But I also realize they took this approach to Lord of the Rings, and it didn't turn out.

This may be true, but Bond hasn't been owned by a traditional studio, it has essentially been owned by a family who have inherited control down a few generations.

> This is a sad outcome. The Bond franchise is very strong

Even back in the Broccoli years, Bond was garbage. The movie bond was a government assassin who we all pretended wasn't. Because sex. Ridiculous!

To Americans he also seemed smart and worldly. Because he had a British accent. Which sexy women liked. True, yet also ridiculous!

Can AMZN bury this relic faster than Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was reburied? Rate to find out!

Even back in the Broccoli years, Bond was garbage.

LOLWut ?! As of 2023, the James Bond film franchise has grossed over $7 billion globally at the box office. It's the sixth highest grossing film franchise in history. Your opinions of taste aside, Bond was anything but garbage otherwise it would never have lasted as long, or made as much money.

https://www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchise/James-Bond

Some things generate profit regardless of quality become the popular transcends any medium or iteration.

BvS was garbage but made money because people like those characters and will always pay. Same with Bond.

The movies are a lot of fun.

FWIW, I'm British. I won't disagree that there was a certain cringe to Bond, and the older films have aged quite poorly. But there's nostalgia there still, and it's also worth remembering that in many ways Bond defined the image of worldly/sexy. Bond's cultural impact on Men's fashion for example is huge. The films were influential at the time, even if in hindsight they're a bit simplistic or fantastical and more than a bit misogynistic.

I think the films are also worth more than the sum of their parts. Each one is typically an above average blockbuster style action film, but nothing particularly special. Taken together however, they are worth a lot more because of that continuing thread that has been done so well, and it's that which leads to the cultural significance.

The franchise certainly needs updating, but I think it has evolved over time and can likely continue to do so with that strong creative backing. It depends much less on sex now than it did even 20 years ago, they moved past the gadgets (as "gadgets" became less of a thing, it's hard to have a clever gadget when we all have smartphones in our pockets).

Some modernization but I agree that it is very strong with a single coherent vision of the character. Bond does not and should be a woman, or transgender or any other twist to modernize. It can do that with supporting characters, and in how Bond interacts with them. Making a stark change to the main character would cause too much discontinuity with fans, and people who have know Bond as a specific archetype for a very, very long time.

We should think of new characters to fit modern ideas, not changing old out of simplicity; or latching onto the gravy train.

I doubt that any of the options you've given would have been likely or be any more likely under new management – as you said, that modernisation can happen and is happening already through other characters.

What I could absolutely see happening is a teenage Bond YA fiction style thing, which would dilute the character. Or alternatively, a TV show, which would dilute the brand.

>I hope Bond survives.

? Bond died in last movie.

Bond was also in his 40s in both the 1960s and 2020s.

It's almost like there are different iterations of the character and will be again.

> The Bond franchise is very strong

I'm not sure how well it was doing under the Broccoli stewardship to be honest, I think some younger blood was needed. Although a soulless giant company is not what I would have suggested as a replacement.

Everyone's got a number they can't refuse...

Defenders will say Bond deserves a modern update beyond the Daniel Craig era.

But if I'm reading the tea leaves from Lord of the Rings, I am not bullish on Amazon's MCU-ification of the Bond franchise.

The Daniel Craig era was a modern update, though, so those defenders won't really be taking history into account. Not that the Broccolis never missed, but they were capable of moving with the times, and they did not blindly follow the money.

Amazon/Disney/Netflix/HBO move with the times by following the money, and by milking the reputation of respected brands and celebrities until they're dried out husks.

Yeah, I don't think people realize how many times the franchise has been updated over the years. I'm conservatively counting five times (marked with asterisks) but I think the number could be as high as seven. And then you've got to consider that they've tried to finish the character unsuccessfully even before No Time To Die with Never Say Never Again.

- Dr. No

- From Russia with Love

- Goldfinger

- Thunderball

- You Only Live Twice

*- On Her Majesty's Secret Service

- Diamonds Are Forever

*- Live and Let Die

- The Man with the Golden Gun

- The Spy Who Loved Me

- Moonraker

- For Your Eyes Only

*- Never Say Never Again

- Octopussy

- A View to a Kill

*- The Living Daylights

- Licence to Kill

*- GoldenEye

- Tomorrow Never Dies

- The World Is Not Enough

- Die Another Day

*- Casino Royale

- Quantum of Solace

- Skyfall

- Spectre

- No Time to Die

Never Say Never Again probably shouldn't be used as an example of "the franchise". It wasn't produced by Eon or the Broccoli family as someone else owned the rights to that particular story.

> and by milking the reputation of respected brands and celebrities until they're dried out husks.

Seems reasonable to me. The big question is why other creators are not working on creating new brands. There are more heroes, superheroes, super villains created nowadays. This is not some utility services which has to be mature, tried and tested even if old and boring that must remain in use.

No one's buying into that, it's too risky - supposedly. And it's not my field, but I have to think that writers coming up in this media environment have the formulas beaten into them from the start.

I'm struggling to think of truly original movie/TV created in the last 10 years that has stuck around . Maybe in TV there's a few, Severance comes to mind, but everything else is warmed over spy/supe/soap/horror/reality.

Even prestige dramas feel like they were designed to look and feel "important" without actually being important.

They are producing according to a small number of formulas because it's cheap, predictable, easy to make, easy to watch. Above all, we keep watching. Why would they take the risk of making something different?

Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Star Trek .... it feels like everything eventually devolves and runs into people or a situation where it doesn't seem like anyone has creative control / defined vision, and horrific writing and such decisions.

Interesting timing, considering that the overwhelming discussion since the last film has been will Bond be gay/non-white/non-male etc. Under Broccoli I think they could have pulled this off, under Amazon (see: LOTR) absolutely not. BUT now it seems Amazon may no longer feel pressure to have "DEI Bond". If I had to predict I'm guessing the future of Bond is:

1. Bad, see: LOTR, WOT

2. MCU/StarWars-ified (expect dozens of spin-offs, sequels, prequels, etc)

3. A-list action actors, (Tom Hardy? Jason Statham?)

4. Cringe, Amazon does not have an ounce of taste, never has, so Bond will drive a Mustang, he'll shoot a Glock or S&W, his clothes will look like Zara, and he'll be funny in the wrong ways (more Tony Stark, less Sean Connery)

God I wish we had just gotten a Idris Elba bond movie.

Dr. Who recently stepped down.

As a fan of the Wheel of Time and Lord of the Rings, this doesn't bode well.

I read the Wheel of Time just before the TV show came out.

The community around WoT was easily the kindest, most welcoming, helpful that I've found around any book series (maybe any work of fiction).

Sad to see they didn't get the TV series they deserved.

I was disappointed when Amazon canceled their plans to bring the first Culture novel, Consider Phlebas, to TV. After seeing the page-to-screen translation of Wheel of Time I think that it was just as well.

Yeah, I’m really glad the Culture series will not be tarnished by amazon as well for now.

Honestly I’d want a studio dedicated taking these long, beautiful series and making long, beautiful TV adaptions true to the books. Probably wouldn’t make enough money though.

Now there's a series of novels I'd love to see on the screen. Assuming, of course that someone could do it justice. Not easy, given the scope.

The CGI for the orbital being scuttled would be expensive I imagine, but very, very cool.

Same, I was finishing my first read through as the show cane out. So disappointed… Lots of really major changes for very little reason.

In the last episode of S2 Loial gets stabbed with the ruby hilted dagger, which is typically extremely lethal.

Another great community and series are the cosmere books by Brandon Sanderson, who finished the last few WoT after Robert Jordan passed away. Mistborn and The Stormlight Archives are both amazing. Also, 9000 pages and over 3 million words for all of the cosmere books, so you will be reading for a bit!

Before the first 6 seasons of GoT, pretty much every book to screen SF/Fantasy adaption was awful. An okay-ish adaptation was something to celebrate. WoT and Rings of Power were okay-ish.

Are you just mind deleting the LOTR trilogy?

Yes, there are notable exceptions. Princess Bride is another. There are more. But they are vastly outnumbered by the crud.

I'd nominate The Leftovers as the most successful fantasy adaptation for TV, even if it wasn't the type of fantasy that has dragons and swords. Unlike Game of Thrones it was consistently good to the end.

Idk about you but I have been a WoT since I discovered them in middle school, read every book multiple times, audiobooks etc. Similar if a bit less for rings of power, they absolutely butchered them in the name of some weird political agenda

I am with you. I starting reading WoT in middle school, I think when about 8 or 9 books were out. I re-read that whole series multiple times in the last 20-25 years. The adaption is mind boggling, and the changes make absolutely no sense. The adaption practically feels like it was made by someone who hates the wheel of time, and wanted to make it bad.

It 100% feels like they HATED the original material.

snakes and foxes..

The Savor… of upset fans!

Bond movies are in a perpetual cycle of reinvention, trying to update the franchise and keep it relevant. I'm not sure it's wholly succeeded in that. They've certainly done the sequel thing of adding more tech, more action, more globetrotting, higher stakes, more of everything. Bigger, but better? Of the Craig movies, by far the best was Casino Royale, because of how it stripped things back to basics. At least, compared to the lunacy of the previous film (an invisible car, really?).

I'd love for an Amazon Bond reboot to be a 1960s period piece. Keep the tech light, make him a spy again, put him in some tense situations. It could work!

Barbara Broccoli thinks the people at Amazon are "fucking idiots":

https://www.wsj.com/business/media/james-bond-movies-amazon-...

Amazon has apparently solved the problem by pushing her out.

... by buying her out.

Bummer. T-2 years before it becomes an algorithmically-optimized so-so miniseries.

Nothing lasts forever.

Except Diamonds.

Only in songs.

They only live twice

This is a story that will definitely be told in family office conferences for a long time: one family has basically overseen bond since the beginning of the films I believe. Sad end.

not sure if their policies have changed but in 2021 Amazon Studios implemented quotas for performers and creatives on each project based on race/ethnicity, gender, and ability, with the actor's real-life identities expected to align to their characters. doesn't sound like a compatible platform for this particular franchise.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/ama...

Did you fail to notice the diversity of the cast in the last 20 years of Bond films?

And if you mean the title character, you are presupposing that:

A. the quota existing means Bond won't be a white man (he absolutely will be in the first Amazon outing), and

B. Bond ceases to be Bond if he isn't white.

There's no reason for modern Bond stories to require a white Bond. He does have to be a guy, but don't see why race changes the story.

> He does have to be a guy

why?

Personally I can’t wait for Snow White to be played by a 60 year old retired plumber from New Jersey.

It's certainly a matter of opinion, but the character's flaws and conflicts are very much tied up in his masculinity. Making the character a woman changes things so much it's essentially a different property with the same name. Just make a good original story about a woman who's a spy, don't ride the franchise's coattails for the wrong reasons. We don't need representation at this level of granularity.

Bond is the embodiment of white male privilege. (I suppose you could add handsome and straight privilege as well.) A well-dressed, handsome, white male with an abundance of confidence can easily gain access to many places without a second glance. Along with seducing women who have information, this is one of his main investigative strategies.

Unfortunately, women and people of color often don't have the same advantages and in some places are completely locked out. This makes it more difficult to change than someone like Leiter, Moneypenny or M who are much more flexible characters.

While it would still be possible to make a Bond without these attributes (they can still drink martinis, shoot bad guys and make quips) it would be a drastic change to the character.

I suppose the other perspective is that if Bond is primarily intended to be a personification of Britain, perhaps it's right that the character looks representative of Britain.

He has to be a James

Food doesn't have to taste good, but the people that consume it generally like it that way.

maybe both of us are doing some presupposing

After I read the article in the WSJ[1] I wrote a Bond spec script over break. The tricky thing with spec scripts based on other people's IP is getting the word out, because unsolicited submissions can put the recipient in a bind if some element of what you sent ends up – even accidentally – in the final product. It's silly, but it's the reality of screenwriting.

Fwiw I'm a former special operations veteran and an accomplished screenwriter. Here's my risk-mitigated pitch for HN's enjoyment.

==========

1. We want to preserve the Bond legacy. We also want to expand the world he inhabits. We can do both.

2. So much happens 'under the water line' of reality already. Psychological operations. Cyber warfare. Supply chain attacks. Transnational smuggling. There's literally gobs of espionage content that can be explored.

3. Ultimately bond is about heroes who preserve the realm when institutions fail. They become the cornerstone upon which the new institutions will be built.

4. We build a universe that predicts and reacts to our current reality, which, broadly, is about institutional failure. We are in a multipolar world now, and technology accelerates at the same rate as the danger. Can we demonstrate an escape route? A rallying cry for heroism in an unjust world?

5. We build a universe so rich with possibility that we can compartmentalize cleanly; for example, a show can live semi-independently of the film franchise.

6. Imagine a limited series about Chinese teenager working at a microchip factory in Wuxi. Alone, barely scraping by, forced labor. Then, over the course of a season, a Q Branch operative approachers her, recruits her, teaches her to smuggle out secrets, aides in her breathtaking escape when she’s caught. This characters

7. We build characters whose impact can be felt elsewhere. Q is later able to deactivate a missile - piloted by those smuggled microchips – fired at Bond in the big theatrical film.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/business/media/james-bond-movies-amazon-...

Also I wanted to create a separate post in response to the negative predictions. Obviously I can't predict the future, but in my experience creating any film is subject to significant pressure, internal and external, on the creatives involved. There are a LOT of really excellent scripts that get diluted in this way, and there isn't much that can be done about it.

That said, Amazon Studios is probably a loss leader for Prime, or at least certainly doesn't enjoy the same margins as other AMZN LOBs.

That's okay!

Amazon Studios execs can mitigate their risk by spreading it around. Do small stuff, a single, small film about someone in this universe. Someone doing a supply chain attack on behalf of Q Branch. A watchmaker approached for a Special Project. A deep-cover NOC who works for Lloyds of London who gets wind of a forthcoming infrastructure attack. It doesn't all have to be big explosions and major stunts; the seedy underworld of espionage happens not in soaring bunkers and Red Square, but behind a highway rest stop, or in a factory office, or in the Port of Marsailles.

No need to blow the budget all at once; begin slow, build towards the theatrical films in interesting, round-about ways. Take your time and iterate, see what works. Disney/Star Wars is doing this in reverse (Andor was wildly successful) and Amazon Studios has the chance to do it right!

I’d watch this

With all due respect, because there are nice ideas in this, a wider Bond Cinematic Universe is the wrong direction. There is already a very established "BCU" in the film progression, and I believe that the cultural significance of that would be diluted, not enhanced, by adding side quests to the story.

Alternatively, to look at it from the perspective of your spec script, what about your spec script is enhanced by it being in the BCU. Ignoring the leg-up it would get from that, what is better about the story for it being Bond, over a new franchise? From what you've written here, nothing jumps out to me as benefitting from being Bond. Similarly, how are the Bond films improved by this? By having a missile deactivated by off-screen magic that you need another streaming subscription to watch the back-story of?

Thanks for your thoughts!

BCU is why AMZN bought the IP, so I'm just leaning into the business reality. My argument is that the films are the center of gravity, and it's fine to put other BCU properties 'in orbit' around them without having to have everything reference everything else like they did (brilliantly) at Marvel.

The films are holy, but deserving of a reboot. My spec - which I genuinely can't post here – dips into deep Bond lore but, introduces us to this broad world of espionage in which these other properties could orbit.

It's not too too different than Star Wars or even DC (like with Gotham), but what's so cool about this world of espionage is that there's so much to tap into that is both grounded AND cool. A whole constellation of espionage stories just under our psychic reality, perhaps moreso than comic books or scifi.

The real question is not the name of the studio but the name of the person(s) hired to handle the job. If they're like Kathleen Kennedy, the franchise is toast.

I see a lot of shade thrown at Kathleen Kennedy these days. Sure, some of the Star Wars movies under Disney haven't been great, but look at this resume. It's incredible. I'll save you the click and put some things she's been the executive producer of here: Poltergeist, E.T., IJ & Temple of Doom, Goonies, Back to the Future(I,II,III), Young Sherlock Holmes, The Money Pit, Empire of the Sun, Who Framed Roger Rabbit (jumping ahead to more recent stuff), Rogue One, Andor, Mandalorian, Ashoka, Skeleton Crew....

So yes, not everything has been a winner, but to say that having her name attached to something means it won't be good means that either A)you might not be informed about her resume or B)you have another reason you don't like her involvement with a project.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005086/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1_tt_0_...

That's a nice list, but most of the real great ones were over FORTY years ago. Maybe she changed. Maybe her influence back then was limited by her youth and the blatant sexism in the industry. Who knows? But something about her work has changed.

Well, it was a good run. 25 films ain't bad!

Given the insipid B-series mess Amazon has made of Reacher (despite the fanfare of having a physically representative actor playing him), this is not an obviously positive development.

It sounds like they gonna dilute the crap out of this by doing tv, games, etc

They will play it safe on their first outing while chasing some sort if weird trend (“Bond should be Y with Z sensibilities”) making Bond’s next movie one for the trash. I’m not worried about “wokeness” or whatever the trolls are whining about these days (making Bond black or gay is the least interesting addition to the character you could make, once you do that there is actually very little to examine). It will probably be Bond working with Alexa as the femme fatale or something dumb. “They got into our AWS account but thankfully Q had full sys-admin powers and Amazon security team helped us out.”

I pirate anything from these tech-streaming companies anyways. Go ahead do whatever.

Bezos can finally realize his dream and the project he has been training for since retiring from CEO...

The name is Bond, James Bond

He would make a GREAT bond villain!

Modern day Blofeld

Maniacal laugh included

https://tinyurl.com/mpvymy27

Most billionaires do.

Coincidence?

Surprised nobody has commented hoping they make the character less rapey.

Spoiler alert: Bond died.

And Snape killed him.

I thought it was Freddy Mercury

Well his boss was Voldemort.

This massively increases the probability of having a black James Bond on screen.

I’m not sure - big tech is reversing their DEI narrative since the Trump election/ inauguration.

And even before that Amazon had The Man in the High Castle, which seemed like an edgy exercise in displaying Nazism more than anything else. You could tell there was some sci-fi plot there but the adaptation merely just touched on it. New Bond is likely to be joining Spectre.io and helping put down rebellions in colonized lands. Perhaps even helping the Russians/Chinese undermine the EU, working with a Leiter who avoided "rightsizing" and was promoted four levels by pledging loyalty to the Party.

Surprising to see the downvotes on this comment.

I didn't know racism was common around here.

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